What If You Had $25 to Start a Band?

Rob Slater on June 3, 2014

If you’re scanning through your Twitter recently, you’ve probably seen many variations of the “if you had $15” picture. For reference, here’s one of the originals that started the trend that focuses on the NBA. Thankfully, this has now been adapted to the music world thanks to CBSSports.com writer Matt Norlander (all sports and music fans should give Matt a follow), who created the fantasy five-piece rock band.

For starters, the frontmen certainly offer some great value. With $25 and five spots to fill, you can certainly get a quality and reliable (key attribute) frontman without having to break the bank. Bowie at $5? Seems like a no-brainer, but you can always go big with Mercury, Jagger or Plant at the top. Next up are the lead guitarists, and if you don’t like the image of Prince sharing the stage with a frontman, you can always opt for high value picks Duane Allman or Eddie Van Halen to lead the group.

Now that you have the frontman and lead guitarist, who joins them on rhythm? A couple of more modern picks–Stone Gossard and John Mayer–seem like great choices to lay the foundation underneath the power lead man. You’ve also got classic picks like Page, Townshend and Richards, but you have to be willing to spend. Moving over to the low end, something about Flea, Bootsy and Claypool in the $4-6 range seems perfect. Or you could always grab Sir Paul at $2. The choice, as they say, is yours.

Last but never least, the drummers. Remember, you only have $25, so spend wisely. There is value at the bottom with Ginger Baker, Stewart Copeland and Tool’s Danny Carey. And Grohl is always sitting there at $4. At the very least, Grohl would take your band to the coolest places to record an album.

We kicked this idea around the Relix office this morning and here are some of the final selections:

Robert Plant, Duane Allman, John Mayer, John Paul Jones, Stewart Copeland

Steven Tyler, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Flea, Carter Beauford

David Bowie, Steve Ray Vaughn, John Mayer, Paul McCartney, Stewart Copeland

Although he isn’t a Relix employee, check out Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s picks. Now, what say you?