Culture on My Mind
Battle of the Fictional Bands 2023
March 31, 2023

This week, I’m thinking about two battles involving fictional bands.

Such things are traditions among the crew at the Dragon Con American Sci-Fi Classics Track. While the rest of the world builds brackets around college basketball (and mourns their busted brackets—congratulations, Fairleigh Dickinson University!) these geeks ponder and debate which fictional bands would come out on top in head-to-head competition.

This time around, the battle was two-fold. First, the question of the best solo acts. Second, the best team acts.

On March 16th, Joe Crowe and Gary Mitchel were joined by Keith DeCandido (@KRADeC on Twitter), Kevin Cafferty (Gleaming the Tube), Shaun Rosado (@pneumaz on Twitter), and Sherman Burris (@NerdBurger358 on Twitter) to determine if it will be Rex Manning Day all year long.

On March 23rd, Joe Crowe and Gary Mitchel said farewell (for now) to Keith and picked up Leigh Tyberg to question which fictional band was the best. Surprisingly, there never seems to be any love for King Thunder.

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These Classic Track Quarantine Panels are typically held once every two weeks (or every fortnight, if you will). If you want to play along at home, grab your internet-capable device of choice and navigate the world wide webs to the track’s YouTube channel and/or the group on Facebook. If you join in live, you can also leave comments and participate in the discussion using StreamYard connected through Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch.

Gary can also be found on A Podcask of Amontillado, a horror-themed podcast that he co-hosts with Erin McGourn.

If you want to connect with the track, Joe, and/or Gary on the socials, you can find them on Twitter (ClassicTrack, JoeCroweShow, and sneezythesquid) and Instagram (SciFiClassicTrack, JoeCroweShow, and Gary_Mitchel). And, of course, to celebrate more pop culture awesomeness, you can find Dragon Con all year round on the internet, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

You can find those discussions and more every other Thursday as the American Sci-Fi Classics Track explores the vast reaches of classic American science fiction.

The episode art each week is generously provided by the talented Sue Kisenwether. You can find her (among other places) on Women at Warp: A Star Trek Podcast.

Culture on My Mind is inspired by the weekly Can’t Let It Go segment on the NPR Politics Podcast where each host brings one thing to the table that they just can’t stop thinking about.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.