Band Candy

[caddyman]

There was a recent article on (I think) the BBC website and picked up from there, in a number of newspapers -certainly The Times, suggesting that new bands were finding it hard to come up with names after fifty years of pop and rock music. In some cases, obscure, defunct old names were being recycled (Nirvana, anyone?).

I find that hard to believe. Certainly all the easy ones have gone, but surely a band's name is nothing that a little imagination can't sort out? Do we want to listen to the music created by anyone who can't come up with a name for their band, or who can't manage anything better than Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong? I'm not sure I do; if there's no inspiration for the name, or if it's a recycling of someone else's great idea, what does it say about the music?

Personally I'm still waiting for Ten Famous Belgians, who ideally should be a quartet or smaller to trade on the irony.

Comments

[davidt3001.livejournal.com]

Didn't Barclay James Harvest generate their name by writing words on bits of cardboard then randomly pulling them out of a hat?

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Ah well, but I am operating a double standard here, you know.

I wonder where to find out if that's actually true?

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

their biography on their website says that they put names in a hat and chose them that way

http://www.bjharvest.co.uk/bjh-biog.htm

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Frenchify it - L'ecstatic wardrobe delight.

Hmm. Mebbe not. ;-)

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

How about Legally? that's not one syllable that's three so it has a rhythym

[drjohnsilence.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of Roger Ruskin Spear and His Giant Kinetic Wardrobe.

Or something like that. Shirts may have been involved.

[immerwahr.livejournal.com]

The best band name of all time - When People Were Shorter And Lived Near the Water.

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

When I tell people that my occasional blues band is the Sanctified Boogie Trouser Experience, they laugh. It must be because I stole the last half of it from the Bonzos, (the mere mention of whom always summons up a smile for me), and they "dig" the cultural reference. Or perhaps no-one takes me seriously anyway...