The Rock & Roll Fantasy

From the looks of things, there might be a band calling itself Bad Company playing live this year. A group billed as “Bad Company 2008″ is listed as performing at a festival on May 5th in Manchester, England, to help launch the new station Rock Radio. The musicians include original Bad Company guitarist Mick Ralphs; latter-day members Robert Hart on vocals, Dave “Bucket” Colwell on guitar, and Jaz Lochrie on bass; and drummer Harry James from the group Thunder — but no Paul Rodgers, who’s planning a new album and tour with Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor, and no Simon Kirke (founding bassist Boz Burrell passed away in September 2006).

Here’s where it gets a bit more interesting — a MySpace site for the new incarnation of Bad Company was taken down in the past day or so, but you might still find it cached through Google. The site refers to this new group several times as a “live stage show,” which could potentially indicate the guys are walking a fine line as a tribute act. The fact that the MySpace page was removed (after more than 40,000 views) might be related to this rather pointed disclaimer on the official Bad Company website: “Bad Company are not touring and have not been on tour since 2002. Anyone saying that they are Bad Company is doing so without the band’s approval or consent.”

Neither Rodgers nor Kirke has made a public comment on the situation.