TIL from Craig “Dave Lister” Charles (on his new 6 Music show) that in the Red Dwarf episode where he meets his waster younger self and his crappy band “Smeg and the heads”, the band in question is played by the real metal band Napalm Death.
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What other examples of this are there? I mean there is the Blues Brothers of course, but IIRC that was a bunch of legendary session musicians rather than a band.
I’d also add extra brownie points for real bands playing fictional bands who are meant to be really crap (the whole joke was young Dave Lister’s band was rubbish and wasn’t going amount to anything, and his song was just him saying “Ohm” over and over).
In the Gilligan’s Island episode “Don’t Bug the Mosquitoes,” a fictional rock band, the Mosquitoes (a parody of the Beatles) visited the island. They were played by Les Brown Jr. and the Wellingtons – the Wellingtons were a folk group, who had recorded the series’ theme song for its first season.
The Jeff Healey Band appeared as the house band in the 1989 film Road House; I don’t think that they were supposed to be the Jeff Healey Band in it, as Jeff himself played a character named Cody in the film.
On The Andy Griffith Show the Darling Family would occasionally play a little tune. The brothers were in real life members of a family group called The Dillards. darlings compilation - YouTube
Se if you can spot the cameo when they play “Boil That Cabbage Down” .
In S3 E2 of Metalocalypse, Dethklok lifts the ban on Dethklok tribute bands and eventually they all replace the members of Thunder Horse, a Dethklok tribute band named after a Dethklok song.
Not quite what the OP is looking for, maybe, but it still (sorta) involves a band doing appearances as a fictional band.
Wait, so the members of real tribute band for a fictional band played a themselves as a fictionalized version of said tribute band on the show? Definitely a grey area, but as they are playing themselves doesn’t count, I think?
The Standells (known for the song “Dirty Water” played a band called The Love Bugs on the Bing Crosby Show. They even got down with Bing himself. They were an L.A. band and so were in a bunch of shows and movies over the years.
In “That Thing You Do,” The Wonders play a fake band called Cap’n Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters in a movie.
Before you say that this is a fake band in a movie playing a fake band in a movie, remember that after the movie came out, they released the title track as a single in the US. It made it to #41. So they count as a real band. Playing a fake band in a movie about playing a fake band in a movie.
The Redcoats, played by Chad and Jeremy, not Peter and Gordon.
Loudon Wainwright III appeared on MASH as Captain Spalding, who played guitar and sang. He was supposed to be a regular, but only appeared in three episodes.
They were “The Redcoats.” And they were played by Chad and Jeremy, not Peter and Gordon. But I’m not entirely sure that Chad and Jeremy didn’t actually play Peter and Gordon.
On Who’s the Boss?, Angela goes out with a biker who becomes completely infatuated with her to the extent of getting up on stage in the middle of their date and singing a love song to her. The biker? Lee Ving, the lead singer of Fear, an LA punk band. My recollection from many years ago was that he was a remarkable good singer for a punk rocker.
In a first-season episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, “Hoodlum Rock,” the radio station sponsors a concert by a fictional English band, called Scum of the Earth. The lead singer of the band, who went by the name “Dog,” was played by real-life rock singer Michael Des Barres; Des Barres and his band, Detective, performed Scum of the Earth’s music for the episode.
A decade later, Des Barres starred in the series reboot, The New WKRP in Cincinnati, as DJ Jack Allen.
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