If you started a band, what would the name be?
I am a huge fan of music. I listen to music every day. I find new bands all the time. I am what one might call obsessed. However, other than being able to tell awesome music from terrible music, I have zero musical ability. I’m not kidding; I really suck. I know that I suck because I have been given the ridiculous gift of perfect pitch. Since I have no musical ability whatsoever, all this means is that I can’t stand to hear the sound of my own voice when I sing. Perfect pitch is completely wasted on me.
In addition to zero musical ability and perfect pitch, I also have auditory -> visual synesthesia. This means that I see music as color and patterns. I’m not sure how and if synesthesia relates to the music that I like, but it is an omnipresent part of my enjoyment of it, so I thought I’d mention it. I wrote about it here if you’re interested.
And, as long as I’m laying all the cards on the table, not only do I have no musical talent, perfect pitch so I can hear how little talent I have and synesthesia, I also have massive case of stagefright. I wrote about that already here. You’d have to drag me up on stage to perform the worst songs ever. It seems as though my musical career is at an end before it even began.
Now that that’s all out and we’re on the same page as far as my completely nonexistent musical career is concerned, I actually have given thought to band names, you know, just in case I wake up as someone else with a modicum of talent someday. Here are some real band names that I like:
I like bands that use initials because they really could mean anything:
DRI, YOB, GBH, DYS, Run-D.M.C., RPG, DOA, NWA, AC/DC, MDC, ETD, EPMD, The FU’s, NoFX, TSOL, X.
One word band names that I think are neato:
Scissorfight, Camarosmith, Bang, Devo, Boris, Tusk, Buzzcocks, Funkadelic, Dozer, Fear, Botch, Gojira, Down, The Clash (although, technically, that’s two words), Unsane, Crank, Madness, Craw, Throttlerod, Keelhaul.
I also like names with errant diacritic marks, strange punctuation, particularly exclamation points, numbers, and/or all capital letters:
Bl’ast!, OFF!, Motörhead, The Accüsed, sHEAVY, GWAR, Buzzov*en, Hail!Hornet, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sunn O))), Sham 69, 999, 108, 35007.
More complicated band names that are also of the awesome variety:
The Fucking Am, Beaten Back To Pure, Pig Destroyer, High On Fire, Corrosion of Conformity, Karma To Burn, REO Speedealer, Captain Beyond, Goober & the Peas, Stormtroopers Of Death, Old Crow Medicine Show, Me First And The Gimme Gimmes, Alabama Thunderpussy, The Atomic Bitchwax, Halfway To Gone, Eyehategod, Mess With The Bull, Trampled By Turtles, A Tribe Called Quest.
And my personal favorite real band name ever, which is actually written as one word:
Superheavygoatass
These are all real band names of real bands I like. I’m sure there are other bands out there with awesome names and music I might not like. If I were to have a band, since I have no musical ability, it would have to have an awesome name. My band would have to have a name that was so stupendously confusing that people might forget how terrible we were, for example:
Saucy Wench & The Destruction of Grammar
Synesthesia & The Whirling Colorful Squiggles
Corrosive Marshmallow & The Metal Milk
Insanity & The Very Scary Hallucinations
One-Armed Larry & The Attack of the Prosthetic Guitars
Suicidal Picnic
Forgotten Necktie
Rhetorically Questionable
The Pygmy Wonders
Pretentious Blathering Of The Inscrutably Loquacious
Alpine Explorer & The Wandering Mountain Goats
Mr. Spooge & The Concentric Triangles
Perhaps my band name should instill fear in those who listen so that they won’t come for reprisals and/or their money back. I like the concept of adding “Of Death” to the ends of things like Stormtroopers Of Death did. It makes it scarier and you know they mean business. Some possible scary band names for my terrible band that would never play include:
Diabolical Deception Of Death
Ambush of The Angry Attackers Of Death
Decapitated Panda Of Death
Exploding Angry & The Head Wounds
Doctrine of Über Violence
We Mean Business Of The Painfully Violent Kind
Free Chainsaw Haircuts
Angry Corpses From Space
Rhino Testicle Removal
Murderous Simian & The Hate Wave
HATE HATE HATE!
RAAAR!!
Destroy Squash Impale!
Or we could always go the truth in advertising route:
We SUCK!
Screaming Mumbles
This Isn’t Even Music
Catastrophic Calamity of The Sound Variety
Vacuous Ballad
Unsongs
Junk Of The Airwaves
Meaningful Failure
For The Deaf Only
Scream If You Can Hear This
Unwilling Audience
Stagefright & The Horribles
Hm, I can’t seem to remember any of the good names that I’ve come up with for my wake-up-as-someone-else-with-musical-talent contingency plan right now and all of those suck, but since I’ll never have a band anyway, I guess it doesn’t matter. Rock on!
Fish Of Gold 