So I figured, I would make some of the work of starting a band easy for all of you amateur air guitar dreamers out there. We all know that every good rock band doesn't actually start wtih music, it starts with a kick ass band name. And the hardest part of starting a band is always getting the name right.
Think of all the lame band names that are out there:
- Savage Garden
- Phish
- Nickleback
- Hoobastank
- Tony Orlando and Dawn
And then think of all the awesome band names that exist:
- Death
- Gay Marriage
- Master Musicians of Bukkake
- Jackie-O-Motherfucker
- Styx
- The Archies
Of course, this always begs the question, what makes a good band name versus a bad band name?
I have often found myself in this predicament, scratching my head as I tried to come up with the right name for various aborted musical projects.
The Burnt Selena Project, the monicker under which this blog falls, was originally a noise project, and it was a name that stuck. Then there was the Anomia Orchestra, a fifteen piece one off performance piece I put together before leaving Ashland; Ich Bin Ein Cobrrra, the failed German Techno outfit with lyrics about butterflies and Liberace; The Public Decency League, the all keyboard pop group; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Try and Step on Her was the most successful of bands in which I was involved and that was a name clipped from a line from a Yukio Mishima novel, something completely out of context--We could have been Loco if we had kept thumbing through the dictionary.
These were names cut on the fly. Of other projects I was involved, one was called "Bully Culture." This was a name I hated from the get go. Why? Because it was dumb. Luckily my amp and keyboard blew up simultaneously and I never had to play with the people ever again.
Now to return to the most practical advice I can give to people…
Naming a metal band is perhaps the most easy thing to do. I have even set up a little diagram to show you how to successfully do it:
For successful naming, one requires equal portions of a15-year-old boy's inability to understand a concept and the simultaneous ability to make his mother cringe. The same can work for punk bands. Day-glo Abortions is a fine example of such a naming convention working to full effect.
In fact, if you look at the above list of successful band names, all of them confound the minds of teenage boys but still run shivers down the spines of their doting mothers.
That is why I have only one name that would choose if I were to form a metal band.
Cold Speculum ©
The mere mention of the word makes women, mothers, sisters, nuns, grandmas, even labor and delivery nurses cringe in fear. And 15-year old boys simply think, "Wow, that sounds soooooo cool."
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