Reflecting on the worst cover band ever

 Okay sure, it's an old topic, but near as I could tell it'll only be bad if the people discussed ever improved. Otherwise I'm pressed for ideas and I'm gonna be busy with school near the end of the month, so how about a trip down memory lane?

Cover bands can either be the best thing ever, or the most hilarious thing ever. I won't bite the heads of anyone who just does these for fun, but if you're intending to become famous for it... I dunno, don't suck I guess?

Such was the way of a two piece outfit who were prominent in the early-2010s, but either they took a hint or grew up a few years after. I'm gonna try and piece together a cohesive piece on prime shit-meisters Bad Departure.

Background

Bad Departure, earlier known as Point Blank Tunes and Nuclear Vengeance, was a three-piece band from America's favorite punching bag New Jersey, said to be Tom's River. Max Branvall and Cody Fox, the latter of which seemed to be the lead mastermind behind all this were principal members. They had a drummer too, about two to three of them, like he got sick of either their shit or ensuing bullying.

Their identities varied, but kept a certain motif, playing covers of songs by Green Day and Blink-182. I mean I heard of fangirls, but cover leeches are new. Now sure, covers are never better than the original, but here... how do I put this? They suck harder than the most manufactured pop artists out there and at least then they're built for success. They make me wanna pledge my undying love to Fred Durst and Chad Kroeger. They had three chances to improve and they never did.

Everything that could go wrong, did. Singing is off key, tempos are inconsistent, drumming isn't in tune with the guitars, bass and guitar are inconsistent, plus Green Day. 

It gets worse once you take into account they wanted to get noticed. They had to hop between three different channels of differing names, only reason I know of was to bury the lead, but word to the wise, don't announce this on your channel, thanks to that I was able to uncover a more obscure second channel.

One other takeaway I noticed was that for such a small outfit in New Jersey, they somehow got access to some bitching equipment, Marshall Amps, those guitars and some other stuff I didn't notice. Either these are a bunch of privileged rich white kids or they drove their parents into debt and are forced to make music in order to make their money back.

Only way they could be worse is if they were ghosted by a Nigerian who makes anything creepy just by being there, but he prefers girls I guess, lest the boys wasted all their money in equipment and couldn't afford the entry fee, or maybe just the fact both operate on separate edges of the US.

Chronological Stuff

Okay, nothing more to note in general, so I'm gonna go over the history of these wackos for the hell of it.

Part 1: Point Blank Tunes

They made their debut as PointBlankTunes in May 31st of 2012. It seems they were set on getting famous at this point, at least to my best guess as the Wayback Machine put out zilch implying otherwise. Their first upload was only nine days after they made the channel. On here, we have two live performances, a pre-recorded cover and a pink slip. 

The two live performances were shot in either Branvall's or Fox's backyard, the drummer probably pissed off Cody so they squirreled him away into a shed to only moderate visibility. They play to an audience consisting of their parents and family members I believe, some of which slowly getting eaten away by the fact they wasted their money on what amounted to nothing, lest they knew nothing of their intent beyond it being some post 4th backyard concert.

I noticed they not only tried to cover the songs, but to get them as close to the originals as humanly possible. It's the little things, but they also tried to recreate Billie Joe Armstrong's freestyle rant at the start of a performance of She. Notable thing here is that while the bass tone is right, Branvall's guitar is in the wrong tune and they do nothing to correct it.

Perhaps under threat of violence for butchering the name of Armstrong, they were forced to remain in their rooms, but made time to do ruin the name of Blink-182. They recorded separately, the drummer wanted to get revenge for his shed placement and just did his own thing, only to forget about in some areas.

Basically, it sounds like they recorded everything separately, and shat themselves when trying to make it cohesive. It was so embarrassing, they pulled a BenTheLooney and moved to a new channel, but unlike Ben, were a bit more honest about it, I mean Ben is a hell of a lot more honest these days, but that's beside the point.

Part 2: Nuclear Vengeance

If it hadn't been for that announcement video, this channel would've completely slipped under the radar. It seems around this point they tried to put their music on Reverb Nation, or just made the account, what reason would they have to remove the music if the account implied anything went on there. But I'll discuss other profiles later on.

There isn't much here, beyond an accoustic cover of a Green Day song and a full-band cover of a Blink-182 song. There is one thing I noticed. Around this time they claimed they'd be making more original music, but it never happened beyond a snipe that played at the start of the last video on the channel. I can see why they gave up, it proved to be too generic even for them.

It seems they discovered that when they link to a new channel from their own, the hate travels with it, so quietly launched...

Part 3: Bad Departure

Their most notable phase, or so it would seem. They resumed their usual schtick of cover songs, only improvement being that they did another Blink-182 cover that was mostly on time, even though the guitar ascension was total ass.

Once more, the drummer changed every phase or so, like they think "Fuck this." And leave when the timing is right. It seems their ambitions clouded their better judgement, as at this point, they did a live gig, albeit somewhere small. The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, big to locals, but otherwise a small blip on a giant radar.

It must've been slow that day.

After that, possibly due to an unseen beatdown, they went into hiding, and it seemed like a fitting end to the band, until...

Part 4: Good for Nothing Music

The band made one last rebranding attempt, but this one was far more elusive. Nothing much exists on this band aside from an Instagram account with the latest post coming from 2014. Facebook provides nothing much either and due to the generic name, any info I could find will be inconclusive.

Based on the names listed, it seems Cody Fox left the band at some point and Max Branvall was the last one involved. The Instagram users listed on the band's description lead to either empty or dead profiles, but at least one member in their videos looks like Max, I guess.

Web Fingerprints

Of the profiles I could find, whether they be abandoned pages or indications, they were active on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, ReverbNation, SoundCloud and Wix. They never had a Twitter account, but given how shitty that site is it wouldn't take long for them to jump ship.

The oldest profile they have as of now is their Point Blank channel, every YouTube channel they made had an associated Facebook page, and those pages would typically get shut down every time they changed names, probably for security reasons. No surviving Facebook profile exists for this band.

It wasn't till around their Nuclear Vengeance days where they branched out to ReverbNation, probably to take advantage of making their own songs, but nothing came of it and they never tried it again when they became Bad Departure, although they did make a SoundCloud account when they moved to their third channel, maybe that's why.

They made an Instagram account later down the line, as with for Good for Nothing Music, but nothing came of them beyond a few scant posts, one of which being a promotion for their Stone Pony concert. Had it not been for this I would've never known they made a fourth attempt.

Lastly they have a Wix site, which seemed to have come close to the end as there're only a scant few updates. Only thing interesting is a proposal for new songs which never happened, another cover advertisement, and a promotion for their Stone Pony show. I just brought it up here because I'm a completionist.

Closing thoughts

Follow your dreams, but work at being good at accomplishing them. If this was intended to be a joke it has less mileage than Weird Al Yankovic, because this is just the same joke over and over if so, or an excuse to avoid having this be a cloud forever hanging over their heads.

Got nothing else to say, and it may be a while before I post anything else, so I'll end cringe style.

They

Shock me to silence

Shrivel my face up into such pain

They

They figured out

How to make Ashlee Simpson feel less ashamed

Why'd you ever turn to Green Day and Blink-182?

Why do privileged white boys always the worst of use?

Scream or ease, my ears always bleed.

Now take this heed, and screw you.

They

Haunt all the senses

Of hearing sight and sound no rules apply

I

Want to point out

Originality would just make things much worse

Why'd you ever turn to Green Day and Blink-182?

Why do privileged white boys always the worst of use?

Scream or ease, my ears always bleed.

Now take this heed, and screw you.

(annoyed grunt)

Why'd you ever turn to Green Day and Blink-182?

Why do privileged white boys always the worst of use?

Scream or ease, my ears always bleed.

Now take this heed, and screw you.

Weird Public Access Memory

 Anything goes when it coms to public access, I think. I don't know how to preface this without making this a bigger mystery than it needs to be, all I'm doing is recounting a memory I have, who knows if it's well known and I just don't know the name of it, or there're crossed wires and I'm confusing myself.

To share

I can't pinpoint an exact year, but I wanna say it was around 2004 to 2005. I caught this on Queens Public Television, my local access network in my area. Now due to its lower profile it isn't exactly easy to pinpoint any show that's no longer airing on the network, due to it being local programing, so for all I know this is gone forever.

Near as I could tell, this was a sketch off of some comedy sketch series. I recall seeing this twice, the exact thing, so this might've just been a one-off.

What I Remember

It was introduced through some roughly animated title-card, that I don't remember the name of. It centered on this girl who dressed as a superhero (short brown hair, neon-colored outfit.) She was hired to help out a store owner who's antagonized by two punks, it has one owner (a guy with a moustache and green shirt), as well as a wife who angrily swears over the punks as chunks come out of her mouth (the footage of this was sped up in one area as she puts those pieces back in her mouth)

The superhero girl has a sidekick in her pet talking Chihuahua, it's a female dog in a dress (not a bitch allegory, it's female), but I don't know it's name. It also flies or goes by hoverboard.

The punks also own their own chihuahua, I believe it was named Sylvester, who they either don't feed or just neglect. I know they have a perpetual shot of the dog staring in desperation as an acapella rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow plays.

Another gap, the superhero girl gets caught, forced alcohol leading to her cursing them out, and is about to be killed by a board with nails hammered in (this displayed by the male punk popping a balloon on it). All else I recall was that the girl chihuaua is flying by a window remarking her only company is the birds, while she passes Sylvester looking at her through the window. When she notices him, it leads to a romantic fantasy montage.

That's really all I recall.

Final Thoughts

I'm not begging for an all out search, but if you were in my neck of the woods in Queens and watched public access, let me know if you came across something like this.

O'Grady review

 While this wasn't the last hurrah for its production company, this was the last hurrah for its animation style, well, on a visual basis at least. If Y2K killed one thing, it was squigglevision apparently, it started strong in the 90s and gradually decomposed to nothing, sorta like a band scooped up by a corporation for promotions and dying off in relative obscurity some time after. Anyone remember Sev?

Stay tuned for some moderate irony and questions on how a network views teenagers with O'Grady.

Background

O'Grady was the last show to make use of the art direction presented in prior shows by Tom Snyder Productions. By then it had rebranded to Soup2Nuts following an acquisition by Scholastic. This came out in 2004, about two months or so after Home Movies wrapped, so this was certainly the last for what the company used to be.

On the irony bit, O'Grady was made for The N (remember that network?), and it was the last for the studio in this incarnation. What's the irony? The last show produced by the company during the Tom Snyder Productions era was The Dick and Paula Celebrity Special for FX.

Both shows were aired on niche networks, produced for niche audiences and were the last shows produced for their respective incarnations (reminder, in terms of overall style.)

As this was a Soup2Nuts production, we got the endearing mainstay H. Jon Benjamin in the mix, along with another mainstay since Home Movies Melissa Bardin Galsky. Also as a rarity, this show features a celebrity in a major role. Celebrities were relegated to guest appearances, especially in Dr. Katz, the most you got out of Home Movies was Emo Phillips.

The man of the hour here is Patrice O'Neal, who is perhaps better known as a cautionary tale relating to bad choices on Type II Diabetes.

If Girlstuff/Boystuff did air on The N, this was The N's second cartoon overall, but their first original.

Plot

Like Dick and Paula, this show has a mundane framework with a gimmick, but unlike that show, the gimmick is used to its full potential and maintains relevance to the plot. Four highschoolers attend a school in a town with a curse, where various oddities happen called the weirdness. It could be anything, whether students multiply thanks to fits of anger, or music suddenly playing out of nowhere to manipulate the mood.

Our leads here are honestly not as generic as I expected them to be, as it comes with the territory of many teen cartoons. Kevin is a more self-aware and honest slacker type, but perhaps on a lower ebb compared to others. We have the progressive Beth, the vain Abby and the good natured Harold.

One thing I find kinda interesting is that they place the worser of the two in the lead roles, a rarity and a nice change given how we strip those kinds of characters of any other dimensions to make us root for the heroes who ironically come off as the obnoxiously popular while the people we're supposed to hate get so maligned it just leads to an endless cycle of mixed feelings and questioning who is truly the villain.

#IStandWithVictoriaBest

The characters work off well against one another, but can keep it together well enough to prevent it from feeling forced. Only conflict is a difference in opinion and the situation whether or it has an impact. The weirdness is prevalent, but not common enough to be a major hinderance.

By this point, retroscripting was abandoned, which improved the overall flow. Retroscripting worked better when the situation was fit for it, but it seemed Dick and Paula tainted the prospect with a lack of a major focus and a piece of the actual actors. Home Movies took to scripting since season 2, but mainly ironed out improvised dialog, something that shows here as well.

Compared to Girlstuff/Boystuff which felt like a manufactured take on teen life, this feels a bit more genuine thanks to its gimmick, just seeing weird stuff happen to some insignificant teenagers. It strangely has a more natural flow to its dialog. Plus no lingo.

Art Style

Something wrong happened, either that or The N were heavily convinced teens enjoyed ugliness. This show feels like a visual mockery of prior Soup2Nuts shows with how asymmetrical everything looks, what even is the point of having the mouth pass the cheeks? Now sure, it stands out, but I'm just confused. Home Movies was consistent between its first and later seasons, why the change?

Best case the artists pulled a Matt Groening and hastily drew concept art for this show for fear of losing the rights to another.

It kinds functions like South Park if done in flash in certain areas.

But who am I kidding? This still looks a hell of a lot better than Girlstuff/Boystuff, this was bound to have a better reason.

Overall

I liked this better than The Dick and Paula Celebrity Special, for the sake of making do with a gimmick and a better flow. This is also technically the best cartoon on The N, it was a hell of a lot more bearable than Girlstuff/Boystuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtfzUtCGakg

The Dick and Paula Celebrity Special review

 The Dick and Paula Celebrity Special is as close to sheer obscurity as any show could get, only way it could be even more obscure is if no episodes ever surfaced, but they did. It's a mix of a swan-song for a production company's initial incarnation, its animation style it pioneered and popularized, and part of the humble beginnings of a beloved cable network.

Retroscripective/Squigglemation

The Dick and Paula Celebrity Special was released in 1999 for a six episode season. It was the work of Tom Snyder Productions, perhaps best known for Science Court, Dr. Katz Professional Therapist and the first season of Home Movies, and not because an old talk show host was behind them (it wasn't, this is an entirely separate guy.)

This and those shows made use of a process called "squigglevision", named for the shaky outlines present on characters. It's a form of computer animation with the shaking existing for simulation purposes and to push the illusion of traditional animation. It was also very easy and cheap to produce, and that, along with the fact that it was kept entirely to one studio helped to give every show they produced a unique visual flare.

These shows also utilized retroscripting, where scenes are improvised based on an outlined premise before they are polished for final reads. This would slowly rear its head outside of squigglevision on most Adult Swim shows (owed to the fact that Tom Snyder mainstays like H. Jon Benjamin and Brendan Small were there.)

Point is, it was a unique process, maybe other shows did something similar, but this was where it was at its most popular at the time.

Perhaps one thing this show is known for is being the very first cartoon to ever air on FX, of Archer, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, American Horror Story, Sons of Anarchy, The Shield and possibly more fame. Funnily enough, FX at this point were transitioning away from reruns and flicks as their main focus, but at this point scripted programs (or just situational programs) were next to none, the most you got were variety and comedy shows. It wasn't until The Shield where FX took scripted programing more seriously, and it was as early as 2000 where they experimented with Son of the Beach.

Better yet, it seemed like FX were finding their footing and would take up anything that can either broaden their horizon or not leave a dent in their pockets. I'd claim cable viewers are a niche market at least at the time, but what do I know?

Weirdly enough, while the infamous Sammy was long lost but known well enough, this was the opposite.

The show

Set in Massachusetts, the show centers on a husband and wife talkshow team who interviews historical figures dead or alive, along with whatever oddities faced in relation to the figure. That's about it.

The fun in a Tom Snyder program is the dialog, especially since a bulk of it is improvised, and because the outlines are so air tight that it feels genuine and fitting for the show. On Dr. Katz, for those not in the know, it's basically comedians stating what's on their mind to a therapist, mixed with the therapist's daily lives. The key is a natural flow.

Home Movies got by because of how awkward it was (okay maybe it was funny, though why ditch retroscripting as the core function afterwards?)

What kills that kind of vibe here is the use of an extravagant premise, where historical figures are interviewed. You can't just glance over it, and with something like retroscripting, it can feel kinda basic, like of course it's gonna be a stitch and a joke, little nuance. They do go for the "how historical figures affect the modern world" deal, either fleetingly or mostly, but that'd be the first thing you'd expect.

I've been zoning in and out watching the show. The key to good improv is the element of surprise, or a little piece of yourself, you'd never know what you'd get with it. Here, this feels a lot more straight-forward than it should. Maybe I've seen one bad parody too many and I've been desensitized, who knows. The comedy here feels very basic, I can forgive it if it was a scripted sitcom since that just has you follow a story a lot of the time, but honestly, this is improv at its worst.

I literally felt the minutes slip away from me as I watched it, if something good happened then okay, but I wasn't interested enough to continue.

Overall

This feels like a bad cross between Dr. Katz and the educational spirit of Science Court, with little nuance. I understand if they didn't wanna do Dr. Katz again, but this didn't do any good. If this was that good, why is it not talked about more often? Every small collection has a non-valuable piece to it, and this was that piece.

This show would've worked better as an educational series for kids, where kids would interview various historical figures, keeping the talkshow setting. I mean come on, it makes sense and it'd feel more genuine, somehow. If Science Court is anything to go by they were no strangers to educational content, so why not?

After this show, Tom Snyder Productions was bought out by Scholastic and rebranded to Soup2Nuts, handling the remainder of Home Movies and upgrading still running shows in the pipeline and future productions to flash, namely Home Movies, going on to produce Word Girl, as well as one last series to have the squigglevision motif, at least in spirit.