What Happened To The Scoundrels?
An Adult Contemporary Mystery
A few weeks ago I was seduced by the blues tune, Sexy Weekend from the London-based band, The Scoundrels.
This is an unsatisfying story of an unsuccessful deep dive trying to find information about this elusive band.
Innocent Beginnings
As a basic, white dude in his mid-thirties who drinks craft beer, I love a good blues/soul station on Pandora.
You hit play on an Alabama Shakes or Lake Street Dive or Leon Bridges or Otis Redding station and you get the same, great selection of laid back, nondescript bluesy soul that all leads to the same destination:
Tennessee Whiskey by Chris Stapleton.
Most of the time this passive experience is exactly what I’m looking for. But when Sexy Weekend came on during a lazy Saturday, my ears perked up.
Sexy Weekend?
I must know more about this.
The song is both playful, yet sad. Classic and contemporary. Clever and honest. They aren’t trying to do too much. The perfect blend of everything I love about this genre of music.
After obsessively listening to it over the next few days, I needed to satiate my curiosity.
Normally, in 2018, this process would have taken about 30 seconds to get the answer I was looking for. Either they would be touring and I would buy tickets or they would be recording an album and maybe touring sometime next year.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as I had hoped.
“It’s always the hard part that creates value.” — Seth Godin
We’ll see about that, Seth.
Early returns. Vegas, baby.
Bingo.
They play once a month a Dive Bar in Las Vegas. Seems weird but maybe they just love Vegas? Time to pack our bags. We need an impromptu Vegas pilgrimage.
Wait.
The Scoundrels don’t have a female lead singer with pink hair. This didn’t seem right.
Looks like there are multiple bands named The Scoundrels.
I had a feeling that was too easy.
I need to be more specific in my googling. I’m pretty sure they’re from London.
Let’s try The Scoundrels UK in Google.
Yes. Found them.
Or, wait a sec… from their (?) website:
We’re a highly polished 5 piece cover band with great presence and a massive high energy sound. We’ve got an irresistible set of rock, pop, 80s and funk tunes and we are ready to party with you!
Interested in booking us? Contact us today.
What in the hell? This super cool, laid back band singing about sexy weekends definitely does not play Black Eyed Peas at your cousin’s wedding.
Next.
Enough messing around. Let’s hit Wikipedia.
I finally found the right band but this page is suspiciously sparse.
Scoundrels are a blues-rock band from London. They were originally formed in 2007 but the current line-up was completed in 2009.
The last line of their history:
In October 2011, they were invited to support The Kooks on their UK tour. Later that month they travelled back to the United States to play at college radio festival CMJ.[9]
That’s it. The end of their history paragraph.
What happened after that college radio festival in 2011? Come on wikipedia. There must be more.
It lists 3 albums in the discography:
- Sniff It Up EP (2011)
- Scoundrels (2011)
- “Sexy Weekend EP” (2012)
Evidently, they didn’t breakup after that college radio festival because they dropped the Sexy Weekend EP in 2012. That is encouraging.
Not much available after 2012, though.
Let’s try the social medias.
It appears they do have a Facebook page. Although, it has been fairly quiet the last few years.
The most recent post was from 2016…
But there is nothing after that.
No big announcement. No anything. They changed their cover photo to a turtleneck clad mock-album cover and the comments seemed to indicate they had something big in the works. But it was radio silence.
Dead end at the facebook page but they have a website listed! Yes!
Scoundrels.fm
All my questions are answered. I clicked the link and…
Coming soon: scoundrels.fm
Yup. That is their website. Don’t worry, I checked the “CD Album” link.
Dead.
And I’m 90% sure my computer contracted a virus from that exchange.
Maybe they’re twitter users?
The most recent tweet:
That was the big finale of their twitter account. Feb 21, 2015.
Three and a half years ago. Without any other relevant tweets there isn’t much to read into.
The final frontier…Myspace.
For those who haven’t visited Myspace.com in a while, you might be surprised to learn that it is basically a music news site with individual band pages promoting their music.
I can’t imagine any civilian intentionally visiting myspace in 2018.
The Scoundrels do have a myspace page. And it actually has a new-ish song. Hangman’s Lament, released in 2015. Nothing after that.
And absolutely no other information.
I guess that’s the end of the line?
After concluding my 20ish minute investigation my theories are as follows:
- It is possible that these guys are just really good at playing music and terrible at self-promotion. They are toiling around London bars can never get their shit together because they’ve been meaning to make a website but never quite get around to it. And part of me loves that.
- They just stopped playing. Which seems so weird. Every band that has ever had a hit is still touring. My cousin texted me a video from a Barenaked Ladies and Better Than Ezra concert this summer. Bands don’t ever stop playing once they’ve had a hit. There is always someone willing to pay to see them.
- My final theory is maybe Sexy Weekend and their other frequently played Pandora song, Arrogant Blues, weren’t hits at all. Maybe they nailed the Pandora algorithm just right and it seems like they’re more popular than they are. Maybe they never quite made it in the real world. They must have got jobs and moved on.
I guess I’ll always have Sexy Weekend to listen to. And that will have to be enough.
