First, a bit of background: You in all probability acknowledge the band beneath — it is Weezer, particularly the lineup from their 1994 debut album, which featured hits like “Buddy Holly” and “Undone (The Sweater Tune).”
Earlier than recording Weezer’s second album, bassist Matt Sharp began a facet challenge, a band known as The Leases, which scored a giant MTV hit of their very own, “Associates of P.” That is the place Maya Rudolph got here in. Proper after graduating from faculty — and earlier than Rudolph had a single performing credit score — she joined The Leases as they toured behind their first album.
“It was such a enjoyable job out of school,” Maya instructed the New Yorker. “I obtained to dwell on the highway for six months. We opened for Blur and for Alanis Morissette, and we obtained to spend Thanksgiving along with her and play hacky sack along with her band and go bowling.”
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This is one other wild one — within the late ’60s comedy legend Chevy Chase attended Bard Faculty in New York, the place he studied English and performed drums in a band known as The Leather-based Canary. The thrilling half? The opposite members of the band had been Donald Fagen and Walter Becker.
You recognize…Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame inducted duo Steely Dan!
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Academy Award-winning actor Brie Larson (Captain Marvel within the Marvel Cinematic Universe) additionally had a shocking — and temporary — music profession again when her performing profession was in its embryonic phases.
Larson started enjoying guitar at age 11 and shortly began writing, recording, and importing songs to her web site. This led to her music “Invisible Woman” (written after she did not win the function of Wendy in 2003’s Peter Pan) getting some airplay on a Los Angeles radio station. Issues saved wanting up for Larson when the 16-year-old obtained signed to a serious label deal and launched her debut album Lastly Out of P.E.
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You recognize Stephen Tobolowsky? The actor who performed insurance coverage agent Ned Ryerson within the 1993 traditional Groundhog Day with Invoice Murray?
Properly, earlier than he went on to star in over 200 motion pictures (like Freaky Friday) and on TV exhibits (like Glee), he grew up in Dallas, the place he and a few highschool buddies had a band known as Forged of Hundreds. “We had been a horrible folks rock band,” Tobolowsky instructed the Lone Star Plate podcast. “We had been actually unhealthy.” Horrible or not, in 1970, they had been picked to document two songs on a storage band compilation. To fill out their sound, band member Bobby Forman invited a child from the neighborhood to play lead guitar — future blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“It was the primary time we noticed genius,” Tobolowsky recounted, “and if you see that for actual, there isn’t any getting back from it. You understand, one, it exists, and that is excellent news, and then you definitely understand how far-off you’re from that, and that’s sorta unhealthy information. However it’s true that Stevie did make us sound like we knew what we had been doing.”
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You recognize actor Jason Schwartzman as a favourite of director Wes Anderson (having appeared in eight of his motion pictures together with Rushmore and The Grand Budapest Resort), however 4 years earlier than making his skilled performing debut, a 14-year-old Schwartzman joined the Los Angeles-based band Phantom Planet as their drummer.
Phantom Planet’s 1998 debut album did not make a lot of an impression, however proper across the time Schwartzman’s performing profession took off, the band scored a giant hit with the music “California,” which grew to become the theme music for the TV collection The O.C. Schwartzman even co-wrote the tune!
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Lengthy earlier than Rashida Jones made us snicker on The Workplace and Parks and Recreation, she dabbled within the late ’90s and early ’00s as an expert singer.
This in all probability ought to come as no shock, contemplating her dad was 28-time Grammy award-winning document producer Quincy Jones. Nonetheless, you may not know she sang on The Excessive & Mighty’s 1999 album Residence Discipline Benefit, the Tupac Shakur tribute album The Rose That Grew from Concrete, launched in 2000, and, possibly most surprisingly, Maroon 5’s debut album, 2002’s Songs About Jane.
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As of late, Peter Dinklage is called the star of Recreation of Thrones and Elf, however again within the ’90s, the twentysomething future Emmy award winner was the frontman of a punk band known as Whizzy.
Whizzy launched a four-song demo tape in 1995 and performed in New York golf equipment just like the well-known CBGB.
Dinklage instructed the New Yorker, “We had a following, however our following was, like, progressive rock. It was all guys. For some cause, simply dudes got here to our exhibits. I felt a bit of bit, like, what’s the purpose of being in a rock band if there’s no girls?”
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Have we obtained a photograph for you! It is of comic Ricky Gervais, who you recognize because the creator and star of the British The Workplace and controversial host of the Golden Globes.
However earlier than his comedy profession took off, Gervais and his buddy Invoice Macrae shaped the new-wave duo Seona Dancing (I promise that is actual, LOL). That is younger Ricky on the best.
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Talking of The Workplace stars, Ed Helms fell in love with bluegrass music as a boy and later met some like-minded musicians, Ian Riggs and Jacob Tilove, at Oberlin Faculty. Dubbed The Lonesome Trio, they performed on again porches and at basement keg events, then moved to New York after faculty and have become a fixture within the NYC bluegrass scene.
In fact, Helms was most targeted on changing into a comic/actor, and after hitting it huge, he used his star energy to assist the group document a self-titled debut in 2013. Additionally they carried out on the prestigious Bonnaroo competition, and the LA Bluegrass State of affairs, a competition Helms helped put collectively.
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And lastly, Harrison Ford wasn’t a musician pre-fame, however he did have a wild connection to music historical past.
In 1970, Ford was attempting to start out a profession as a carpenter when he obtained employed for an enormous job — constructing a recording studio for Brazilian bossa nova music legend Sérgio Mendes.