Mad Pride

Last night I was having some drinks with some new friends and one of them, who works for a mental health charity mentioned an organisation called Mad Pride.

It sounds like the sort of organisation which could polarise opinion. On one hand there will be those who say it is derogatory towards sufferers of mental health problems and will set back mental health care by years, and on the other hand there will be those who say it empowers those with mental health problems. And on the other, other hand there will be those who say... what a great name for a band!

Actually, the idea is a time-tested one and possibly a logical next step on from gay pride and black pride. In both those cases there are people who took words which were previously used as terms of abuse like 'queer' and 'nigger'and tried to reclaim them, with differing rates of success.

For years we have had mental health professionals saying that we should avoid words like 'mad', 'crazy' or 'mental' (on its own). How do they feel if the very patients with mental health conditions decide to go ahead and call themselves mad? It probably drives them crazy.

I think its safe to say that Mad Pride would not be one of those po-faced bands who all dress in black and look like they are sucking a lemon.

Grief Bacon

Another one from the Meaning of Tingo book, and its another German word - kummerspeck - which is the word to describe "the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating." As opposed to excess weight gained from overeating for any other reason I suppose, but how can you tell? Are Germans able to look at a plump person and tell instantly whether the extra pounds are from emotion-related overeating or just from plain greed-related overeating?

And would it be wrong for a politically-correct, good European to suggest that if Eskimos can have dozens of words for snow, since it dominates their lives and environment, that the Germans should have ultra-specific nuances for obesity? Being a bit of a porker myself I should leave that subject well alone I think!

The word kummerspeck translates literally as grief bacon, and that was what struck me as a great name for a band.

Grief Bacon would be rock rather than dance, folk or pop I think. Guitar-based anyway. For some reason I get a mental impression of them being punky ska revivalists but maybe that is just a subconscious association with the word (and band) Rancid.

(I suppose I could have used a photo of John Prescott instead of Nicholas Soames but that would have been too obvious.)

Drachenfutter

Today I found this fascinating site via this article on the BBC website.

It is all about language, and those words in foreign languages which describe something very specific for which no exact equivalent word exists in English. Schadenfreud is a well-known example - the only way we can describe the feeling pleasure at someone else's misfortune is to either say "the feeling of pleasure at someone else's misfortune" or just appropriate the German word and have done with it.

The website is basically a plug for a book called The Meaning of Tingo by Adam Jacot de Boinod on the same subject. (Only six quid on Amazon. Got to be worth a look!)

One of the words is the German word drachenfutter, which roughly translates to 'dragon-fodder' and describes "the peace offerings made by guilty husbands to their wives." Its a great concept to have a special word for, and a great name for a band.

Dragon-Fodder would be an equally good name, but I think Drachenfutter would be even better, if adopted by an old-fashioned heavy metal band. They just love teutonic-sounding names like Queensryche, and even in otherwise non-Germanic names they can't resist throwing in an umlaut! (Blue Öyster Cult and Motörhead anyone?)

So they would probably end up as Drachenfütter I suppose.

Flying Mobulas

The Mobula Mobular, less formally known as the Devil Fish, is part of the Eagle and Manta Rays family of fish. Manta rays are better known but devil fish have a much cooler common name and official name.

Thanks to Pootergeek I found this page from photographer Michael Albert. Its an interesting story with some brilliant photos. Personally I did not know that rays could jump, let alone jump two metres out of the water. (Gonna need a bigger boat!)

See! The internet is good for more than just porn and gambling, there's educational stuff out there too.

While Devil Fish would undoubtably make a good name for a band, it was the title of this story which grabbed my attention - The flying Mobulas of the Sea of Cortez. What a great name for a band!

The whole title would be a bit unwieldy for all but the most defiantly uncommercial, so The Flying Mobulas would be the name used by a good-time, rowdy rock band with tinges of reggae, latino and arabic influences - a British version of Manu Chao's Radio Bemba Sound System is what I have in mind.

Talk Like A Pirate

A topical choice for a change. Today was the world-famous Talk Like A Pirate Day. To my mind it is at least as valid as Father's Day or Secretary's Day and it is surely only a matter of time before Hallmark start producing Happy 'talk like a pirate day' cards.

Someone at work came across this a couple of years ago and we try to mark the event by at least throwing a few Aaaaarr's around when we get in the office.

There is now quite a thriving pirate sub-culture on the Internet, which started well before the Pirates of the Caribbean film. Just look at the links listed on the Talk Like A Pirate website for a start.

Apparently my pirate name is Filthy Bryant Dagger and if you go to this site you can translate any website you like into pirate-speak, to six different degrees of piracy.

The very word 'pirate' conjures up some strong connections for music. First of all there are the original pirate radio stations like Radio London and Radio Caroline, and the later land-based pirate stations which even now blast out tunes from the tops of tower blocks in inner cities, then there is the whole music piracy ethic which started with making bootleg copies on a C90, and evolved through CD-burners to the whole Napster thing and other peer-to-peer programs. And no study of the music/pirate clash would be complete without considering Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (Shakin' All Over!) or Adam and the Ants and their pirate-chic stage outfits. For all these reasons its a great name for a band!

So Talk Like A Pirate would be, I reckon, an urban band, one of those grimy UK Garage sort of bands which has a symbiotic relationship with their local pirate station. And they would be one of the few bands to have a whole day named after them (assuming that someone has used at least one of these names:- Good Friday, Mother's Day, Halloween, etc.)

Extraordinary Rendition

The American fondness for military euphemisms is well-known, indeed some of their best ones have become commonplace in the UK too: 'collateral damage' to describe civilian deaths is now common currency in the British media.

Other examples are 'wet work' for assassinations, 'pre-emptive war' for invasion, and 'potential future terrorists' for children.

The latest one to reach our attention is extraordinary rendition which is where someone is forcibly abducted and transferred to another country. Its like an unofficial extradition, but usually to places no country would sensibly extradite anyone - places where torture is routine.

Its a big story at the moment as it looks possible (likely?) that the CIA have been either kidnapping people in Britain or transporting them via Britain and using British airports as staging posts on the way to who-knows-where.

"Extraordinary" I can understand, but "rendition" is a bit obscure for most of us. Although the definition in legal terms is the "extradition of a fugitive who has fled to another state", most non-lawyers will immediately think of the more conventional definition of an artistic performance - which is why it is such a great name for a band.

The phrase has musical connotations to most ears, but has a hidden, more sinister meaning. As such Extraordinary Rendition would be best for a politically-aware, anti-globalisation, anti-military, anti-US sort of band with a sound like Rage Against The Machine.

But it would be more likely to be wasted on a band with an extravagant stage show (like early Genesis, late-70's Tubes, Lemon Jelly and so on) or who do an unlikely mix of styles (like the Balanescu Quartet performing Kraftwerk songs or the dub reggae version of Dark Side Of The Moon - yes it does exist!)

Heritage Colours

The magazine part of today's Guardian had a large feature on heritage colours, which not only sounds like a great name for a band, but a fine way to make a significant profit from pretentious types with more money than sense.

Apparently heritage colours, period palette as the BBC would say, are a big deal with people who care deeply about interior design - like Guardian readers. Most of us just want something to not clash too much with the furniture, but those who were obsessed with stripped pine in the 80s and stencils in the 90s have now moved on to heritage colours

It seems we have been, for the last 50 years, using newly invented colours which didn't exist before, and shunning the previously popular colours. From a scientific point of view that is nonsense of course, but it is what the paint manufacturers seem to imply.

Heritage colours is a euphemism for 'more expensive paint'.

I don't know what my ancestors in Victorian, Edwardian, or Georgian times did or where they lived, but I suspect they were not landed gentry. Their houses were probably decorated with whatever they could lay their hands on. I don't think a house decorated in the style of my own heritage would be very pleasant.

But then, looking at the different ranges of 'heritage' colours, they don't look very pleasant either. Mostly they are very dull.

Having said that Heritage Colours would be a reggae band with a roots influence. They would be class-aware and take great pleasure in subverting such a pretentious, middle-class concept as a label for their songs about gritty reality. The racial implications would not be lost on them either.

Links

I have put some links in the sidebar, but be warned - if you follow them you could end up losing a few hours of your life because some of them are addictive!

I started with a couple of band name generators I had come across ages ago, and a couple of more general music-related sites. Then I did a Google search and found that there are dozens of band name web sites, including one called greatnameforaband.com - oops.

All of these sites have many, many more names than you can find here, but thats not what this blog is about. I am just noting a great-sounding name when I come across one rather than trying to invent names.

Worth noting is this article from the Guardian back in March 2005 about band names, which links in turn to another article from February's Guardian.

Also worth noting is the Blogthings band name generator. It will generate a name for you at random and give you the code to put your imaginary band name on your own site - like I did with The Sacred Goldfish in the sidebar. The Blogthings site has similar tools to generate your Irish name, what your underwear says about you, your hidden talent, and loads more.

Finally, a plug for Julian's Rock Lists. Way back in 1995 or something like that I shared a Crawley-based ISP with Julian. I had set up a web site for a band and he was very helpful in supplying an article I half-remembered from an ancient back-issue of Q magazine to put in it. His site collects all those charts, best-of lists, festive 50s and other stuff from a whole range of current and defunct magazines.

Interlude: what a great name for an album

Sometimes I hear something which is a great phrase, but wouldn't really be suitable for a band name. In some cases I think they would sound really good as the title of an album.

Here is a small collection of them:

Don't Tell Him Pike

The most famous line from any episode of Dad's Army, and a strong candidate for funniest line in any sit-com ever. Good album name for a quintessentially English band. British Sea Power, Thousand Yard Stare, Squeeze, somone like that.

Windfarmyard

Actually I didn't come across this phrase. I saw a picture of a wind turbine and it just popped into my head, along with 'Windfarmer Giles'. Maybe suitable for a Radiohead album.

Vintage Bintage

Heard on Radio 1 on (of course) the Chris Moyles show. They had a phone call from an 'older woman' and referred to her as 'old tottie' and 'vintage bintage'. It might scrape through as a band name, but maybe better as an album. By Goldie Looking Chain. Or as a title for a Best of Sailor CD.
(By the way, the woman was only 37. As a 43-year old I don't consider that 'vintage'!)

Here Comes The Science

From those naff shampoo adverts with Jennifer Aniston. Ideal name for a Coldplay album.

Intelligent Design

This is the new name which creationists have for creationism, so that people don't realise that it is creationism which fundamentalists want to teach instead of Darwinian evolution in American schools. At the very lest they want it presented as one of several theories, given equal weight.
Whoever came up with the idea didn't realise that they were also coming up with a decent name for a Manic Steet Preachers album.

Monkeybomb

I took this photo today in a tunnel under Waterloo station - I think its a Banksy. When I uploaded it to Flickr I gave it the obvious name of Monkeybomb, and then I realised it was actually a great name for a band.

All around the Waterloo area and along the Southbank from Westminster Bridge to Gabriels Wharf there are trails of white paint on the ground. I often go for walks around there with colleagues at work and we often find ourselves following the route of one of these trails by chance: some of them go on for a really long distance, too long to be anything but deliberate. Its always an anticlimax when it just fizzles out, and I have always secretly hoped there would be something like this at the end as a little joke.

It occurs to me that 'Monkeybomb' is not a good name for the photo. Its a banana bomb or a monkey bomber, but I think I'll stick with it.

Monkeybomb sounds like its one of those hard house acts who have one massive dance anthem hit and are never heard of again.

Interlude - real great names

A few bands who already found great names, even if they didn't necessarily find huge success.

The One-Unders

A 'one-under' is tube-workers' slang for when a passenger falls or jumps off a platform in front of a train. When I worked for London Underground some of the workers on the Piccadilly line formed a band and called themselves The One-Unders.

Daddy Those Men Scare Me

Another colleague on the tube was in a band with this fantastic name. They even had a fantastic nickname - the Daddies. They are still going, have a website and have some MP3s available there. I recommend that anyone who has teenagers at home listen to their song 'Teenagers'.

Never The Bride

I first saw Never The Bride back in the early 90s in Tufnell Park when some Kiwi friends introduced me to The Church one Sunday. When we went in the club the band were playing and I thought they were OK - competent and hard-working. They were one of those bands who seemed to always be playing somewhere. They must have been doing 150 to 200 gigs a year. I was amazed to find today, via Google, that they are still going. Great name though.

The Unflushables

A 3-piece punk band from Cleveland. (An mp3 is available here). The name popped into my head when I paid a recent visit to the toilet at work and found it had previously been visited by someone who must have left a few kilos lighter. Unsurprisingly the name had already been snapped up.

Four-Man Trio

I saw this lot supporting Spizzenergi. They were OK, but I loved their name. Don't know if they are still around - they used to have a site called www.fourmantrio.co.uk but its dead now.

A little searching on the internet revels an American band of the same name who sing songs of the 50's, and New Jersey bar band with the same name, and probably a few more - "four man trio" gives 1,260 hits on Google.

The Screaming Ab-Dabs

I saw this band in about 1979 or 1980 playing in the old 'Top Alex' pub in Southend, and again at an open air rock festival in Basildon for local bands. They did straightforward blues/R&B and the female singer who we all just knew as 'Alf' really belted those standards like 'Mojo Working' out, although they had a few songs of their own. A few years later she turned up as half of Yazoo, then turned solo.

I wonder if they knew that Roger Waters and Nick Mason had a band of the same name before they became Pink Floyd?

Tongue Louse

There can be few phrases more likely to induce a gagging reflex than "a tongue-eating parasite found inside a fish dish..." According to this story from the BBC someone was preparing a red snapper for dinner and found something strange in its mouth.

It turned out to be less harmful than it looked, but lets face it, it would be difficult for anything to actually be as harmful as that thing looks!

Here comes the science...

This site explains that the beastie in question is called Cymothoa exigua. A bit of a mouthful - 'tongue louse' is a much better name for a band - but then the animal itself is a bit of a mouthful for unfortunate fish.

What the thing does is this: it 'causes degeneration' of the fish's tongue, then it attaches itself to the stub and pretends to be the fish's tongue. A gruesome prospect for the poor old fish, but it is the only known example of a parasite which eats part of its host then acts as a replacement for the eaten part.

The good news is that it has only been found in the Gulf of California. And now Lewisham. There is no suggestion that it eats the tongues of humans - just the red snappers where it comes from.

No jazz-funk, or smooth soul band is ever likely to snap up the name, so Tongue Louse will be something a bit more earthy; someone looking for a slightly disreputable and disgusting name in the way that Rancid or Corrosion of Deformity have. It might be fitting for a death metal band, as they all sing as if suffering from tongue lice themselves.

(Thanks to Councillor Andrew Brown of Lewisham for bringing this to wider attention)

Crepuscular Rays

This little project seems to keep coming back to nautical and meteorological subjects. This does not reflect any particular obsession of mine, I just keep coming across things which catch my eye. In this case it was the above photo on the Londonrubbish photoblog.

A totally breathtaking image in my opinion. It got picked up by a UK weather blog and then someone commented on it, providing the correct mereorological term which was Crepuscular Rays and is nearly as great a name for a band as Mammatus Clouds.

Here comes the science... its all to do with scattering and perspective.

The ever-useful Penn State site has an explanation of the phenomenon, with diagrams, another neat photo, and some alternative names for it - Buddha's Fingers, Sun drawing water and Ropes of Maui. The first and last of those names would make great names for bands too, but I will stick with the one I first encountered.

At a pinch Crepuscular Ray could be a pseudonym for a solo artist or member of a band, but I think it would be a slightly arty band, possibly from the North-West, and maybe involving Julian Cope as a collaborator. If nobody else snapped the names up they would release a debut album called 'Ropes of Maui' and follow it up with an album called 'Buddha's Fingers'. They could do worse than using Londonrubbish's photo for the cover artwork.

ChiCarCo

Chicarco is the name of a car dealership on the Chichester by-pass, West Sussex. (Chichester Car Company.)

I know its a really contrived name for the company, but I quite like contrived names. Whenever I see bizarre names in SF books I automatically, almost subconsciously, do a mental check to see if its something more normal speleld backwards. This probably dates all the way back to seeing the film Dracula AD 1972 as a child. There was a main character called Johnny Alucard. Fairly late in the film someone realises that it is Dracula backwards.

Anyway, a great name for a band is what I thought when we passed the establishment today.

I am pretty certain that a band using the name would actually style themselves ChiCarCo (and fans would shorten it to CCC) although they would still get confused with Chicago the city, the musical and the band who did "If You Leave Me Now". Bands who play with their name, incorporating unusual punctuation or capitalisation are often, though not always, dance-related. I think ChiCarCo would be dance-related. Not like Chemical Brothers or Orbital, but more like D:ream, and they would be a real band - not a studio-based DJ with a session singer to add vocals to his (and its always a bloke!) music.

Dittybox

According to the online free dictionary a ditty-box is a small box to hold a sailor's thread, needless, comb, etc.

I came across it as a single word, while looking round a naval museum in Portsmouth, where it appeared as the title of a Royal Navy magazine, a sort of internal publication for sailors, and thought it would be a great name for a band.

Any type of band could work under the name Dittybox. Although it has a meaning it is totally obscure to just about anyone who has not been to sea. I would like to see an indie band called Dittybox but then I like to see indie bands anyway.

Adversane

Adversane is a small village near Horsham. If you are driving from Horsham to Chichester along the A29 you will see it. Unless you blink.

The word appears to mean nothing, but hints at advertising and sanity, with maybe a slight unfortunate nod towards Peter Andre's "Insania". When I saw the "welcome to.." sign I just thought... what a great name for a band.

There are a few single-name bands around at the moment, like Razorlight, Kasabian, Coldplay and Adversane might be good for another band with ambitions towards mainstream success.

Geordio Galactico

The newspapers today were still full of Michael Owen signing to Newcastle United for £16.5 million. In the Guardian there was an article which said that he already has a nickname amongst the St James Park faithful of Geordio Galactico and for the first time in ages I thought to myself... what a great name for a band.

Or maybe not. Its pretty naff as a band name, but it has such a great ring to it that it would be a shame not to be used, so maybe a naff band should use it, some updated version of Black Lace maybe.

At a pinch it might also be a pseudonym for a Newcastle-based equivalent of Fatboy Slim.