Desperate to get out of the circus theatrics business, Cecil Pitt and his sidekick, Clive, turn to the world of Rock music Management with the help of a £50,000 inheritance.
Objective
To win the game, one must select a band, record an album and earn 4 gold discs within the space of a year. If the player fails to meet this target, goes bankrupt or has no musicians left, the game is over.
Gameplay
The game is almost entirely menu-driven with options that allow the player to decide what the band does next.
The player's first task as manager is to pick musicians for the band, and then decide whether they should buy them brand-new equipment, second-hand equipment or get some dodgy gear off the back of a lorry.
ZX Spectrum screenshot
Once in the main game, the options presented are as follows:
Practice - the players lock the band away for up to 5 days so they can practice. The music of the band is also presented, gradually increasing from atonal noise to actual music (songs are generated on the fly by the software).
Gig - the players go on tour and is the primary source of moneymaking in the game.
Publicity - the players organise a publicity stunt that can make the band more famous, but can also trigger events that kill a band member.
Gifts - the players have to buy some gifts for the band to keep them sweet, otherwise they will make some rather costly ultimatums.
Record - once the band gets a recording contract, this option appears and allows them to record an album.
Release - once the album's recorded, this option releases it along with any singles.
Along the way, the player also has to decide:
Whether or not to play a charity gig. Some of the charities that contact the band are real and others fake. The band could end up with negative publicity if they ignore a genuine charity or get duped by a bogus one.
Whether or not to accept a sponsorship deal.
To shoot a music video and who will direct it, the location and the theme of this project. The player has the options to select from a range of choices, each with a cost value, such as an expensive directors and locations or less costly ones. As with the parodical nature of the game director names lampoon real-life directors. A selection choice of a high level (most expensive) director is named Steven Cheeseburger (a parody of Steven Spielberg). There are many others fitting with the theme of recognizable but legally distinct names.
Which recording contract is best for the player's band.
What to do if a little organisation in Korea is bootlegging his or her records. Players have to decide if they should do nothing, sue them, buy them out or "send in the boys".
Releasing an album or single makes them eligible for the charts. A Top 10 Singles & Albums charts (depending on what players have released) gets displayed on screen every Sunday. The other bands in the Top 10 are also parodies of other rock bands.
Musicians
At the outset, the player can choose to hire up to four musicians to make up the band. The musicians are parodies of contemporary pop music stars. Their weekly wage depends on their abilities and their fame, ranging from £30,000 for "Bill Collins" down to just £50 for "Sidney Sparkle".
The game is heavy on parody on existing people and names, which wasn't well-received across the board: according to Jones, "an irate parent had taken objection to one of the jokes in the spoof newspaper included in the box and WHSmith pulled the game from their shelves".[1]
Notes and references
All the information above was taken from either the actual gameplay, the game manual and/or packaging.
Belle and Sebastian are a Scottish indie pop band formed in Glasgow in 1996. Led by Stuart Murdoch, the band has released twelve studio albums. They are often compared with acts such as the Smiths and Nick Drake. The name "Belle and Sebastian" comes from the 1965 television series Belle and Sebastian. Though consistently lauded by critics, Belle and Sebastian's "wistful pop" has enjoyed only limited commercial success.
John Baldwin, better known by his stage name John Paul Jones, is an English musician, songwriter, and record producer who was the bassist and keyboardist for the rock band Led Zeppelin. Prior to forming the band with Jimmy Page in 1968, he was a session musician and arranger. After the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, Led Zeppelin disbanded, and Jones developed a solo career. He has collaborated with musicians across a variety of genres, including the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures with Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, and Alain Johannes. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 as a member of Led Zeppelin.
The Rutles were a rock band that performed visual and aural pastiches and parodies of the Beatles. This originally fictional band, created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes for a sketch in Idle's mid-1970s BBC television comedy series Rutland Weekend Television, later toured and recorded, releasing two studio albums and garnering two UK chart hits. The band toured again from 2002 until Innes' death in 2019.
Huey Lewis and the News is an American pop rock band based in San Francisco, California. They had a run of hit singles during the 1980s and early 1990s, eventually achieving 19 top ten singles across the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, and Mainstream Rock charts. Their sound draws upon earlier pop, rhythm & blues and doo-wop artists, and their own material has been labeled as blue-eyed soul, new wave, power pop, and roots rock.
The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was an American committee formed in 1985 with the stated goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to have violent, drug-related, or sexual themes via labeling albums with Parental Advisory stickers. The committee was founded by four women known as the "Washington Wives"—a reference to their husbands' connections with government in the Washington, D.C. area. The women who founded the PMRC are Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore; Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker; Pam Howar, wife of Washington realtor Raymond Howar; and Sally Nevius, wife of former Washington City Council Chairman John Nevius. The PMRC eventually grew to include 22 participants before shutting down in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Booker T. & the M.G.'s were an American instrumental R&B/funk band that was influential in shaping the sound of Southern soul and Memphis soul. The original members of the group were Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper (guitar), Lewie Steinberg (bass), and Al Jackson Jr. (drums). In the 1960s, as members of the Mar-Keys, the rotating slate of musicians that served as the house band of Stax Records, they played on hundreds of recordings by artists including Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Bill Withers, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor and Albert King. They also released instrumental records under their own name, including the 1962 hit single "Green Onions". As originators of the unique Stax sound, the group was one of the most prolific, respected, and imitated of its era.
Talk Talk were an English band formed in 1981, led by Mark Hollis, Lee Harris (drums), and Paul Webb (bass). Initially a synth-pop group, Talk Talk's first two albums, The Party's Over (1982) and It's My Life (1984), reached top 40 in the UK and produced the international hit singles "Talk Talk", "Today", "It's My Life", and "Such a Shame". They achieved widespread critical success in Europe and the UK with the album The Colour of Spring (1986) along with its singles "Life's What You Make It" and "Living in Another World". 1988's Spirit of Eden moved the group towards a more experimental sound informed by jazz and free improvisation, pioneering what became known as post-rock; it was critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful.
Die Toten Hosen are a German punk rock band from Düsseldorf. The name is taken from the German slang idiom tote Hose, which means "nothing happening"; "boring".
Spicks and Specks is an Australian music-themed comedic television quiz show in which the host, Adam Hills, asks two teams, of three people each, varying music-themed questions in different games. Team leaders are Myf Warhurst and Alan Brough. Members of each team vary from episode to episode; one per team generally comes from the world of music and the other from comedy. Scores are kept, but the prize for the winners is simply personal satisfaction. Many games are named after, or otherwise reference, well known song titles.
Homer and Jethro were the stage names of American country music duo Henry D. "Homer" Haynes (1920–1971) and Kenneth C. "Jethro" Burns (1920–1989), popular from the 1940s through the 1960s on radio and television for their satirical versions of popular songs. Known as the Thinking Man's Hillbillies, they received a Grammy Award in 1959 and are members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Nuno Duarte Gil Mendes Bettencourt is a Portuguese-American guitarist. He became known as the lead guitarist of the Boston rock band Extreme. Bettencourt has recorded a solo album and has founded rock bands including Mourning Widows, DramaGods, and Satellite Party.
Raging Slab is an American band that plays a blend of southern rock and boogie with influences from metal and punk. They released six albums between 1987 and 2002.
The Strangeloves were a band created in 1964 by the New York-based American songwriting and production team of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer. They initially pretended to be from Australia. The Strangeloves' most successful singles were "I Want Candy," "Cara-Lin", and "Night Time".
Rock Manager is a business simulation game for Microsoft Windows.
The Hamsters were a British band from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England.
Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic is an American musician, comedian, and actor. He is best known for writing and performing comedy songs that often parody specific songs by contemporary musicians. He also performs original songs that are style pastiches of the work of other acts, as well as polka medleys of several popular songs, most of which feature his trademark accordion.
Disband is a Canadian reality show that was produced and broadcast by MuchMusic that gave aspiring music acts a chance to get big industry attention. It was hosted by either Sarah Taylor or Devon Soltendieck and was usually narrated by the lead singer of the featured band.
Engine were a British boogie rock band formed in July 1979 in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, England.
The music for the 2013 action-adventure video game Grand Theft Auto V, developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games, was composed by German electronic music group Tangerine Dream, American composer Woody Jackson, and American hip hop musicians The Alchemist and Oh No. The game is the first entry in the Grand Theft Auto series to make use of an original score. In collaboration with each other, the musicians produced over twenty hours of music which scores the game's missions. Some of the works produced by the musicians throughout the game's development influenced some of the in-game missions and sparked inspiration for further score development. Grand Theft Auto V has an in-game radio that can tune into sixteen stations playing more than 441 tracks of licensed music, as well as two talk radio stations. The composers of the score wanted it to accompany the licensed music, as opposed to detract from it.
The music for the 2018 action-adventure game Red Dead Redemption 2, developed and published by Rockstar Games, consists of an original score composed by musician Woody Jackson and an original soundtrack produced by Daniel Lanois. The soundtrack album was released digitally in July 2019, consisting of vocal tracks with artists such as Willie Nelson, Rhiannon Giddens, and Josh Homme. The score album was released in August 2019, mostly consisting of Jackson's original work and collaborations with artists such as Colin Stetson, Senyawa, and Arca. An additional extended play, The Housebuilding EP, was released in February 2021, consisting of original songs by David Ferguson and Matt Sweeney. Two singles of music from the game have also been released: "Unshaken" by D'Angelo in January 2019, later released as part of the original soundtrack; and "Letter from Bluewater Man" by Christone "Kingfish" Ingram in August 2021, as part of an update for Red Dead Online.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
