I love the movie "Rock Star" with Marky Mark and Jennifer Aniston. The basic story is about a guy who is the ultimate fan of a heavy metal band, and gets invited to replace their lead singer. A la Judas Priest, who did something similar in the 90s.
Life imitates art again. Journey got a new lead singer in 2007. Which isn't that remarkable since they've had a few since Steve Perry left ages ago. The crazy thing is that they found their singer on YouTube, singing Journey covers in a cheesy hotel band. In the Phillipines. Seriously. I thought my friend Dave was totally making this up when he told me the story.
And then he sent me this link:
Watch it. Seriously. Take in the cheesy hotel band, the Tagalog chatter at the beginning of the song. And then this guy starts singing and it's unreal how much he sounds like Steve Perry. How is it possible that he sings with an American accent? Amazing.
The even more remarkable thing is that Arnel Pineda has been a musician for a long time, and grew up really, really poor, if you believe Wikipedia. And one day Neil Schon from Journey saw this video and emailed the guy who posted it to get Arnel's contact info so he could convince him to audition for Journey. And then they picked him. Crazy.
They're going on tour this summer, and I *so* plan to be there if they come to Seattle. Woot!
That is funny because in Invincible, Marky Mark plays a Eagles Fan who gets to play with the Eagles. I bet he hates us calling him Marky Mark. Hee hee
ReplyDelete@stumpymonkey - Yeah, he'll always be Marky Mark to me. And I totally forgot about Invincible. Maybe if they make a movie about Journey, he can play Arnel Pineda too. Now that would be funny :)
ReplyDeleteThat's crazy! John and I are definitely in for tickets if they head this way - John says he's got to rep the Pinoys. =-) Would never have expected that voice to come from that man - eerie!
ReplyDelete@jenna - I'll keep my eye out for tour dates and let you guys know! It'll be a fun show, I'm sure. And I totally agree with you about the voice and the guy being totally incongruous!
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