Three Fake Bands
A Collision Of Collage & Fiction
I’ve been told that a few of my collages look like album covers, which makes sense.
I’m a lifelong music obsessive who got an DIY start in this medium making flyers for my various teen and 20s bands. Shout out to the high school drafting classes that first put an X-ACTO knife in my hand.
Beyond flyers, collage became an on-again/off-again form of self-expression over the years. I made postcards for our oldest daughter when she first went off to college as a creative way to stay in touch. More recently, I started collaging again after we lost our home in the Eaton Fire. It’s a good way to channel all of my nervous energy, and ease the sadness, anger, and trauma.
I’m proud to say that my collages have adorned two actual releases. The Ken Layne & The Corvids album Transcontinental came out in 2008 (I played drums on that album too). The Gregory Vaine and the Zephyrs EP Rogue Wave arrived in 2025.
I’ve also published some crime fiction along the way.
As you might have guessed, many of those novels, novellas, and short stories revolve around music. Teachers were always told me to “write what you know” when I was growing up, so I took them up on it.
This post attempts to merge my collage work with short fiction to create three fake album covers and a capsule history for each imaginary band. “Three Fake Albums” is a weird little Saturday side quest, but I had a lot of fun putting it together.
I hope you get a kick out of it too.
Let’s Start A Band
Let’s Start A Band (EP)
Genre: Garage Rock/Indie Rock
Four friends got bored at a sleepover the summer after eighth grade.
They were half-heartedly watching School of Rock again when their host Jake blurted out: “Let’s start a band!” Jake’s dad was briefly signed to a major record label in the ‘90s and still had a few old instruments stashed around the house. The rest of the teens eagerly agreed and went on a gear scavenger hunt.
Jake was on lead vocals since the band was his idea. Mikey played guitar because he’d taken a few lessons in elementary school. There was only one proper guitar, so Marc chose a ukulele. Gary’s “drum set” included a plastic bucket and tambourine bashed with wooden spoons. They wrote their first song that night, recording a take on Mikey’s phone. The demo sounded terrible, but they’d all been bitten by the bug.
The ridiculous band name stuck. By the time freshman year started, Let’s Start A Band rehearsed three times a week in the garage at Gary’s house. Each of the members convinced their parents to buy them real gear, Marc switching from ukulele to bass. They played several backyard parties, the set evolving from well-worn garage rock and ‘90s covers to a handful of originals written by Mikey.
Let’s Start A Band tracked their self-titled, 4-song EP the summer before sophomore year at a small recording studio behind a local music store. They posted the tracks online and burned a few CD-R copies to hand out at shows. One of those landed on the desk of a local indie label who signed the band and pressed five hundred copies. College radio airplay was surprisingly solid, so they did a few regional weekend tours. Jake’s dad drove the van, ran sound, and kept the excitable teens out of trouble.
Things got wobbly when Gary’s parents divorced and he moved out of state with his mom junior year. Then Marc made the varsity tennis team, eventually trading his bass for a racket. Jake and Mikey played with a couple of different rhythm sections deep into twelfth grade, but the original chemistry was long gone.
Let’s Start A Band officially broke up the summer after high school graduation, but they’d stopped playing together months before. Jake works for an education equity non-profit in Washington DC these days. Marc is a tennis coach. Mikey became a respected indie producer. Nobody’s heard from Gary in years.
CD copies of their only EP regularly sell for $35-$50 on Discogs.
Shafter Wasco
Homecoming
Genre: Americana
Shafter Wasco started out as Charlotte’s solo indie folk project.
A college psychology major in no rush to graduate, she spent weekends locked in her closet-sized bedroom/recording studio while her roommates partied all around her.
A Southern girl with a California heart, Charlotte grew up listening to Taylor Swift and Amy Winehouse before discovering Neko Case and Jenny Lewis. From there she traveled back in time, gravitating to Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, and Patti Smith. Her songs borrowed from all of those influences, but sounded like none of them.
She picked up a band when her raucous roommates invited some local musicians to play in their living room. They sounded so good through the flimsy apartment walls that Charlotte couldn’t resist poking her head out to take a look. She knew instantly that those three shaggy guys and the stylish young woman on keyboards were her people. They toured the world together several times and racked up millions of streams in the years following that magical night.
Homecoming is the band’s third and final album. It was released shortly before Charlotte and her partner, drummer Tatum Wallace, were killed in a tour bus crash. Shafter Wasco was on an overnight trip after a sold out show in Buffalo to a winter festival in Toronto the next day when the driver lost control on the icy midnight roads.
This 11-song collection is considered a masterpiece by a growing worldwide army of fans. The rest of the band is currently compiling a collection of unreleased demos dedicated to the memory of their two lost bandmates.
Streetlighters
1993
Genre: Power Pop
After 15 years of hardscrabble punk touring under various band names, Gene and Jenny St. Germaine finally settled down.
They poured their meager savings into a fixer upper in the California desert and started a family. Their daughter Genevieve arrived first, followed by her little brother Johnny two years later.
Gene bartends, books bands, and does sound at a local dive bar called Streetlight Inn. Jenny is a freelance graphic designer for an LA-based indie publisher. They make just enough between the two of them to cover the mortgage and keep food on the table.
Their old band gear is out in the garage, collecting dust beside the secondhand washer and dryer. Gene sneaks out there to smoke, picking up a guitar and cranking the volume on his old Twin Reverb amp now and then. He eventually nailed some carpet to the walls to keep from waking his napping kids, which made it feel more like the many low budget rehearsal spaces they haunted in their previous life.
He was out there noodling away one day when Jenny wandered in with the laundry basket. She was half listening to his spastic R&B riff when a vocal melody popped into her head. Jenny sat down beside him—gently pushing a lock of her husband’s long, greying hair behind his ear—and leaned in to hum along. It had been three years since they played together. That small moment was the start of a new musical chapter.
1993 is the fourth self-released Streetlighters album of ‘60s-influenced alternative rock (named for the year they formed their first teen punk band). Their kids are both in high school now, neither of them showing much interest in the their parents’ music.
Gene and Jenny have gotten offers to play a few out of town shows over the years, but they always turn them down. If you want to see Streetlighters live, you’ll have to make a special trip to Streetlight Inn on the first Saturday of every month.
Join The Conversation In The Comments
My Collage Store On Etsy
Featuring All Three Of The Original Collages Above
I’m not going to claim that a lot of people have asked how to purchase my collages outside of LA…but a few have. For them and anybody else who might be interested, I opened an Etsy store. Currently only shipping in the U.S. until I get my head around all of this. Greeting card packs featuring select collage images will be posted in the next few weeks. —> Coulter Collage Etc.
Fabulous. Love all the covers, and would gladly read books about any/all of these groups.