In 1989, a band was born at WBCN’s Charles Laquidara show. The Fools were supposed to play one morning but cancelled at the last minute. The show producer threw a group of men – including a man who filled the candy machine - together and called them The Stools. And thus “America’s Greatest Garage Band” was formed. Ultimately, they ended up becoming the house band to the Dwayne Glasscock show, a highly rated radio show also on WBCN in the early 1990s.

Now, thanks to producer Lance Norris and Wareham Community Television, The Stools have found a second life in the form of a show by the same name, comprised of 23-minute episodes.

The show is a rock-and-roll version of "Blackadder," a British television show in the 1980s that placed its main character in different eras throughout history. Each episode is stylized as its own "Behind the Music"-style documentary piece that places The Stools within a different era of rock history, and features real-life Stools members Elvin Anderson, Cosmo Ditmar and Antonio Morretti.

“I am using [The Stools] throughout the history of rock and roll as sort of a representative of everything that goes wrong in music,” said Norris. “Every time something goes wrong in world of rock, the band is blamed or behind it.”

Norris lives on the Cape, and is also the show's writer, videographer, and editor. He said former WCTV producer Bruce Gannon helped him get a space in WCTV to create the show.

But this is not to say Norris is an amateur: prior to writing The Stools, Norris was a contributor to the morning show that spawned The Stools on WBCN and later WZLX as well as a contributor to shows like "Politically Incorrect" with Bill Maher and Saturday Night Live. However, he has always been into rock and roll, playing shows in bands for 20 years.

“I was a drummer in high school, and it just evolved from there,” Norris said. “The drum set was too bulky to carry around college, so taught myself guitar and bass and so on. ... I'm a jack of all trades, but a master of none."

Norris’s own observation of a declining live music scene in Boston, especially with the recent closure of well-known Cambridge club T.T. the Bears, brought upon the creation of his show. But, as he says, it was also created out of "boredom."

The seven episodes made so far range from the dawn of rock and roll in 1954 to the British invasion, all shows involving snafus by America’s favorite garage band. Norris said a BCC Access executive who was interested in the show wanted to replace the rock and roll element with rap. Norris, of course, declined, but said it was "ironic," as The Stools big hit was “Italian Ice,” a parody rap homage to Vanilla Ice’s hit, “Ice Ice Baby”. The song landed them gigs at legendary Boston venues like the Boston Garden, The Paradise and the old House of Blues in Harvard Square.

Though the events portrayed may seem outlandish in nature, there is an educational element to the series, Norris said, because the events actually happened. The idea of the show is to get the viewer to do some research themselves, so they know what really occurred during each event covered. "

Nobody should take a story in rock history at face value because there is always a deeper, ugly story beneath it," Norris said.

Norris said he taught himself how to use Final Cut to make the program, and can produce one to two episodes a week. He began filming in the early summer, and said he hopes audiences can learn from it.

“Viewers can take the show either way,” said Norris. “It’s 23-minutes of entertainment, or ‘Wow, maybe I should rethink this.'”

Interested audiences may watch "The Stools" on WCTV, or visit the show's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC46AIINeb921w3WeXQavtlA.