Rejection Arcade
I’m at this mirage of a juncture in my career where the things that lived only in my head are starting to leach out into the real world. Not just because I’m querying THE FRONTMAN, but because I’ve joined writing groups and now real people talk to me about the fake people I made up.
Rejection Arcade is 1980s hair metal band from THE FRONTMAN. The term “hair metal” came later — you’d probably call them rock or pop-rock if they debuted today. I made Rejection Arcade in the vein of Journey and Genesis, set in a time before Bon Jovi roamed the earth (THE FRONTMAN is set in 1983).
During the events of THE FRONTMAN, Rejection Arcade is headlining their Joystick tour. In 1984, Rejection Arcade pauses between legs of their tour to open for Genesis, who actually did tour at that time. Because the best fictions share drywall with fact. My eternal thanks to the people running and updating Concert Archives.
In the midst of the Joystick tour, small Midwestern dive bars hosts Battle of the Bands competitions where the winner gets to open for Rejection Arcade on the rest of the Joystick tour. In fair Iowa we lay our scene — this is how the band at the heart of THE FRONTMAN joins the plot.
On the second leg of the Joystick tour, Rejection Arcade parties with Van Halen while their North American tours overlap. Again a huge thank you to Concert Archives, and also to modern-day tour promoters and their in-depth Twitter threads about how to plan a multi-city tour.
The gist: you don’t plan a tour stop within a certain radius of bands too similar to you (example: The Band CAMINO can’t play Charlotte because The 1975 is too close by), and you work your way back to the band’s home city. Is the band from L.A.? Then you end in L.A.
Some of the more geriatric notes in my iPhone tell me that Rejection Arcade was born “Arcade Reject” during a discussion with my friend Bellamy. I felt, while drafting, that Rejection Arcade had a better ring to it.
I went through nearly fifty names before I named my main band (because copyrights are things, even if the bands themselves no longer are), but Rejection Arcade came easily to me, as if it were waiting for me.
So, because I want to colonize the SERP on this subject forevermore: Rejection Arcade is a Los Angeles-based rock band from the early 1980s.
