A band featuring ‘N Sync members Lance Bass and Joey Fatone covering Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes” at a high school graduation is about the farthest thing imaginable from hardcore. But that’s how Kevin (Lance Bass) describes his high school band Granite in the opening credits of the 2001 movie On the Line.
“Spring 1994. That was our band Granite. We were all about the rock. I mean we were hardcore.”
Bass says this in a voiceover as he sings “Marry him, marry me I’m the one that loved you baby can’t you see” and the crowd goes berserk. To prove his point, his best friend Rod (Joey Fatone) kicks over his Fender amp in the grand finale before telling his friend he should sing the ballad he wrote and dedicate to a girl he likes in the crowd.
Kevin chickens out, a foreshadowing of his striking out with a girl he meets on the L train in Chicago and then spends an hour and a half – and a ridiculous amount of display advertising dollars in pre-social media days – trying to track down. Hardcore, indeed.
Kevin and Rod remain best friends and Rod is still a rocker with basically the same wardrobe, but the band is never mentioned again in the movie. Rod does manage to get rockstar Mick Silver interested in his music though thanks to Kevin who sends him a demo tape. Silver (Richie Sambora) shows up at a bar where Rod is playing, talking about himself in the third person and saying how much he likes his rock ‘n roll that sounds strangely identical to schmaltzy ’90s era Boy Band music.
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