About a year and a half ago, one of my friends from college decided he was going to drop out of his Ph.D program at Columbia and start a band. Thus began a fairly insufferable period of friendship during which everything he encountered was a potential band name. We were at his parents’ house for a mutual friend’s wedding and his mom said something about packing up a porcelain horse carefully: “Porcelain Horse!!” he blurted. “That’s an awesome name for a band.” I believe another name possibility was “Rocket Ship” (??) and yet another was “Jungle Mode” (“The best band names are the stupid ones, Amanda. Like Radiohead.” Oh, kay.)
Perhaps it’s because I’ve had this evening marked in my Entourage calendar as LOST COMES BACK for the past 9 months, or perhaps for another reason, but this Flavorpill listing for a band called Previously on Lost caught my eye. They have a fairly prestigious quote sheet,
“Great job y’all, its a good treble vocal sound on that, and there’s a
lot of depth to that production!” – Michael Emerson of LOST“It was like seeing the Beatles for the first time!” – A nice lady at the Kennedy Center
“The songs are hilarious and cool, somewhat like a frantic mash of
Frank Zappa and Flaming Lips with a dose of old Disney musicals for
good measure.” – Wired.com
…and 1566 friends, including John Locke, Matthew Fox, and Tom. The song (the single?) “The Island Won’t Let You Die” has 22,701 plays. Fair enough, Previously on Lost. Fair enough.
Another band name that caught my attention recently was Trampled by Turtles; no reason, really, it’s just appealing to me. Of course there’s a special place in my heart for Alarm Will Sound; any ensemble I’m forced to think about every time I exit the subway did a darn good job picking a name.
What’s the point of band and ensemble names? We rarely know what they mean, or where they came from, so what is the artistic effect or marketing purpose? Hard-hitting investigative reporter that I am, I put my iPod on shuffle, and here were the first five band names that popped up:
Supergrass
Gorillaz
(Hair original Broadway cast recording…what a nerd)
The Jealous Girlfriends
Yo La Tengo
(Kathleen Edwards)
White Rabbits
I like all those bands, but out of the five, I only know where Yo La Tengo’s name comes from (c.f. Wikipedia).
Is the point of a name to get your attention or to keep your attention? That is, should a name be eye-catching or memorable? Must the name be clever – Alarm Will Sound – or can it simply invoke something that the group hopes to achieve musically – The Emerson String Quartet, for example? Should there be a eureka moment involved that makes for interview material – “My mom was packing up a porcelain horse…” – or can it be as simple as “we just thought the name fit”? How necessary is accurate advertising? Previously on Lost is…exactly what you think it is. Supergrass? Perhaps less so.
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but am interested in a discussion: how important have names been in the success or failure of classical ensembles (and bands, for that matter) in the past, and are names increasingly or decreasingly effective as the music industry changes?
By “past,” I guess we’re really only talking about the last 30 years, or maybe 40 re classical groups. Maybe others can think of earlier examples, but Tashi comes to my mind as the first group to give itself an unconventional name, the first in a wave of groups beginning to try to break free of the boring tradition of “such-and-such String Quartet” etc. and to emulate the monikers of rock bands or fusion bands of the era.
Most of these groups were focused on new music but Tashi was unique in playing both older and newer repertoire, unlike Kronos Quartet, which I think also had to be one of the first string quartets not to name itself after a place, member, or patron. Plus after a while, the quartet managed to be known simply as “Kronos,” with a clear “brand” identification.
The problem is, what if you’re a group that plays a lot of older music by dead guys? Then naming yourself something like “Ethel” would just seem absurd, an overreach. This is the challenge, for example, that many chamber music series presenters have around the country in trying to attract younger audiences. Most are falling all over themselves trying to lose that word “chamber” which is like the kiss of death. But coming up with something else is not very easy.
One of the tricky things about band and ensemble names is that the name really only has to be good _before_ you’re famous. Once you’re famous unless your name is horriffically bad nobody is going to care. Take “The Beatles.” Totally stupid band name, but they’re so famous that we don’t hear the name as having its own internal aesthetic content, it’s merely a signifier for a famous band. The other tricky thing is that so many people have such bad taste that they settle on band names that really do suck.
Add into that the increasing number of things a band name has to do:
1. Sound cool
2. Not belong to somebody else
3. Fit your musical purpose
4. Be googleable (So a common phrase or a single common word is tricky. And randomly strung together sets of words that mean nothing and end up sounding lame and pretentious (or great, which does sometimes happen) are extra tempting.)
5. Have an available URL
6. Be accepted by all of the band members
7. Be memorable
8. Not be embarrassing for your fans to repeat, because who wants to admit they’re fans of a band called “Supergrass”?
It should be noted that composers suffer a similar problem with names for their new pieces. I can’t tell you how many pieces I’ve heard which really would have been better off called Sonata Number 7. I’ll pick on Michael Gordon because I usually love his music and usually his titles are great: “Popopera”? Really? For a piece that’s neither operatic nor particularly pop you’re going to craft that ugly portmanteau?