The Bands
Jem and the Holograms
The Holograms' music is bright, bouncy, generally up-beat, and full of positive and hopeful things to say about life. The Holograms harmonize beautifully together without effort.
Jerrica Benton aka Jem - Jerrica is the daughter of recording engineer and inventor, Emmett Benton, who created Starlight Music and began the Starlight Foundation - a foster home for girls. After the death of her father (her mother Jacqui passed many years prior), Jerrica carries on her father's work on the Starlight Foundation and Starlight Music. She is intelligent and sensible, and is a competent businesswoman when it comes to the music company. She is very independent, almost to a fault - she sometimes is too proud to admit she needs help.
As Jem, Jerrica is able to cut loose. Jem is bubbly, fun-loving, and a natural leader. Jem was the product of Jerrica's need to stop Eric Raymond from taking over Starlight Music. The mystery of Jem has heightened the effect of her popularity and has put her in a strange love triangle with Jerrica, her boyfriend Rio, and Jem herself. Since she didn't confide in Rio in the beginning, she is afraid she will lose his love forever if he discovers her secret - something she can't bear to have happen.
Kimber Benton is Jerrica's younger sister. Kimber hasn't learned all the lessons about responsibility that her big sister has. She's less mature, with a leaning more for the creative side of music and not much of a mind for business. Kimber is fun-loving and is brilliant with any kind of instrument and writing lyrics. Kimber is just flighty enough that Jerrica has to keep pushing her to finish things, much to her annoyance. However, when the going gets rough, Kimber grows up fast and comes to learn that being dependable is important.
Aja Leith is Jerrica's best friend. In fact, they grew up together. Aja came to the Starlight Foundation as a foster child and stayed, becoming almost a third daughter in the Benton family. Though very intelligent in her own right, Aja is happy to be Jerrica's right hand. Aja is very dependable and takes care of important tasks when Jerrica is unable to do them herself. Aja loves to drive and has a passion for cars and motorcycles. She's the resident chauffeur for Starlight house.
Aja is very athletic and sees to it that the girls in Starlight House get plenty of exercise, play sports, and get to school and back. All the girls respect Aja and would think twice about disobeying her. She can be very stubborn, but has a great sense of humor.
Shana Elmsford is a young woman bursting with talent. She loves to design and make clothes that would make the top designers in the world drool. It's thanks to Shana that the girls of Starlight House are dressed like miniature models at even the most casual of times.
She quietly goes along making things run smoothly and gets along easily with everyone. The girls regard her as kind of the "mother" of the house. Shana gives them extra tutoring in music, art, and sewing. Through Lin-Z Pierce, Shana met video-director Anthony Julian and they've been a hot item ever since.
Carmen Alonso, aka Raya, is the daughter of naturalized Mexican immigrant parents. She also has 3 brothers. Raya is a shy girl, bright and good-hearted who works hard to help out the family. Her dream is to play music and she is a natural on any kind of percussion instrument.
Raya lacks confidence in herself, but through her contact with the Holograms, she slowly learns what her true value is, and gains self-confidence. Although she needs coaxing to speak her mind, when she does her opinions are well thought-out and intelligent. Raya is patient and slow to anger, but when she loses her temper, she is a tigress. After calming down she is usually embarrassed for losing her temper, even if it was for a worthy cause.
The Misfits
Their music is rough, tough, and full of self-centered lyrics which promote their own selfish, materialistic creed. They can harmonize, but half the time it turns into a contest between Pizzazz and Roxy to see who can dominate the song.
Phyllis Gabor, aka Pizzazz - But don't call her by her real name. Pizzazz thinks she is the greatest thing since sliced bread and her ego knows no bounds. She only wants two things from life - money and fame - which of course, should be handed to her on a silver platter.
Besides being arrogant, selfish, conceited, and lazy - Pizzazz is the mistress of dirty tricks... stopping just short of actual crimality.
Image is everything to Pizzazz and she lives up to her name, resorting to extreme gestures, loudness, rudeness, or whatever else it takes to make herself the center of attention - her favorite place to be - without realizing that the wrong kind of attention is worse than no attention at all.
Pizzazz likes to order people around, but if she doesn't get her way, she usually throws a tantrum like a spoiled child, which is basically what she is. She grew up in a rich family and has no sense of the value of money or property. Her father Harvey Gabor, is fantastically wealthy and is too engrossed in deal-making to give his daughter any real attention. If Pizzazz wants something, she knows she can easily get it by badgering her father for a few minutes while he's busy and he'll do what she wants just to get some peace and quiet.
Roxanne Pelligrini, aka Roxy, ran away from home in Philadelphia when she 13 and earned a living by waitressing and any number of minor jobs, becoming street-wise in the process. She isn't terribly smart, and she can't read or write particularly well, but she knows her way around the blue-collar working world.
She sees music as a way to the good life without caring about the creative aspects of music at all. Pizzazz might manage to knock out a song now and then, but Roxy unabashedly steals material from unknowns and claims it's hers.
Roxy is a born bully and follower, willing to let Pizzazz take the lead as well as the rap if things go wrong. She'll lie or cheat to get her way, caring nothing about hurting people in the process. She's been poor most of her life and is determined to be rich.
Mary Phillips, aka Stormer (a name chosen for her by Pizzazz) is the youngest of the Misfits, easily intimidated and shy. Although Stormer has genuine musical talent, neither Pizzazz nor Roxy let her know it, yet they will latch onto her ideas claiming them for their own. Stormer is naive enough to believe what they tell her.
Stormer was overawed by Pizzazz's image and promises. There are times when she has second thoughts about the way Pizzazz and Roxy go about things - but if she dares bring them up, she's verbally bullied back into submission. Maybe someday she'll realize that she's in bad company and break free, but for now she's under Pizzazz's thumb... while vehemently insisting that she isn't.
Sheila Burns, aka Jetta, comes from a lower class English family in the down-and-out working class town of Hull. Out of sheer boredom, she joined a group called The Tinkerbillies - who came to the States, but were so obnoxious that the Immigration Dept. kicked them out of the country.
But Jetta got lucky and met up with The Misfits at a club where she and Pizzazz hit it off. Pizzazz used her father's money and influence to get Jetta a Resident card.
Jetta is a born liar. She can't help herself. She makes up all sorts of outrageous claims, and lies endlessly about haing royal blood in her veins.
Jetta is a skilled pickpocket, but doesn't do it for personal gain. She only does it to prove to someone that she can do it, or when Pizzazz asks her to "lift" somethng as part of one of her troublemaking schemes.
The Stingers
The Stingers have a hi-tech, synthesizer sound which sets them apart from both Jem and The Holograms and The Misfits. Their lyrics don't deal with as much mischief as The Misfits, but they are selfish, self-centered and self-aggrandizing in nature.
Rory Llewelyn, aka Riot, is obsessed with style and class. Not a particular style, but the concept of style as something that sets him apart from the rest of humanity. That's how Riot sees himself - a paragon to which all others should aspire. It's a conceit so cosmic that not even Pizzazz can match it. Whereas Pizzazz's ego is based on need for attention and insecurities, Riot has no such needs. He KNOWS beyond any doubt that he's close to perfection - or as close as one can be in an imperfect world. Riot has an eye for perfection in all things material. No matter what it takes, he will never settle for anything but the best. He's the complete materialist.
Riot hates to speak about his family or background. His father is a lifer in the Army and was bounced around from city to city and country to country, never able to attend one school or live in one place long enough to form friendships. This made Riot particularly aloof, indifferent to lasting relationships, and independent. It's also given him a sophistication and awareness of various societies and cultures. During his last three years of high shool, his family was in West Germany, and it was there that Riot discovered how to use his charisma in conjunction with his budding musical abilities. He formed his first group Nirvana and learned about guitars and synthesizers.
Riot thinks of his music as a form of personal energy that enables him to reach his goals. His two main goals are - A) to be recognized as a paragon, and B) to own and revel in the best and finest posessions - and to Riot, people come under his definition of possessions. The trouble with people is that they can't always be bought and they can't always be "charmed", and this will provide Riot with his greatest source of frustration - especially when it comes to Jem.
Ingrid Kruger, aka Minx, grew up in Berlin, West Germany. Her mother, a secretary, her father, a computer repairman. Minx has always been fascinated by the insides of computers, contantly sticking her fingers into the ones her father was repairing and usually doing damage that he'd have to spend hours undoing. One day her father gave Minx a broken synthesizer he had acquired, and she fell madly in love with it, fixed it up and and soon after, met and joined up with Riot.
Minx is a shameless flirt. With her long hair and kittenish demeanor, Minx is nearly irresistible to men. Once she decides to go after a man, almost nothing can shake her, and it makes no difference to her whether or not he already has a relationship with someone else.
Unfortunately, Minx is only interested in the game. The minute she feels she's "captured" a man, she loses interest and becomes cold, even hostile. It's a switch that happens so fast, it's left scores of boys and men bewildered, nor is there anything they can do to change her mind.
Minx has a quick, alert mind. She has a sharp tongue and a caustic wit to go with it. Plus she has a pretty good technical mind limited to what she knows about - mainly musical intruments and the insides of computers - though she's fairly hopeless at actually running one. She's not on par with Techrat, by any means, but she can do a certain amount of work on synthesizers, and she is unequaled in getting any kind of sound from a synth that she wants.
Phoebe Ashe, aka Rapture, has never quite had her feet on the ground. She was considered the perfect, model child who never made a fuss. She was a pretty blonde girl who grew up into a beautiful woman, but the older she got, the more people worried. What seemed like a model child turned into a girl who lived in her own fantasy world and hated to be bothered with the "real" world - especially when it came to doing work.
Rapture is physically lazy. Music is the only thing that really gets her moving, mainly because she can incorporate it readily into her daydreams. Mentally, however, she never stops. She loves fantasy-oriented movies, fantasy books, fantasy art - anything that transports her from the dull, uniteresting world of reality.
Rapture doesn't necessarily believe in fantasy, she simply prefers it over the "mundane" world. One thing she does do extraordinarily well is manipulate people. Not in a fashion remotely resembling what Riot does. Rapture uses her well-exercised imagination to baffle and bedazzle others with nonsense made up totally off the top of her head or from something she read in a New Age pseudo-science book. The only reason Rapture never bothers to use astrology to this end is that it takes too much work to learn "all that stuff" and she's so lazy, she'd rather make something up on the spot. Rapture is all image and little substance.
Given her propensity for manipulating others, it's ironic that Rapture is completely under Riot's spell. She's not in love with him, she's in love with his image and the fantastical aspects of him.
