Re: (TV) Bad Names

[Jay <piazzasanmarco@yahoo.com>]

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Got the perfect name for a band? It's probably
destined for failure.
Peter Hartlaub

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

 
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You're probably not capable of playing a musical
instrument, if you've picked one up at all. You
certainly can't carry a tune, as was proven during
that toneless office party rendition of "Sexual
Healing." There's a chance you don't even have enough
friends to form a musical group. 

But everyone, it seems, knows exactly what they would
name their band. 

It's a natural reaction, in part because the names of
most mainstream bands are totally lame. While few of
us will ever play an instrument or sing better than
the members of U2 or Pearl Jam, anyone with a pulse
could think up a better name for either group. 

The number of successful bands with great names is
surprisingly small, and mostly stacked in the punk
rock genre. The Dead Kennedys and Me First and the
Gimme Gimmes both look great spelled out on an album
cover, and the turntable-heavy Handsome Boy Modeling
School has a nice cadence as well. But looking at the
Billboard Top 100 albums, it seems like this nation is
in a severe creative recession, with no recovery in
sight. 

Among the most popular musical groups are the
spelling-challenged (Linkin Park; Ludacris), the
painfully unimaginative (Usher; Creed) and various
combinations of the two (Lil' Jon & the Eastside
Boyz). There are also inside jokes that everyone
forgot a decade ago (Green Day) and metaphysical
nonsense that will make your head hurt even before you
listen to the music (Destiny's Child). Good Charlotte?
Bad name. 

Finding out the origins of a band's name doesn't
always mitigate the poor word choices. Coldplay
reportedly got its name when another band didn't want
it any more, while Incubus, the Pixies and the
Grateful Dead sought out dictionaries for creative
inspiration. And doesn't AC/DC rock a little less when
you find out members got their name from the back of a
sewing machine? 

As a general rule, it seems the less commercially
successful the band, the better the name -- which is
proven by inspecting the lineup at the San Francisco
nightclub Bottom of the Hill on any given week. While
the third groups on the bill always have excellent
names -- Nuke Infusion, Kill the Messenger and El
Capitan are a few recent examples -- the featured acts
are almost universally weak. 

In that way, giving your band a creative name is a
surefire harbinger of doom (which is, incidentally, a
great name for a band). From the moment members of ...
And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and the
Brian Jonestown Massacre chose their inspired and
memorable names, they were guaranteed to never
headline a venue larger than the Warfield. It was
similarly over before it started for John Cougar
Concentration Camp, a punk rock band that was
musically halfway decent, and can now be found only in
the nether regions of the Amoeba Music clearance bins.


Thousands of even better names, tragically, may never
surface -- even on a handbill for Hotel Utah or 12
Galaxies. 

For every real band trying to rise through the ranks
from house parties to small clubs to discovery by a
major label, there are thousands of imaginary ones --
eternally stuck in the early planning stages of the
unmotivated masses. It's human nature to dream about a
musical act that will never be -- coming from the same
part of the brain that fantasizes about romantic
partners who are out of your league and imagines hero
scenarios where you save Robin Williams from getting
hit by a falling piano. 

While I've picked up my guitar less than 10 times
since college, I've become a sort of Dave Grohl of
imaginary musicians, with enough names for a main
band, several side projects and the supergroup I plan
to form years from now with Dan the Automator and
members of Journey. 

My current Top 5 band names, in descending order of
coolness: 

5. Cabana Boy 

4. Gondor Calls for Aid ... And Rohan Will Answer! 

3. M.C. Gordon Getty and the New Kennedys 

2. Bastards! 

1. Surefire Harbinger of Doom 

Lest you think you're the only one with a great name
for a band, ask the people in the cubicles around you.
The chances are they know exactly what they would name
their band, and it's better than anything in the Top
40. Just among my colleagues who sit within 10 feet,
future plans exist for Medulla Oblongata, Samoan
Quinceaqera, the Erectile Dysfunctions and a group
called Breakfast, which I'm told will play only
acoustic covers of songs from the Wu-Tang Clan. 

Of course, it's more than likely that these bands will
never play a single note. But in their own way,
they've already achieved a greatness that members of
Pink Floyd, the Who and the Beatles can only dream
about. 




Flanders: Homer, God didn't set your house on fire.
Rev. Lovejoy: No, but He was working in the hearts of your friends and neighbors when they came to your aid, be they Christian [camera pans to Flanders], Jew [Krusty], or...miscellaneous [Apu].
Apu: Hindu! There are 700 million of us.
Lovejoy: Aw, thats super. 

  
   -The Simpsons, Homer the Heretic 






























		
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