Did all the bands suck that played at the Bronze on "Buffy"?

[Jayson]

Am I the only one who hated almost all the bands they used on the show? A bunch emo bands that plays music that sounds like it should have never escaped the Lilith Fair. Some might say it was grunge but I know grunge and that crap wasn't nothing like good grunge music. In fact I always felt it hurt the Spike character when he would hang at the bronze. That music doesn't have the edge to it that I would think someone like Spike would like.

Jason

 

[Shazam!]

Yeah, they were all terrible.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

I liked some of them. It has been ages since I watched the show, so I can't give examples, however.

... good grunge music...

Good grunge? Is there such a thing?

 

[Chekov's Phaser]

Good grunge? Is there such a thing?

Yes there was at one time, but by the time Buffy was airing in late 90's, most of the genre was dead (literally in some cases), and most of the bands sucked (pun intended).

 

[Skywalker]

I dunno, I thought Dingoes Ate My Baby were decent. I wonder what happened to their lead guitar player...

 

[NileQT87]

I liked a lot of what was played on the shows. It was a nice mix between contemporary (a lot of alternative rock at the Bronze and contemporary ballads that were regulars on every WB show), oldies (much of it due to Caritas, Lorne and Angel), various genres based upon a character or setting (Joss is a known fan of country music and it rears itself as Xander and Fred's music of choice), instrumental scores, classical, etc... I have practically every song heard on the shows/movie (even songs only referenced) on my computer (I've been a Whedonite for quite a while).

Songs that stand out in my mind in the soundtracks:

BtVS movie:
* I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore (Divinyls), Little Heaven (Toad the Wet Sprocket), We Close Our Eyes (Susanna Hoffs)

BtVS season 1:
* The Harvest - Ballad for Dead Friends (Dashboard Prophets)
* Never Kill a Boy on the First Date - Let the Sun Fall Down (Kim Richey)
* Angel - I'll Remember You (Sophie Zelmani) (one of my favorites!)
* Prophecy Girl - I Fall To Pieces (Patsy Cline), Inconsolable (Jonatha Brooke)

BtVS season 2:
* School Hard - Stupid Thing (Nickel)
* Surprise - Transylvanian Concubine (Rasputina)
* Innocence - Moment of Happiness (Christophe Beck), Goodnight, My Love (Alice Faye - Stowaway)
* Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered - Pain (Four Star Mary a.k.a. Dingoes Ate My Baby)
* Passion - O Soave Fanciulla (Luciano Pavarotti/Giacomo Puccini - La Bohème)
* I Only Have Eyes For You - I Only Have Eyes For You (The Flamingos), Love is Forever (Christophe Beck)
* Becoming, pt. 1 - Show Me Your World (Christophe Beck), Devil Child (Christophe Beck)
* Becoming, pt. 2 - Close Your Eyes (Christophe Beck), Full of Grace (Sarah McLachlan)

BtVS season 3:
* Amends - Dreaming of... (Christophe Beck)
* Bad Girls - Chinese Burn (Curve)
* Consequences - Wish We Never Met (Kathleen Wilhoite)
* The Prom - Wild Horses (The Sundays)
* Graduation Day, pt. 2 - One Last Look (Christophe Beck)

BtVS season 4 / AtS season 1:
* City of... - I'm Game (Christophe Beck
* Lonely Hearts - Touched (VAST)
* Rm w/ a Vu - You Always Hurt The One You Love (The Mills Brothers)
* Hush - La Danse Macabre (Camille Saint-Saëns), Golf Claps (Christophe Beck), Suite from Hush (Christophe Beck)
* The Prodigal - The Birth of Angelus (Robert J. Kral)

BtVS season 5 / AtS season 2:
* Judgment - I Will Survive (Andy Hallett)
* Untouched - Dreaming of Darla (Robert J. Kral)
* Darla - Rebellion (Robert J. Kral)
* Reunion - Drusilla's Nursery (Robert J. Kral) (unreleased)
* Happy Anniversary - The Star-Spangled Banner (Andy Hallett)
* Crush - Key (Devics)
* Dead End - L.A. Song (Christian Kane)

BtVS season 6 / AtS season 3:
* That Old Gang of Mine - Crazy (Amy Acker)
* Once More, With Feeling - I've Got A Theory/Bunnies/If We're Together (Scoobies), I'll Never Tell (Emma Caulfield & Nicholas Brendon), Rest in Peace (James Marsters), Standing (Anthony Stewart Head), Walk Through the Fire (Scoobies), Where Do We Go From Here (Scoobies)
* Tabula Rasa - Goodbye to You (Michelle Branch)
* Lullaby - Darla's Sacrifice (Robert J. Kral), All Through the Night (Keith Szarabajka)
* Waiting in the Wings - Giselle (Adolphe Adam)

BtVS season 7 / AtS season 4:
* The House Always Wins - Lady Marmalade (Andy Hallett)
* Selfless - I'll Be His Mrs. (Emma Caulfield)
* Sleeper - This Is How It Goes (Aimee Mann), Pavlov's Bell (Aimee Mann)
* Salvage - Evil-Cordy/Connor Theme (Robert J. Kral) (same as the Drusilla's Nursery and stalker-Wesley themes - unreleased)
* Release - Here (VAST) (note: this song also appears in the AtS pitch tape)
* Orpheus - MacArthur Park (Donna Summer), Mandy (Barry Manilow)
* Lies My Parents Told Me - Early One Morning (Nana Mouskouri)
* The Magic Bullet - Wouldn't It Be Nice (The Beach Boys)

AtS season 5:
* Life of the Party - Don't Leave Me This Way (Thelma Houston)
* The Cautionary Tale of Número Cinco - Güero Canelo (Calexico)
* In Harm's Way - Hey, Sailor (Detroit Cobras)
* Shells - A Place Called Home (Kim Richey)
* The Girl in Question - Take Me in Your Arms (Dean Martin)

 

[RoJoHen]

A few of them did a good job setting the mood, but for the most part I did not enjoy any of the bands.

 

[Lindley]

I don't remember much of it. That sort of music is pretty much just wallpaper.....which is fine if it supports a given scene well.

As I recall, one of the last Bronze scenes in show uses the band Nerf Herder, who did the theme song.

 

[RoJoHen]

I think it's "Conversations with Dead People" that has a really cool song at the beginning and the end. I believe it's the same woman from that episode of Firefly who sings "Amazing Grace."

 

[NileQT87]

And Jonatha Brooke--who has a song (Inconsolable) from Prophecy Girl--also did the theme song for Dollhouse. Darling Violetta performed at the Bronze in Faith, Hope & Trick before they did Angel's theme song. Nerf Herder, of course, did the Buffy theme and later got airplay in Empty Places (with a joke about how this band is one of the signs of the apocalypse).

The girl you are referring to in Conversations With Dead People is Angie Hart (the song is Blue).

Most of the characters had types of music often associated with them.

Buffy - Contemporary easy listening
Willow - Alternative rock (Alyson Hannigan was known for recommending Bronze bands to Joss)
Xander - Oldies country
Faith - Techno
Giles - '70s classic rock
Angel - Swing, oldies and classical (preference for ballads and Barry Manilow)
Spike - Sex Pistols, Ramones, etc... (a lot of Billy Idol jokes)
Lorne - Disco divas, lounge music and oldies
Fred - Country (oldies and modern)
Gunn - Hip-hop with a secret love for soft stuff

 

[Trent Roman]

Bif Naked played the Bronze once, before they made it big with I Love Myself Today (which also means the song on the actual show was pretty forgettable). Don't recall which episode, but I recognized her from her tattoos and went "Hey, Bif Naked."

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[NileQT87]

That was The Harsh Light of Day (Buffy and Parker at the college party in season 4).

You'd be surprised at the amount of people who are VERY familiar with all the music tracks featured on the show. Whedonites are probably more likely to be familiar with the songs that are part of the franchise than work they've done elsewhere. Bif Naked would be one such example.

Stuff like Sophie Zelmani's I'll Remember You ended up featuring on multiple WB shows (Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek in that case). BtVS mostly avoided big names on purpose, though, because Joss wanted artists that could conceivably come to play in a crap place like the Bronze in a one-Starbucks town like Sunnydale. Some of the artists were bands that weren't even signed and Joss went after them for that reason.

Joss actually discovered Andy Hallett (Lorne--R.I.P.), himself, at a karaoke bar (he wasn't an actor and didn't even have an agent when he did Judgment). Lorne's disco diva fetish comes from Andy (who was once asked to perform on stage with Patti LaBelle).

Cibo Matto was an alternate rock group that Alyson Hannigan wanted on the show.

Shows like Charmed (and unfortunately my dear Roswell) tended to do stunt casting of music acts a lot more often (though BtVS did lapse with Michelle Branch and Aimee Mann--don't even get me started on Ashanti playing one of Xander's demon dates). Points to Aimee Mann for being the only performing music act who was ever given a line of dialog (about hating to play vamp towns--LOL). Speaking of Aimee Mann, I always notice that Michael Lockwood is her guitarist in that episode--and I know him because he's Lisa Marie Presley's husband.

No, I overall like a lot of the music on Joss' various shows. The songs are often chosen because they very clearly have lyrics related to what is happening on screen.

The Ballad of Dead Friends occurs when Xander's friend Jesse has just died, Chinese Burn's lyrics are all about someone who is jealous of someone for being spoiled and having it easy (very much Faith's feelings towards Buffy), Fred singing Crazy during an arc where her mental facilities were being questioned, Lindsay's L.A. Song (Christian Kane has a country rock band--Kane) is all about being in the city of broken dreams with all the glitter and the glamor hiding all the lost, empty people--which is appropriate to the character's arc, Pavlov's Bell plays during a period where Spike is being manipulated by a Pavlovian trigger, etc...

I always thought You Always Hurt the One You Love was very appropriate to AtS in its entirety (not just the Maude/Phantom Dennis relationship).

I think Joss did an awesome job of picking songs where the songs clearly are related to the plot.

 

[John Clark]

For me, I quite enjoyed a fair portion of the music that was in the show

 

[Star Wolf]

I thought that the two Japanese women of Cibo Matto were cute so I'm prejudiced to like them

 

[Mr. Adventure]

The better bands played at the Gold and the Silver, of course.

 

[Too Much Fun]

I kept thinking I would like the bands playing the Bronze since a large amount of my favourite music is indie rock and indie pop, but again and again I just cringe at how lame the bands in the Bronze are. I also hated a lot of the cheesy indie stuff they used for musical montages, like when they'd show all the different characters suffering.

"Wild Horses" (or whatever it's called) was nice for Buffy and Angel's dance at the prom, though. The swing band backing up Jonathan in "Superstar" was cool too, but most of the regular bands annoyed me.

At least there was some good music playing in the background sometimes. "I Wish That I Could Be You" by The Muffs rocks and was perfect for the scene of Sunday and her cronies rummaging through stuff they stole from students, and it always made me happy to hear Nerf Herder songs playing in the Bronze. They rule, and I believe they did actually perform there once, but I didn't see their performance because I hate season 7 and skipped parts of it.

The use of music on the show was hit and miss, but I don't think any music decision topped the awesomeness of Spike driving off singing the Sid Vicious version of "My Way".

 

[Ethros]

You'd be surprised at the amount of people who are VERY familiar with all the music tracks featured on the show. Whedonites are probably more likely to be familiar with the songs that are part of the franchise than work they've done elsewhere. Bif Naked would be one such example.
.

Yeah like me
Dingoes Ate My Baby (aka Four Star Mary in real life) are a great band.
The two main soundtrack albums have some pretty decent stuff on them.

I really like the song Virgin State of Mind by K's Choice is an awesome song. They play at the Bronze in "Doppelgangland"

 

[Jayson]

I have a question. Is the song "Angel" by Sarah McGlauflin(spelled badly) a song used for "Buffy?" For some reason I use to think they used that song, after Buffy kills Angel in season 2. When everyone is wondering were Buffy is, and she is on a bus to LA.

Jason

 

[NileQT87]

No, Sarah McLachlan's Angel was never on BtVS (though Full of Grace was in Becoming, pt. 2 and Prayer of St. Francis was in Grave).

Interesting thing about the swing band behind Jonathan in Superstar... Jonathan's singing voice was done by Brad Kane (best known as the singing voice of Disney's Aladdin), who had appeared as the nerd, Tucker Wells, with the hellhounds in The Prom. Tucker Wells, of course, is the brother of Andrew Wells of the nerd troika. They actually wanted Brad Kane to come back for the nerd troika, but he was unavailable, so, they created his brother and added him to Warren and Jonathan (and made a lot of jokes about everyone only knowing his brother).

Another fun fact about Brad Kane... He's married to Sarah Thompson (Eve in AtS season 5).

You should recognize Brad Kane in this A Whole New World behind-the-scenes as having been Tucker here. The theatrical pronunciation that Tucker had was a big clue that I knew that voice. Quite obviously I did (how could a girl born in 1987 not?!). LOL. I've always found it hilarious that Jonathan wanted to have Tucker's singing voice, particularly with the fact that Tucker is the unofficial 4th nerd in the troika.

 

[Kelthaz]

I never really noticed the bands, but most of them seemed okay to me. I can't think of any I hated.