高中英语新课标人教版(广东)高一(2)unit5 reading

Unit 5

THE BAND THAT WASN’T

Have you ever wanted to be part of a band as a famous singer or musician? Have you ever dreamed of playing in front of thousands of people at a concert, at which everyone is clapping and appreciating your music? Do you sing karaoke and pretend you are a famous singer like Song Zuying or Lin Huan? To be honest, a lot of people attach great importance to becoming rich and famous. But just how do people form a band?

Many musicians meet and form a band because they like to write and play their own music. They may start as a group of high-school students, for whom practicing their music in someone’s hours is the first step to fame. Sometimes they may play to passers-by in the street or subway so that they can earn some extra money for themselves or to pay for their instruments. Later they may give performances in pubs¹ or clubs, for which they are paid in cash. Of course they hope to make records in a studio and sell millions of copies to become millionaires!

However, there was one band hat started in a different way. It was called the Monkees and began as a TV show. The musicians were to play jokes on each other as well as play music, most of which was based loosely on the beatles. The TV organizers had planned to find four musicians who could act as well as sing. They put an advertisement in a newspaper looking for rock musicians, but they could only find one who was good enough. They had to use actors for the other three members of the band.

As some of these actors could not sing well enough, they had to rely on other musicians to help them. So during the broadcasts they just pretended to sing. Anyhow their performances were humorous enough to be copied by clubs in order to get more familiar with them. Each week on TV, the Mondees would play and sing songs written by other musicians. However, after a year or so in which they became more serious about their work, the Monkees started to play and sing their own songs like a real band. Then they produced their own records and started touring and play their own music. In the USA they became even more popular than the Beatles and sold even more records. The band broke up about 1970, but happily the reunited in the mid-1980s. they produced a new record in 1996, with which they celebrated² their former time as a real band.

1 pubs   

酒店，酒馆( pub的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• I don't like pubs.They're noisy, smelly, and what's more, expensive. 我不喜欢酒吧。那里又吵，气味又难闻，更重要的是，花费太多。
• We did/went the rounds of all the pubs in town. 我们逐一光顾了城里所有的酒店。

2 celebrated   

adj.有名的，声誉卓著的

参考例句：

• He was soon one of the most celebrated young painters in England.不久他就成了英格兰最负盛名的年轻画家之一。
• The celebrated violinist was mobbed by the audience.观众团团围住了这位著名的小提琴演奏家。