This
week's question: What would you name your imaginary band?
Tasha
Robinson
I
asked this question because I've had a long-running joke with a friend that
when we finally form a band, it'll be called Pinwheeling Varmint Heads, largely because we like
the sound of the words. The original idea came from a long-ago conversation
where he told me about how his father had a friend with a farm, and a
prairie-dog infestation that periodically required culling. So the friend's dad
and his buddies used to go out to the farm and shoot prairie dogs with a 5.56mm
rifle—a ridiculously large-bore weapon for hunting small game. They'd
wait for the prairie dogs to come up out of the holes, then blast them,
sometimes eradicating their bodies entirely and leaving nothing but heads
pinwheeling off from the blast. I'm not a hunter and I have a girly
sentimentality about all things small, big-eyed, and fuzzy, so this strikes me
as a terrible story, but I still like the phrase, particularly for an
unreconstructed old-school punk band.
Josh Modell
Okay,
I'm going to get our Rock Band band name out there before anybody else does. It was actually
inspired by a piece of mail received at the Chicago HQ that was intended for The
Onion's
comedy staff. It was a bunch of headlines, written in crayon if I remember
correctly; many were porn-based. One was something like "Jenna Jameson
injured in three-cock pileup on the Hershey highway." Needless to say,
this would not pass the initial Onion test of being anywhere near funny, but it works as an awesome
band name if your band has three dudes and one lady in it. Our videogame
four-piece, featuring me, Koski, Kyle, and Dave Wolinsky, is called Gena And
The Three-Cock Pileup.
(Gena, it should be noted, is short for Genevieve,
and is pronounced "Jenna.") But it isn't my favorite fake-band-I-was-fake-in
name in history—that's a tie. One was inspired by the credits to the
movie Broken Arrow,
about a rogue stealth-bomber pilot played by John Travolta. That band was
called simply Mr. Travolta's Hair, and that group even had a song ("No Turn On
Red") that was re-improvised every time the name came up. The other
excellent fake band name was, I believe, the brainchild of my friend James
Minor, who is now in a band called Blacklist.
When "queercore" was briefly popular, we wanted to join the fray with
a band called Pole Position.
David
Wolinsky
Although
I'm partial to Gena And The Three-Cock Pileup, there was one after-hours Rock
Band jam
session that yielded a strong contender for an alternate name: Dr. Strap-On. Its origins have been
lost to the sands of time, but it's pretty self-explanatory anyway. That said,
I've been in a number of real bands so tragically named, they should've been
fake. But, alas, they weren't. I make no excuses for The Poptologists (a high-school group
envisioned as less a band than a nebulous network of people who aimlessly
jammed on a fancified digital 8-track), Kermit The Frog & The
Wife-Beaters (an
acoustic duo playing laid-back versions of metal songs before the days of
Tenacious D), or Exis (a band, I, admittedly, remember very little about). In the
galaxy of fake band names, perhaps none can top the very-real trio Robo-Dream-Date—an obnoxious band
with an intentionally horrible name and an involved, ridiculous backstory
involving robots and rock music, uncomfortable sweaters, and no bass player.
(Jim Derogatis called our high-concept demo "lo-fi art-rock that doesn't
stink." High praise indeed.) Of course, that pales in comparison to a fictional
band R-D-D made up to engage in a made-up rivalry against: The Fabulous
Pimps. We
even went so far as to record a real demo for the fake band (Anal Cunt was an
influence), which we circulated among our fans. Then there was a bizarre
basement band called The Rusted Cocks (again, Anal Cunt was an influence) and the hip-hop duo based
on the lives of Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin called Abe & Ben—but the point is,
probably, none of these band names should have existed in the first place.
Jason Heller
I'd
volunteer my own imaginary band, Jefferson Slaveship (yeah, boo, hiss, I
know)—but it actually and kind of accidentally wound up being a
"real" band that played two shows. Imagine Neurosis force-fucked
through a truck-stop toilet, and that was us. The band broke up after I bought
a brand-new bass the day of a show, used it that night, and snapped the thing
in half onstage during our last song. New bass: $300. What I got paid that
night: $7. The sour looks I got when I uttered the phrase "Jefferson Slaveship"
to my friends: priceless.
Sean O'Neal
Some
of the more enterprising commenters here have already rooted through my trash
and come up with the crumpled remains of my real-life musical history, so I'll
leave it to you and the power of MySpace to cast apersions on my actual band-naming
abilities—though trust me when I say nothing you'll find will ever be as
lame as the punk group I briefly drummed for in high school, Attack Of The
Magic Pants.
Also, I'm still holding Surprise! You're An Orphan (which I stole from my
buddies in Zykos and refuse to give back) in reserve, just in case I ever
decide to get back into the loser-local-act thing. So that just leaves the pet
band name I've suggested each and every time I've gotten a group together, which
has nevertheless always been shouted down: The Judith Light. I first coined it during
my very, very brief Elephant 6 phase, and (à la The B-Sharps) it became one of
those names that sounds witty at first but becomes less funny each time you hear it, particularly
when it's coming from me refusing to let it drop on the other side of the
practice room. I'm not sure what, exactly, The Judith Light would sound like,
but in tribute to its namesake, I've often described it as "music shot in
soft focus." And now that I've become aware of The
Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, I'm really, really tempted to put
it together just for the sake of a double bill.
Kyle
Ryan
Wow,
where to begin? I've been making up band names since I got into music. I think
my first was Sammy Jones & The Screaming Bohican Stomachs, sometime in elementary
school. I knew no one named Sammy Jones, and I'm not sure what
"Bohican" was, other than the probable mangling of
"Mohican" and "Bohemian." I didn't improve with age—I
was actually in a "band" called 12
Inch Breath Mint in
high school. In college, I had a list of all my
imaginary "side projects," which included Number Two Pencil (pop punk), OBITUFUCK (grindcore), The
Drunken Fratboys (hardcore), and a bunch of
others I can't remember. A couple years back I thought of a name for a hardcore
band composed of gamers: First Person Shooter. I'm between bands right
now, dudes—who wants to jam?
Nathan Rabin
I
haven't given the matter of what I'd name my fake band name much thought, but I
suppose I'd give it the same name as my fake child: 2Pac Biggie Pun Eazy
E-Dilla-C Winthrop Montgomery III. That way both my fake band and fake future
offspring would have a name that pays reverent homage to just about every dead
hip-hop great and also sounds like the snobby WASP bad guy in one of those '80s
breaksploitation movies where a motley band of pop-and-lockers put on a big
show to save the rec center from a tycoon intent on tearing it down so he can
replace it with high-end condos.
Noel Murray
For
about a week in junior high, I was in a band that my friend called Novo Manus, which he claimed was
Latin for "revolutionary band." (Turns out his Latin was a little
off, as were his descriptive powers… unless there's something
"revolutionary" about playing an instrumental cover of Bob Seger's
"Mainstreet" for 10 minutes.) After I quit Novo Manus, I joined up
with another friend for a band we were going to call The Eclectic Electric
Blues Syndicate,
and though we never actually made any music together, we designed some cool
logos for "TEEBS." Since then, my fake band names have been consigned
to fiction: I once wrote a short story about hanging out at rock clubs that
featured two made-up bands: A Perfect Day For Bananfish (stolen from J.D.
Salinger) and The Featured Comedians. I still think The Featured Comedians would be an
awesome band name. Our fans could call us "The Comedians" for short.
Or "The FC."
Scott
Gordon
Jessica
Steinhoff (our editorial assistant in Madison) and I got a recent one from an episode
of Heroes: Tae Kwon Do Sleepover. There's a scene where a kid's mom just mentions in passing
that he's at some "tae kwon do sleepover," like that's just something
all moms know about. What the fuck? But it sounds fun anyway.
Emily Withrow
I've
had a slew of fake band names over the years (junior high, for example: Beltloops
For Sweatpants),
but none of them comes close to rivaling the fantasy that was Sonny Doesn't
Even Need A Rod,
the flamenco punk sensation (oi-lé!) my friend Susan Howson and I dreamt up in
college. The name came from a story told by some guy Susan had a crush on, a
long-haired skinny dude who got a fish caught in his shorts while
boogie-boarding. The conveniently nearby fishermen saw him struggling to get it
out and said, "Sonny doesn't even need a rod!" We went to a women's
college, so instead of going to frat parties and getting drunk like normal
co-eds, we threw all of our time and energy into SDENAR. We had not only a band
name, but also performer names (Sex Cymbal, Pepto Dismal, and Anna Babe, among others); a
functional fan site complete with band member bios, staged photos of us
performing (taken with borrowed instruments while some sorry college band was
taking a set break), letters from fans, and a tour diary; and business cards
from our label, We're So Not Punk, But Hey, We're Single! Records. I know, I can't believe
we were single either.
Next week: No AVQ&A;,
because we'll all be off for Thanksgiving break. The week after that, we
finally start answering some of the reader questions you've been sending in via
the e-mail address in the intro. Keep 'em coming!