McFly play themselves in Lindsay Lohan vehicle Just My Luck.
Here's one of those questions you can't get out of your head: what are your favourite appearances by bands (as themselves) in movies? It was initially posed on City Of Sound, who got some of the easy ones (Yardbirds in Blow-Up, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in Wings Of Desire) then Stereogum picked up the baton and added a few goodies (L7 in John Waters' Serial Mom, James Brown in Ski Party). But both lists got me (and several million others) rifling through hitherto useless scraps of pop cultural memory in dusty corners of the brain in search of more. Here are a few both lists missed. Are we missing any more?
Ministry AI Who would have expected industrial metallists Ministry to crop up in the background of a Spielberg film? They sing What About Us? at the robot-slaughtering "Flesh Fair" scene in AI: Artificial Intelligence - which is just about the best bit in the whole film. Don't worry, Spielberg wasn't the Ministry fan, Stanley Kubrick was - he signed them up to the film while he was developing it.
Pulp/Radiohead Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban Viewers might have done a double-take to see Ian Brown lurking in the Leaky Cauldron in Harry Potter 3, but for the fourth instalment, those lucky Hogwarts brats get a supergroup comprised of members of Pulp and Radiohead, to play at their school disco, with Jarvis Cocker on lead vocals. Do the Hippogriff, anyone?
Strawberry Alarm Clock Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls "Wow, I've been to parties where they played records by the Strawberry Alarm Clock, but never one where the Strawberry Alarm Clock are actually playing," says Kelly McNamara, the excitable heroine of Russ Meyer's hippie melodrama. The band performs Incense and Peppermints at what must be the grooviest party scene ever filmed, but then McNamara's own (fictitious) band the Carrie Nations get up and blow them off stage.
Alan Price Set O Lucky Man The ex-Animal's combo crops up throughout Lindsay Anderson's surreal British odyssey, punctuating the action with satirical ditties ("Sell, sell, sell, sell... Everything you stand for!"). Towards the end, they bleed into the action and give Malcolm MacDowell a lift in their van.
Beau Brummels Village Of The Giants Giant-sized teenagers go on the rampage in Bert I Gordon's cult classic, which means nobody can tell them to stop partying. Luckily they have San Francisco beatsters the Beau Brummels to keep them happy, they play a couple of frug-worthy numbers at the local youth hangout - funnily enough, one of the go-go dancers is Toni Basil.
The Circle Jerks Repo Man The LA hardcore band send themselves up brilliantly here, performing a terrible lounge version of their usually rowdy When The Shit Hits The Fan ("Let's all leach off the state/Gee! The money's great"). "I can't believe I used to actually like these guys," says Emilio Estevez in response.
Duke Ellington and Lena Horne Cabin In The Sky Going back a lot further, Vincente Minnelli's all-black jazz musical from 1943 was already in on the band cameos thing. Here you'll find no less than Louis Armstrong as one of Lucifer's minions, and Duke Ellington performing a number. Lena Horne, meanwhile, plays a sinful seductress. A scene of her singing Ain't it the Truth in the bath was deemed too racy and cut from the movie.
Davey Graham The Servant Who's that strumming guitar behind James Fox in a London café? Why, it's lost folk legend Davey Graham. You only catch a glimpse of him, but his Rock Me Mama carries on while Fox wanders home through the streets of 60s London.
The Seeds Psych-Out Sky Saxon's seminal west coast garage band spices up a flower-power funeral in this Jack Nicholson-led hippie head-trip. Their Two Fingers Pointing to You inspires revelry so wild that the deceased comes back to life!
McFly Just My Luck Scrabbling around today's moviescape, this is about as good as you're going to get: an anonymous teen band playing watered down indie-rock in a rubbish Lindsay Lohan comedy. They act in it too, which is possibly worse. Where have all the good band cameos gone? Is the era over?
