Have you ever sat in the pub dreaming up band names, regardless of whether you are forming a band or not? I certainly have. That exercise usually follows a predictable pattern. You scan the room, naming every object and sight you come across, reeling them off, then discounting them as you realise there is probably already a band with that name. The Doors? (moving on…), The Door and The Window? (that’s been done too), The Beer Mats, The Bar Stools, The Optics, The Beer Guts, The Pool Tables, and so on. As you get drunker it gets worse. The Bum Cracks, The Nasal Hair Removers, The Pissed Farts, Beer Goggles (not bad, actually), Last Orders. That goes on until we get to chucking out time, then its Pavement (that’s been done), The Lamposts, The Drunken Idiots, The Tube Train Travellers (possibly a Folk Rock band?), The Difficult to Unlock Front Door, (not a name that I can imagine seeing on Spotify Playlists anytime soon), The Stumbling Stairs, The Bed Collapsers, The Dreamless Sleepers. In the morning you’ve forgotten the lot.
Be that as it may, choosing a name is a challenge every band comes across. Some go for the easy options. Back in the 60s they either favoured pun-y insects (The Beatles) or the lazy choice of using the singers name with the rest of the band lumped together almost as an afterthought. That trend may have started with Gerry and The Pacemakers, and Buddy Holly and The Crickets but continued through Elvis Costello and The Attractions, Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Adam and The Ants, Siouxsie and The Banshees, and so on. In those cases, they had perfectly good band names, but their egos wouldn’t allow them to be simply a part of a group. It got worse with names like the J Geils Band, Gillan, James Taylor Quartet, and so, so many others. That sorry trend has continued to this day with acts like The Miki Berenyi Trio (cringe!). There are plenty of examples of band names that didn’t bow to that though. We’ve mentioned The Doors, which could easily have been Jim Morrison and The Doors, but wasn’t. Prog and Metal bands tended to stick with just a band name (Pink Floyd, MC5, Motorhead, AC/DC etc). Punk bands too. You know all this of course.
Then there are the odder choices. Some are clearly chosen for shock value. Joy Division and New Order flirted with nazi symbolism. Throbbing Gristle, well, use your imagination! The (Guildford) Stranglers, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Menace went for in-your-face aggression. We can go through a massive list of those, but there are also those who make you wonder what they were thinking? The Butthole Surfers may have wanted a name as confrontational as their music, but it still comes across as a bit of a joke. And would you want to forever be known as a member of The Pooh Sticks (despite that name actually coming from Winnie The Pooh, but still…)? The Bollock Brothers no doubt had a bit of a titter when they came up with that one in the pub, but did they seriously think that was a name they would be proud to be remembered by in years to come?
The late Steve Albini no doubt wished he could have turned back the clock and not called one of his acts Rapeman. You can find plenty on Youtube by Buster Hymen and The Penetrators too. Worse still, there is a 1977 LA act called The Child Molesters. Seriously, there is! Look them up, if you really want that in your search history. There are dozens of hardcore thrash bands with the word ‘Anal’ in their name (‘Fuck’ too), but I kind of get why they would do that. Ass Pounder also has a certain charm to it, I guess. There is even a Brazilian Gore Core band called I Shit On Your Face, who have released a plethora of scatalogically themed songs. Calling yourself ‘Women of the SS’ though is just asking for trouble. Or how about performance art band Premature Ejaculation? That’s not something you’d want to see appearing on your credit card statement. Basically, the more you dig into this, the worse it gets. I start imagining the gig posters fly posted all over town, their name up in lights outside the venue, the introduction before they appear on stage “Wisconsin, please give a big welcome to…”, and flicking through the racks at a record shop. Shall I buy the latest album from Priest In Shit, or ‘Satanic Masturbation’ by Japanese Thrash Metal merchants Syphilitic Vaginas? Choices, choices. Probably best to imagine what would happen if you died in a car crash and your parents were going through your record collection wondering who to give it away to.
Scrotum Grinder
So, next time you are down the pub with your new bandmates, looking for a name, I would either stick with using Namify, or go with The Beer Mats, or you just might end up being called Scrotum Grinder!
