No time for love, Dr. Jones. The fakes await! As I mentioned last week, this post is devoted to the cinematic musical alter egos (and some non-cinematic ones as well) and as Jon Cummings mentioned last week, he did it first. Undaunted, I’m sending my posse over to his abode to knock ‘im into shape. Yes, my posse consists of a penguin, a rabbit and a cat that has used up one too many lives.

So Opus, Bill and all the rest never made it to the movies, but they should have, and considering how bankrupt Hollywood is for ideas, they may yet get there someday. In the meantime, we have volumes of Berke Breathed’s Bloom County comic strips and a flexi-disc with two of Billy and the Boingers’ (formerly Deathtongue) “hits.” “I’m a Boinger” is rather hard on the ears, the kind of sledgehammer comedy fans used to send to the Dr. Demento show after listening to too much “Weird Al” Yankovic.  “U Stink But I Love U,” on the other hand, is obnoxious, but was performed by the very real hardcore band Mucky Pup. They even got the tuba in, so big points for that.

Last week, I gave credit to Bill Nighy for singing his parts in the film Still Crazy. This week, I’m doing the same for Hugh Grant. What an insane world we live in. Having never seen the film Music and Lyrics (2007), all I knew about it was that Grant played a former pop star from a band (loosely modeled on Wham!) called PoP! His forte was the music, but now as a writer for hire, he’s contracted to create a hit tune for rising pop music starlet and he’s in need of a lyricist. Enter Drew Barrymore, a lyricist on the rise. The rest is rom-com history. Now, there was no need for Grant to sing on the soundtrack, as I think an audience would have given him that latitude. I mean, it’s Hugh Grant. He’s not a singer and nobody really expects anything at all from him. To my shock, “PoP Goes My Heart” is a rather faithful approximation of ’80s synth-pop and I have to offer my apologies. What I will not apologize for is a Wiki blurb indicating David Hasselhoff covered the song and had a hit in Germany with it. I’m calling Bravo Sierra on that one… (more…)