Sunday 6 October 2013

What's in a name?

As anyone who ever fantasised in their teens about forming a band knows, one of the most important things to decide on was the name.  For my friends and me, it was the most important, and came way ahead of actually buying an instrument, let alone learning to play one.  Researching names wasn't too difficult in our punky heyday (and I've talked about this once before here ) - simply a matter of looking up suitably grungey words in a Thesaurus as a starting point.  Hence the 14-year-old Arseknickers never actually did learn to play anything, but the name of the band still adorned many a school exercise book.

Now, though, surely the pool of potentially catchy band names must be running a bit dry? We've had colours, regal monikers, numbers, Black this's and White that's, a short-lived phase of changing 'The' to 'Thee', countries, cities, trends for suffixing names with '-beats', '-men', '-girls' and '-cats' etc, cars, animals, weather conditions and foodstuffs, as well as a whole load of combinations of the above.

I suppose all the more obvious, short, sharp names already being allocated has given rise to more unexpected combinations of words; unrelated adjectives, nouns and phrases.  I think you can go to sites which generate these names, although that seems like a cop-out to me. But I guess anything is possible if it has a certain ring to it (and some readers may already know that I'm married to a man who was in a group with a particularly ridiculous name.  Which also includes a colour.)  It's no wonder then that the sentence, "sounds like the name of a band!" is frequently heard in this house when, for whatever reason, some random words get strung together in haste and sound, unwittingly, rather weirdly good.  Ok, not necessarily 'good' but certainly weird.  At SDS Towers, in the last week alone, we've had 'clubfoot chaffinch' and also 'liquid biscuit', both of which were uttered by me in a genuine attempt to describe something real (in the first case it was a deformed bird, and in the second a very tasty Vanilla Chai tea).   I'm rather partial now to taking it one step further and putting those two together to form the (multi-instrumental seven-piece fusion) combo: Liquid Biscuit & the Clubfoot Chaffinches...  Look out for them gigging in a town near you some time soon.  Well, possibly.  They'd probably be shit but I'd love to see their logo.


(It had to be...!)  Half Man Half Biscuit





8 comments:

  1. So Mrs S & I are not alone in playing this little game! "Sounds like the name of a band!" is a cry that often echoes around Swede Towers too. We should start compiling an ongoing list, though sadly Liquid Biscuit & the Clubfoot Chaffinches wouldn't count, as I can clearly remember them doing a session for John Peel in the early 70's!

    Magnificent choice of tuneage by the way.

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    1. I suspected we wouldn't be the only ones! Ooh - sounds like the name of a band, that ;-)
      Oh, dammit about LB & the CCs. I thought the name sounded familiar!

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  2. I agree the phrase 'that would be a great Band name! often is said! What about 'The Band' and 'The Smiths', they went for the most uninteresting names, but they both worked, due to the great music I suppose. How about 'Strictly X Factor' or even worse 'Corrienders'.....street music of course!

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    1. The Band and the Smiths... good point, didn't do them any harm! And now everyone has to consider their google searchability so perhaps that's another reason why they're getting weirder. Your street names may not make it musically but will probably become TV programmes in their own right some day soon, I reckon...

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  3. Liquid Biscuit sounds like grits (a bowl of which I am greedily eating up now)...though, I reckon we have a different idea of what a biscuit is.

    I think indie bands in the 90's were the worst for names...Sebadoh comes to mind...gibberish. For the most part I treat band names like lyrics...a band should have a name and lyrics (that's the rules) but, I try not to pay too much attention to either.

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    1. The Grits! Now there's a garage punk name if ever there was one. I'd also like to hear the Moon Pies :-)
      I agree about the 90s indie bands, especially a lot of those Sub Pop / AmRep outfits. I am guilty of judging a band by its name - and sometimes its lyrics - so I think you've got the right idea to not pay too much attention.

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  4. Now if it was Clubfoot Chaffinch and The Liquid Biscuits I think you'd have a New Orleans Jazz / Blues combo. I've always liked book titles but they inevitably get snaffled up by others before I can form the band/learn to play an instrument - I had The Slaughterhouse Five all ready to go (a four piece of course) but it got stolen ! Anyone want to form The Secret Seven...?

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    1. Oh bugger it! I can't believe I got that the wrong way round!! Yes, of course - Clubfoot Chaffinch has to be the main man. He's probably recorded some solo albums by now.
      That reminds me too of a 'blues name generator' thing I saw once; I think they all included a 'Fat', 'Blind' or 'Catfish'...
      'Slaughterhouse Five' was perfect...! Book titles have so much potential and I'm going to be racking my brains tonight trying to think of more (but will probably end up with books that have been named after bands instead...)

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