posted by Brit
At school there were a lot of rock bands about the place. They didn't play much actual rock necessarily - often they didn't even own any musical instruments - but every now and again they would get together and change their name.
Often bands would form, split, reform, resplit, reform with a girl singer, sack the girl singer, merge with another band and then split again, all within the space of a fortnight and without having played a single note in anger. During this time they could go through anything from ten to - ooh, I don't know - say, 300 names.
The consequence was that everyone was always looking out for a 'good name for a band'.* Nige is still at it. I'm still at it except these days I keep seeing good names for a blog. I almost want to start blogs just to use names like Jewels and Binoculars or The Borrissey Blog.
Glenties would be a fine name for an argumentative political blog.
Why, just scrolling through the comments of any random post, such as this one, reveals a goldmine of top blog or band names: 3rd-Hand Ford Escort from Elberry, Obsessive-Compulsive Hiking Freak from Ian Russell, and best of all, Mark's The Fruits of Incest.
*Can't remember too many of my contemporaries' band names, except for Cosmic Jug and Plastic Squirrel.
A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Harking back to juniors temporary secondment to the heavy metallers one name from that era stands out..The Dead Kennedy's.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought that 'The Buccal Swabs' would be a good name for a band . . .
ReplyDelete5-a-side football teams are also good for names, though too many go for Surreal Madrid.
ReplyDeleteFor years I played for a team called the Cookie Dusters (after Ned Flanders's name for his moustache). One particularly memorable opponent was 'Five Musty Turds'.
That is good, Dr H. It has a vaguely piratical tang.
ReplyDelete'Half Man Half Biscuit' is surely one of the all-time great band names and would do equally well for a blog. As would some HMHB song titles, notably 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Road' and 'Dead Men Don't Need Season Tickets'.
ReplyDeleteThere are some great band names in the death metal genre that would suit a certain kind of blog. Can't you see yourself clicking on 'Human Jerky', 'Impaled Nazarene', 'Epoch of Unlight', or 'Goatwhore'?
it's good to see old customs don't fade away.
ReplyDeleterecently, I learned that the Edelweiss Pirates was a little-known alternative to the Hitler Youth in the 30s, Germany. but then dismayed to find out it's been used for at least 3 different rock bands since then.
'256 shades of grey' was a delightful find when I first attempted to configure a printer many moons ago. I'm sure that's been had by now.
That old pub band Hatfield and the North had a fine name, if nothing else. And there was The The - kind of drove the whole thing into the ground, that one...
ReplyDeleteI have an album by a band called Godspeed! You Black Emperor.
ReplyDeleteThrobbing Gristle is a good, nasty one.
Not a group, an American folk singer, KC Moan.
ReplyDeleteKC and the Sunshine bands granddaddy maybe?
Jonathan Law forgot to mention in his list of spectacular death metal band names the remarkable Anal C*nt.
ReplyDeleteI've always been rather partial to 'Laibach', which is very enjoyable to enunciate.
The Hijacked Thread works for a blog or a band.
ReplyDeleteNow word verification could just as easily be called the random band name generator. Right now I have "glater" staring at me. I great name for a band.
"The The" is very Wallace Stevens, though i think it's taken. i just told a friend to "Drop the 'the'" as i was editing something of his, thought that was a good title for something or another. i reckon 'The Definite Article' would be an excellent name for a clothes shop selling definite clothing.
ReplyDeleteHey, I read that former post and think one of my comments would make a fine band name: "Channeling Post-Menopausal Women." The band could specialize in soft rock or thrash metal, depending.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it would, Susan, and it could also be descriptive of the BBC's daytime TV policy.
ReplyDelete