Remember the Thieving Magpies? Led by enigmatic frontman Lance Webster, they bestrode the world of terrible indie like a leather-trewed colossus between 1990 and 1995, before succumbing to an almighty onstage meltdown during a headline festival appearance. Brushed aside by Britpop, Webster's badly received solo album, Commercial Suicide, remains the only time he's put his head above the parapet since their split.
The reason you won't have heard of the Thieving Magpies is because they are entirely made up. They star in Tim Thornton's debut novel, The Alternative Hero, which – due to its mentions for everyone from Eat to Bennet – may just be the indiest book of all time. Still, it's hard to resist trying to work out which indie godhead of yesteryear Webster is based on. In truth, only Radiohead have juggled such high seriousness with commercial success. From the clues laid down by Thornton, I imagine the Magpies to sound like some mutant hybrid of the Psychedelic Furs, the House of Love and the Starlings.
One great thing about the book is that the Thieving Magpies are a fictional band you might actually want to hear. This is pretty rare – there have been plenty you'd be content to let remain on the page. Jonathan Coe is a serial offender. First, he gave us the aptly named Unfortunates in The Dwarves of Death. Next up were Gandalf's Pikestaff (from his novel The Rotters' Club), whose prog-rock masterpiece Apotheosis of the Necromancer was so ridiculous it made its creators down their greatcoats and invent punk.
Prog, too, formed the backdrop of Iain Banks's Espedair Street, with Frozen Gold our fictional heroes. Guitarist Davey Balfour would take to the stage with power tools attached to his body. Sounds scarcely credible, but then who'd believe that people once paid money to see Rick Wakeman stage the Six Wives of Henry VIII on ice? Like The Alternative Hero, Espedair Street comes complete with a fictitious discography. But Banks went one louder than Thornton. He designed Roger Dean-style covers for each of his madeup band's non-albums, and even recorded the songs for a Radio 4 adaptation of the novel.
Definitely more Evening Session than Bookclub, Kevin Sampson unleashed another memorable pretend band in his Britpop-era potboiler, Powder. At least one Amazon user wants to hear what their song Beautiful would sound like, imagining a heady mix of "the Verve, Spritualized and the Strokes", and he's not far wrong; Sampson admitted he was "writing about the Verve for a while".
Other fictional bands that spring to mind include Nick Hornby's Marie La Salle (from High Fidelity) and the Mad Hatters (from Peter Robinson's A Piece of My Heart – perhaps the only police procedural in which the detective also writes for Mojo). But whether or not you'd actually want to listen to these acts is another matter entirely. For me, the Thieving Magpies are as promising as imaginary groups get. So which fictional bands would you like to see make the leap from the page to the stage?
