Bandsearch

[Trollheart]

How many bands/artists can you find in the below text?

It was a sunny day. Real Estate Agent "Orange" Juice Newton Faulkner, stopped in traffic, let out a sigh and looked down at her dashboard. "Confessionals", she said to herself. "What a waste of time. Judas! Priests sit there and try to make you think to yourself, hey, the world is a beautiful place and I am no longer afraid to die", that in this moment you should be going on the journey with them, singing gloria dio, getting yourself hooked up to the Jesus and Mary chain, trust yourself to the Church. But what if I hate god? What if God smacks me between they eyes with a personal tragedy? Am I supposed to thank him for that? What a divine comedy! Yeah, God sticks in my throat, to be honest.

The radio finished playing Huey Lewis, and the news was not good. The streets were still not safe at night. Wish they could catch that killer, she thought, the slayer they called the night ranger who had been terrorising L.A. Guns were the only way to protect yourself now, she mused: the police were useless. The city budget was so poor that they weren't trained, and very often cop kill cop, and that was just how it was. Keep the doors closed – her neighbour, Goldie Lookin, chained hers up at night, sometimes even in the daytime. A fear factory: that's what this city had become. Cold played across her skin, chilling her to the bone and making her shiver. Sleep did not come easy these days. So much for the Niravana she had been promised when she signed on the dotted line and took possession of her dream theater, which had been running at a loss for years now. Violence was everywhere: panic at the disco, death grips the city like a fist. The bodycount rose every month, the city was becoming a place to bury strangers, and she was beginning to agree with the extreme right-wing politicians that what was needed was a new order, or just start planning for burial. We're really in dire straits here.

The locals did what they could. Deacon Blue ran a soup kitchen, but you had to listen to him expound on his own political views, as he ranted on about the death of previous presidents, the dead Kennedys, and the useless ones still living, like Bush. Teachers like Professor Green and other cunning linguists tried to educate the populace, but Trump's sexist beliefs meant that all men were now concentrated in a boyzone. This did not happen without protest: girls, aloud, made their feelings known, but it was useless. This was now the status quo, triumph of the will, as Hitler once put it. Yes, this was a real saga of epic proportions, a massive attack on the weaker sex, and one day soon this whole city would erupt in flames if they weren't careful.

The women's patience was wearing thin. Lizzy, another of her friends, kept eagles and she was planning something that, to be quite honest, Juice found to be just a little overkill. Rush into something like this and things start to converge, and before you know it there are explosions in the sky, everything hits the skids and the hammer falls. Lizzy didn't seem to realise this. When she took action she was more like a tank, rolling stones down the hill and not caring who got hurt. She was kind of like a relic from another age, a mastodon maybe, or one of those things with antlers? She couldn't remember what they were called.

As she waited for the lights to change, trying to find that little oasis of calm that would distract her from the noise of the angry horns and shouts, she watched a coal train trundle over the railway bridge, imagining herself aboard that train. But not as a freight wagon: a private passenger train with her as a princess and her prince beside her, a rainbow arcing above her head in the sky above, high flying birds keeping pace with the train, away from all the noise.

Noise. Her phone rang. Her phonecase was pink. Floyd, the caller ID told her, was ringing her. She didn't feel like talking to her brother right now. He was a gun nut, a sex maniac and, of all things, a florist. Guns and Roses, Sex, Pistols, Barenaked ladies, that's all he ever he would want to talk about. Talk? Talk? The man never knew when to shut up. Still, she wasn't going anywhere, so with a resigned sigh she thumbed the "answer" key. Her brother's voice floated out of the speaker. That was Floyd.

"Merry weather!" he chirped. She grimaced. "Maybe where you are, in the Bahamas," she groaned. "You know what I see when I look out my window, Floyd? Cloud. Nothing's gonna change that. I suppose the sun is beaming over there, huh?"

"Always is." She could almost see his self-satisfied smirk. "You know, Juice, you should come out here. Get in the swing. Out, sister: get out of that town. Get away from the smog, the dirt, the crime, the vice. Hey, you know what I've taken up?" Without waiting for her answer, which would have been in the type, oh, negative anyway, he went on. "Writing. I've become a writer. I'm writing historical fiction. Ain't that hysterical? Hey! Historical, hysterical!" For a few moments her ear was filled with his braying laugh as he enjoyed his own joke.

"Anyway," he said, getting control of himself, "the last book I wrote was about warriors. Saxons, warlords, you know the kind of thing. Barbarians at the gates."

"You know nothing about history," she told him, annoyed at herself for being ever the slightest bit jealous, one of those green days she occasionally had. His laugh floated back.

"Ah, all it takes is a little imagination, sis," he assured her. "Sure, it bites that I have to do the research, but I got a lot of free time to allow my muse to come to me, y'know? Next one's going to be about those fighting ships, the galleons. Portugal, the Man'o'war was a powerful vessel. Anyway, how are ya, sis?"

She admitted her life was a lot less enjoyable than his. "Parsons came over last week," she told him glumly. He laughed, but she could hear his grimace too.

"Alan?" he sucked his breath in through his teeth. "Alan Parsons? Projecting a fortune to be made, no doubt."

"Yeah. Trying to get me to sign up to one of his goddamn ponzi schemes. Then there was Adam. And the ants, of course."

"What does that guy see in keeping the little bleeders?" asked Floyd. She was vaguely annoyed as he broke off to order a drink. It sounded so much nicer there. "Seems to me to be very alien. Ant farms? Nah. Not for me. You see the doctor yet about that pain in your chest?"

His sudden change of tack threw her. She had to lie, but he could detect when she was covering something up. "Hmm?" she said, pretending not to have been paying attention. "Ah, I don't think I need any doctor. Feel good at the moment, no more pain."

"Sis...?" He was pushing her now. "Look, I'm not saying I'm going to come over there to make you. I mean, we're talking a lot of miles. Davis is a good man; put your faith in him. It'll be a piece of cake, you'll see. In and out, job done. I already told you: Davis Taylor, swift as you like."

"Oh just what I need!" she grumped. "Super! Tramps! Hold on a minute, Floyd, will you?" Some beggars, seeing the traffic jam, had been making their way up the line of stranded cars and had obviously now reached hers. It was stiflingly hot but she rolled up the window, not looking at the almost ghostly face that looked in at her, hoping the guy would just go away. A beeping from her phone told her that her brother had been cut off, so she dropped the phone and turned on the radio. Head held high and straight, she deliberately bent her attention to the news of the latest China crisis in Asia, and looking in the mirror told herself it was time she got a haircut. One hundred miles an hour, she noted her speedometer went up to, doing everything she could to distract herself from the  window and show the annoying homeless man that she did not want to engage with him.

Suddenly, salvation! The cars in front of her began to move, and she pressed lightly down on the pedal, inching away from the tramp, who grunted something unintelligible (but surely derogatory) in her direction. For no reason, thoughts of her grandaddy, who had come here in '09 from Europe, came to her mind, and she made what to even her mind was a stunning and unexpected decision. Floyd was right, dammit! Dead or alive, she was getting out of LA. What was here for her now? Meat loaf night, the odd walk down to the riverside, keeping bad company, feeling low? Where had her life led? Zeppelin House, her theatre, was losing money hand over fist. Her friend Britney – spears of regret and loss stabbed her heart as she remembered – dead when she fell from a lighthouse. Family were so devastated they moved to Africa.

And what of her family? Tom waits on tables in Boston, Johnny cashes his check every week just to pay his rent, while Floyd lives it up in the Caribbean. Hmm. But what about Ted? New gent in her apartment complex? The guy seemed electric. Light orchestral music was his thing but not hers. And her flat was infested. Well, one mouse so far. A modest mouse, not very big, but it was hard to erase your mind of that fact once it was there. Was she on a slowdive to a bad end? Could she turn it around? She really ought to try. She needed to breathe. There was no air here. A-ha! There was an advertisement for holidays in Rio. Jets to Brazil, eh? Why? Why not?

[GD]

Whoa! How long did it take you to come up with that, TH? I've only searched through four or five paragraphs yet, but thus far I found these:

Spoiler

Sunny Day Real Estate
Agent Orange
Orange Juice
Newton Faulkner
Traffic
Judas Priest
The world is a beautiful place and I am no longer afraid to die
Journey
Dio
The Jesus & Mary Chain
The Church
Eyehategod
Godsmack
The Divine Comedy
Huey Lewis and the News
The Streets
Slayer
L.A. Guns
Cop Shoot Cop (not verbatim but figured that's what you were going for)
Goldie Lookin Chain
Fear Factory
Coldplay
Skin
Sleep
Nirvana
Dream Theater
Vio-lence (I guess?)
Panic! at the Disco
Death Grips
Body Count
A Place to Bury Strangers
New Order
Planning for Burial
Dire Straits
Deacon Blue
Soup (?)
Death(?)
Dead Kennedys
Bush
Professor Green
CunninLynguists
Boyzone
Girls Aloud
Status Quo
Massive Attack
In Flames
Thin Lizzy
Eagles
Overkill
Rush
Converge
Explosions in the Sky
Skids
HammerFall
The Action (?)
Tank
Rolling Stones
Mastodon
Antlers

[close]

Don't feel like I missed any yet but might have

[Trollheart]

I can't remember. I wrote it back when MB was a thing. Nobody was interested in it then either.  I got the idea from, if you remember, that picture that had all the symbols for bands and you had to find them all? Things like guys with heads shaped like lemons (lemonheads) and so forth. I thought since that engendered so much interest this might, but it seems most people would rather look at pictures than read text. Oh well. I didn't want it to be just a bunch of sentences, stream of consciousness deal; it had to make some sort of narrative sense, so I think it must have taken a while.

Thanks for playing anyway, taking the time to go through it. I'll check your answers soon as I get a minute and let you know how you did.

Cheers!