Woke up. Felt slightly ill. Stood up, felt excruciatingly ill. Tried to go downstairs, turned right back around. I’m spending my day sleeping away the sickness that I have been teetering on the brink of for the past three days. Surely this is the pinnacle, and tomorrow will be a much better, healthier day. Or, so I hope. Then I received a call from the folks at Volvo telling me that my right tire messed up, I have a broken motor component, and an oil leak. Welp, there goes this week’s paycheck!
I got some PR-stunt e-mail from a band called “The Good, The Bad, and the Queen” today, which is the absolute shittiest band name I’ve heard in a long, long time. It made me want to write a heartfelt response about why they have the shittiest band name ever, but my head was throbbing and I couldn’t breathe too well, so I decided to go back to sleep. Now I’ve collected myself, taken some medicine, and can sit down and write a “HOW TO” for naming bands.
So you wanna be in a band…well, TOO BAD! Everyone else already is, and odds are you’re no better than them. Fine, don’t listen to me. Start a band. You’re right, no one else is doing it. You’ve got a real shot at success. Just remember, at some point, you’re going to have to name your group. Don’t make any of these mistakes:
– No Punctuation Marks (!) (?) or (¿) – It’s stupid and pretentious. Band names aren’t meant to be complete sentences, phrases or thoughts. That band !!! (chkchkchk)–aside from being a bunch of annoying, pretentious twats (go read an interview of theirs)–devoted no thought whatsoever to a proper name, choosing instead to do something intentionally kitschy that would attract the attention of indie scum. “The Go! Team,” “…And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead,” “Panic! At the Disco,” and “Godspeed You! Black Emperor,” are also awful names, the latter of which draws more ire because of their penchant for changing the placement of their exclamation point between albums.
– No Simpsons or Back To The Future references – By extension, this should be “no cultural references whatsoever.” We get it. Movies and TV shows can be beautiful, funny or awful. There’s nothing unique about paying homage (which is a nice way of “lifting” an idea). If you want your band name to be witty, make up your own witticism. For example, instead of Fall Out Boy (which is a terrible name), make up your own fake character or pun and use that for a name! Don’t steal one from “The Simpsons”. If you’re going to do something stupid like call your band McFly, or 88 MPH, use an original name or measurement of velocity, like 16 Horsepower or 1 Speed Bike.
– No “the” _______ (insert [plural] noun) – Nothing shows a more complete lack of originality than this. You could string a series of words together and come up with something more memorable than “The Knife”. Why not write down a handful of unrelated words, throw ’em in a hat, and select two or three at random? There’s no need for one thousand band names that sound the same. The Shins / The Stills / The Kills / The Killers / The Swills / The Stilts / The Slits / The Swells / The Strokes / The Streets / The Delgados / The Diableros / The Futureheads / The Russian Futurists / The Longcuts / The Long Winters. I don’t care if you take a noun and pluralize it, but does putting a “The” in front of it really make a difference?
Good band names don’t need a back-story, be remarkably long or short, and they don’t have to reference other works of art. They don’t even have to be wholly inventive. They just have to be unique. Climbing aboard a fashionable trend like punctuation marks and complete sentences isn’t unique, nor is attaching an otherwise blase word preceded to the article “The”.
There. Now you can go and start your stupid band. Good luck.
