Any Help On A Band Name?

mark · January 2005

hey.........im in a new band and can't think of a decent name. we are quite mellow and melodic. any names anyone can think of?

james of beswick · January 2005

my freinds band are called gods dice (binural)
another great band radiohead took their name from
a talking heads song
maybe you could try this method

skinnylegs · January 2005

How about Cat Butt?

upina2001 · January 2005

Like Fine Wine

Arabesque · January 2005

Outplay. It means "to play better than" and it just sounds good.

mark · January 2005

Arabesque wrote:

Outplay. It means "to play better than" and it just sounds good.

yeah thats quite cool
cheers

Pearl_Jam_Necklace · January 2005

mark wrote:

yeah thats quite cool
cheers

i like outplay.cool name.

marking our territory is good one too.

MccreadySeason · January 2005

Dilapidated

Words never listen · January 2005

What about
Tina in oil

or
Alice
or
Teak and the Andrew Sisters

Brain of JFK

turtled neck

fanofthemans · January 2005

i like lost in the mist, or hope for hummanity

schuhljam · January 2005

How about 'Pulse'?

blacknapkins · January 2005

I came across this today and it reminded me of this thread ...

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/01/26/DDGEGATV1E21.DTL

Got the perfect name for a band? It's probably destined for failure.
- Peter Hartlaub
Wednesday, January 26, 2005

You're probably not capable of playing a musical instrument, if you've picked one up at all. You certainly can't carry a tune, as was proven during that toneless office party rendition of "Sexual Healing." There's a chance you don't even have enough friends to form a musical group.

But everyone, it seems, knows exactly what they would name their band.

It's a natural reaction, in part because the names of most mainstream bands are totally lame. While few of us will ever play an instrument or sing better than the members of U2 or Pearl Jam, anyone with a pulse could think up a better name for either group.

The number of successful bands with great names is surprisingly small, and mostly stacked in the punk rock genre. The Dead Kennedys and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes both look great spelled out on an album cover, and the turntable-heavy Handsome Boy Modeling School has a nice cadence as well. But looking at the Billboard Top 100 albums, it seems like this nation is in a severe creative recession, with no recovery in sight.

Among the most popular musical groups are the spelling-challenged (Linkin Park; Ludacris), the painfully unimaginative (Usher; Creed) and various combinations of the two (Lil' Jon & the Eastside Boyz). There are also inside jokes that everyone forgot a decade ago (Green Day) and metaphysical nonsense that will make your head hurt even before you listen to the music (Destiny's Child). Good Charlotte? Bad name.

Finding out the origins of a band's name doesn't always mitigate the poor word choices. Coldplay reportedly got its name when another band didn't want it any more, while Incubus, the Pixies and the Grateful Dead sought out dictionaries for creative inspiration. And doesn't AC/DC rock a little less when you find out members got their name from the back of a sewing machine?

As a general rule, it seems the less commercially successful the band, the better the name -- which is proven by inspecting the lineup at the San Francisco nightclub Bottom of the Hill on any given week. While the third groups on the bill always have excellent names -- Nuke Infusion, Kill the Messenger and El Capitan are a few recent examples -- the featured acts are almost universally weak.

In that way, giving your band a creative name is a surefire harbinger of doom (which is, incidentally, a great name for a band). From the moment members of ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and the Brian Jonestown Massacre chose their inspired and memorable names, they were guaranteed to never headline a venue larger than the Warfield. It was similarly over before it started for John Cougar Concentration Camp, a punk rock band that was musically halfway decent, and can now be found only in the nether regions of the Amoeba Music clearance bins.

Thousands of even better names, tragically, may never surface -- even on a handbill for Hotel Utah or 12 Galaxies.

For every real band trying to rise through the ranks from house parties to small clubs to discovery by a major label, there are thousands of imaginary ones -- eternally stuck in the early planning stages of the unmotivated masses. It's human nature to dream about a musical act that will never be -- coming from the same part of the brain that fantasizes about romantic partners who are out of your league and imagines hero scenarios where you save Robin Williams from getting hit by a falling piano.

While I've picked up my guitar less than 10 times since college, I've become a sort of Dave Grohl of imaginary musicians, with enough names for a main band, several side projects and the supergroup I plan to form years from now with Dan the Automator and members of Journey.

My current Top 5 band names, in descending order of coolness:

5. Cabana Boy

4. Gondor Calls for Aid ... And Rohan Will Answer!

3. M.C. Gordon Getty and the New Kennedys

2. Bastards!

1. Surefire Harbinger of Doom

Lest you think you're the only one with a great name for a band, ask the people in the cubicles around you. The chances are they know exactly what they would name their band, and it's better than anything in the Top 40. Just among my colleagues who sit within 10 feet, future plans exist for Medulla Oblongata, Samoan Quinceañera, the Erectile Dysfunctions and a group called Breakfast, which I'm told will play only acoustic covers of songs from the Wu-Tang Clan.

Of course, it's more than likely that these bands will never play a single note. But in their own way, they've already achieved a greatness that members of Pink Floyd, the Who and the Beatles can only dream about.

E-mail Peter Hartlaub at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com.

Merkyjamm · January 2005

That's a classic!

I'd say Rugburn, or Dioxsyis.

johnnie5 · January 2005

"Hot Dog Combo"

I was at the movies and we were talking about band names and I was ordering popcorn when I saw the different combos they had..."Hot Dog
Combo" Sounds great doesn't it?

movedbymusic78 · January 2005

How about Cadence

Porch · January 2005

The Dissident Angels

tenn_blue · January 2005

Sleight of Hand or Undone

red_misquito · January 2005

Grievance
All The Rivals

Jeremy1012 · February 2005

Riot Act. but its mine. you cant have it.

FinsburyParkCarrots · February 2005

MJ12........

JesterTGame · February 2005

how about .......................................................................................
NATURAL SELECTION
im doing a level animal care and it means that animals survive only by adapting to their environment or in a bands case the times of the music. just a though

or maybe "theory of evolution" maybe good.

ooooh anthropomorphism is a good one

packrat_teddy · February 2005

Insertion Loss
or
Avalanche Breakdown

lostprophet · February 2005

Johnny Foreskin and the Pullbacks

saveuplife · February 2005

Yolk of the Eggplant

or

Dyonysis (spelling? the god of wine)

dancer122690 · February 2005

i think you should name your band the ipods or you could name yourself the sophies

red_misquito · February 2005

dancer122690 wrote:

i think you should name your band the ipods or you could name yourself the sophies

the ipods???????

Retro Bacon! · February 2005

u could always go to google and search for band name generators and they usually turn out pretty funny

mine would be retro bacon - but its my name and no one can take it