Best Disney-film appearance by a suburban band that only sings about girls, cars, and getting girls into cars
MTV featured Waltham (the band, not the city) in one of its "You Hear It First" segments, intermittent news clips that have also hyped the likes of Joss Stone, the Darkness, and the Rapture. But we'd bet a buck you didn't hear about the suburban arena rockers on the music channel first. Around these parts, Waltham have been emulating "Jesse's Girl"-era Rick Springfield since the late '90s, the band's five members brought together by their unironic love of cheesy '80s rock, Camaros, and women (their repertoire includes songs titled "Cheryl," "Diana," and "Maria"). They finally signed to Rykodisc this past summer, but a less-reported development was Waltham's role in Disney's America's Heart & Soul (2004), a slice-of-life documentary about Americans overcoming adversity. (The Waltham boys qualified because they still function in the rags part of the rags-to-riches story.) When it opened in July, America's Heart & Soul became a kind of anti-Fahrenheit 9/11, with its "inspirational" profiles of a blind ice-climber, a gospel singer, and Rick and Dick Hoyt, the father-son team that runs the Boston Marathon every year. But Waltham aren't relying on their Disney cameo for promotion; in fact, the band's Web site doesn't even mention the movie. Strange to think they'd be embarrassed - this is a band, after all, with no qualms about performing songs like "All I Want Is You."

Waltham, www.walthamtheband.com.