Steel Panther

No not the Tank Game, the Band.

I suppose like most people I had not heard of a Band called Steel Panther as they are not the type of group likely to be in the Top 40. I spend quite a bit of time on Youtube and kept getting recommendations for videos of Steel Panther. I ignored them for awhile but one day checked them out as I got curious. What I found was not really to my taste as they were on stage at one of the British festivals acting like Rock Gods. I thought WTF? they can not be serious and went and looked at something else. However some time later a Video of them doing "She's Tight" popped at on my recommendations, which is an old Cheap Trick song and one of my old favourite groups from way back. This video was well done but it was obvious by now that they were not serious. I did a bit of googling and found out that they were a Parody Glam Rock Group who started as a Van Halen tribute group with the Singer fronting LA Guns previously to that. 

The thumbnail of 'She's tight" is a bit rude to post here but worth looking at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9uXm0-tZ1g

The Burden of being Wonderful is quite good and shows off their sense of Humour quite well.

You may wonder why I am telling you so much about this group? I have had the EM4 Musicians in my Lead Pile with only a vague idea of what I was going to use them for. This video has inspired me to paint the figures as close as them as possible but with the clothing etc being different in some cases. Lexxi for instance is tall and thin but this model has an oversize bass and he is wearing a teeshirt. The other figures were fairly easy to mimic. I had an extra Guitar player who I decided to call Angus. I later thought that I should have made him Eddie (Van Halen). I did not paint Tattoos on their arms as I was quite pleased with the skin tones already.

Lexxi, Stix,Mike, Satchel, Angus

I have started to make a set of drums for Stix.

So now I have a miniature Parody Glam Rock Band fashioned after a real Parody Glam Rock Band. If you doubt their abilities as Musicians have a listen to the excellent cover of "Don't stop believing". The rest of their songs are too full of four letter words for me to recommend here. I have downloaded quite a few of them plus some other songs from the groups that inspire them.

Of course every Band needs its fans and other hanger's on. I had bought a group of Hippies from Casting Room Miniatures which I was going to use for Vietnam but later thought it could be in bad taste, and they were dressed in a later Fashion that the Mid to Late sixties I was trying to portray.

I think they turned out real well as the sculpting is to the Foundry standard rather than Casting Rooms. I had to repaint the placard as I first copied one of Satchels Tee shirts which said, "Say Perhaps to Drugs" which I found funny for about five minutes. It looked all wrong with black writing on white so I repainted in black and then applied the new slogan which looks much better. It suits the Hippy type and should be relevant for a few years.

The next four figures are all from EM4. Three are Hangers on doubling as security while that last one is the new Leader for my Red Gang which I refer to as the Deviants. He was inspired from watching Fury Road and is meant to be an earlier version of Immortan Joe.

I think I will call him "Immoral Joe".

I have some news about my efforts with casting which I will leave for next time. 

(Some of it is actually good.)