One Man Band was the Pixar short shown before Cars in its original theatrical release.
Directed by Mark Andrews and Andrew Jimenez, One Man Band follows two competing street musicians who try to win a child’s coin. The short relies largely on visual storytelling and musical performance rather than spoken dialogue, fitting Pixar’s tradition of pairing a concise animated story with a feature presentation.
Its characters, Bass and Treble, compete for the attention of a girl named Tippy. Their escalating performance becomes a comic contest, while Tippy finds a clever way to respond to their rivalry. The short was produced by Pixar and released theatrically with Cars in 2006.
One Man Band was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. It is sometimes confused with Lifted, which preceded Ratatouille, or For the Birds, which preceded Monsters, Inc. Those shorts belong to different Pixar feature pairings.