Time Keeps On Slippin' Into The Future

Ladies and Gents, the Band Name Blog has lain fallow for too long! This is not only a disgrace, but also a record in Band Name Of The Day Blog History, and thus nothing but shameful.

The responsible parties have been sacked, and we resolve to do better in the future, especially in light of the wonderful band names we continue to receive in a sporadic but never ending trickle. For that, we thank you!

The first band name comes from our Southern Correspondent in God's own armpit Fresno, who suggests:

Stink Capsule: This would be a great name for a goth band, especially considering how she came by it: She found an article about a perfume that comes in pill form and then you swallow it. Interesting theory, we're not convinced patchouli and rose hip burps are all that sexy, but that's why it's a goth band. Beats coffin breath.

Moving right along, the next name comes from the selfsame correspondent, this time talking about English pub bands:

Shove Shilling, which we envision as a sort of hipster indie band from Swindon or some other quaintly decaying urban place across the pond. Sort of like The Decemberists with a dash of Sex Pistols. You know, just for the Britishisms.

And finally, we have one hailing in from the Warped House:

Emergency Vodka Pouches. This is another amazingly versatile band name, and handily combines alcoholism with preparedness and a touch of... something. Marsupials, maybe. Mostly, everyone was just drunk and utterly taken with the idea of pre-mixed drinks in sealed pouches. Like most drunk people, "mixed drinks" quickly became "vodka and fuck-all."

Good times.

Stay tuned for more band names, we'll attempt to be less remiss in future postings!

The Monster Mash

So a few weeks ago the entire Warped House was back together. As happens when this happens, the jokes rapidly got ribald, and then just tasteless. See, when you have a bunch of intelligent and utterly shameless people with a bit too much fascination with nature get talking, nothing is off the table. Including the mating habits of ducks.

And this, somehow, lead to the first Band Name Of The Day:

DEDV, which is a really bad opening band that's never gonna go anywhere.

Got all that? Good. DEDV stands for dead-end duck vagina. It's actually pretty typical- go Google it. And that neatly leads into our second Band Name Of The Day, which is... (drum roll, please!):

Exploding Duck Cock! Yup, see, the female's got dead ends, and the male's got an exploding cock. And now you know more about duck anatomy than you ever wanted to. This absolutely, positively, has to be a punk band.

And then we had a bit of a palate cleanser by way of discussing Vegas (which, in this group, can also be pretty raunchy but less raunchy than duck mating habits), and then their trip to Zumanity, which lead to the newest member of our tribe to blurt out yet another band name, the Bonus Band Name Of The Day:

Pedicure With A Pocketknife. Apparently this was her idea of a good time after watching hot and half-naked people writing about in bowls of water or waving sticks with ribbons on them. This isn't a bad band name at all though, despite the generally long and perhaps awkward nature of it. It's a very flexible and adaptable band name that would work well for swing, punk, rock and roll, dark jazz, all sorts of stuff!

Anyhow, that's all for now. We've got several more in the hopper from our recent shenanigans, but we've been busy lately so posting has been sporadic. The blog is not dead, or even ailing all that much, it's just a bit tired at the moment. Ta!

Scott Who? Versus The What?

Today we've got some interesting band names for you from a few different corners of the world. There has been a pretty heavy interest in indie, punk rock, folk and other wierd sorts of music here, mostly because they tend to have weird band names.

Today is no different. Let's dive right in:

The Indie One-Shots, who were obviously formed for a one-off show at a festival or rally or something, and were so well received that they stuck around for 13 years and 4 albums, including 2 #3 hits in the US, 4 #2 hits in the UK, and a staggering 5 #1 hits on the Japanese pop charts! They do pretty well, but the lead singer's girlfriend still insists that "one-shots" is an appropriate name. We're sure we have no idea why.

The next one's a bit more... unusual. Well, perhaps not, depending where you're from. This is another one from The Chemist, who happens to live just down the peninsula from San Francisco. He'd know...

Nacho Mama's Escorts, a band of cross-dressing, gender-fucked ambiguous call girls from the Tenderloin of San Francisco, who just so happen to have a vocal jazz quartet on the side. They're locally famous for their cover of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Especially the baritone is well known for her sultry, rich vocals.

The Animals

So in the last post we promised you more horridly disgusting band names from the Warped House, but you'll just have to wait a little bit longer.

First, we've got some surrealist band names for you! See, lately we've had a bit of a dearth of band names, and then an explosion of really, um... original band names.

First, we have a classic Oakland band name:

Unpredictable Bicycle, and like any great Oakland band name this is probably going to be a set of drums, two guitars, Buddy Holly glasses and skinny jeans. But with a name like that, they've got to be skilled or go under. That having been said- like all bands on here, they don't exist yet, so it's up to you to make that happen!

And then we have another one from the latest initiate into the Warped House! See, she had this toy, it's a... well, it's:

Squishy Hippo! Talk about a wide-open band name! Seriously, this could be anything: classic rock, psychedelia, jazz, even a classical ensemble with a sense of humor!

Sweet Loretta

Ladies and Gents, it's been a bit of a hibernation period here at BNOTD, but don't worry- we've reunited the Warped House, and good lord do we have band names for you! Some are in rather bad taste, but that's OK, you'll survive.

The first one we have comes from a strange article about automatons in medieval churches. Yup, they had mechanical devils! This, in turn, leads to our first Band Name Of The Day:

The Wigged Out Church Goers! This would be a great band name for a rock band of recovering cultists, but more realistically probably more along the lines of some sort of punk outfit. Not Daft Punk, just, y'know, regular punk. In a roundabout way, this came in by the Barber, but he had some help from various and sundry... individuals.

And hey, while we're on blasphemy (don't worry, it gets better worse later this week!), here's one to really wig out the church goers:

The Glandular Secrets, which can be nothing but a feminist punk rock band. Or a transgender kickline, either way. Thanks to the Chemist for that one!

Here We Are Now Entertain Us

It's been a busy week for us here at Band Name Of The Day, but unfortunately not with blog-related stuff. Mostly it's been tedious things like earning money to support our blog habit, or figuring out what pub to go quaff beer in tonight.

Nevertheless, we do have some new band names for you! The first one comes from Mark, one of our most loyal followers and a veritable fount of excellent band names! Mark writes in to suggest:

Plovell Fayneman, and recommends that they play "hardcore accountant rock." We think this would work well as the name for a musician of some sort- maybe a Klezmer band leader, or a jazz bassist.

From there, of course, it degenerated like conversations are apt to. Someone shouted out:

The Mighty Froinlaven Players, but didn't bother to say what sort of a band that is. We smell hippies.

Then someone else popped off with:

Shelley & the Combover Kings, which is an excellent band name for a cheesy lounge act. Think a band of has-beens that never were who finally are and know it. Unfortunately, their music is far smoother than their pickup lines, and they're stuck actually playing music on stage rather than "playing music" backstage, if you know what we mean!

I Feel So Alive

So on Monday we had impolite band names, and on Wednesday they got a bit more risque, and now it's Friday. One of these came from Juggler (of Piss Window and Traditional Shank Hand fame), and one one came from our correspondent in Germany- she tried to settle in Sweden, but they kicked her out, which should tell you a lot right there!

The first one we received in a text from Juggler, who wrote "Don't ask- that way lies madness!" The name is:

Jizz Prison. He's right- don't ask. But we're tempted. There are just so many ways this could be spun- a prison band? A pack of depraved punks? A foreign jazz band that doesn't speak a lick of English and just opened the dictionary two two random pages? A blind-drunk Juggler coming up with the most depraved thing his soggy mind could think of? We'll never know, 'cause we ain't asking!

The next one comes from a discussion about this here strip club review. Go ahead and read it, it's just a screen cap of a Yelp review. Done? Good. From there, the discussion veered to Fresno, and then to Las Vegas street walkers, also referred to by the polite euphemism  that became out Band Name Of The Day:

The Strip Lizards. This could be a great name for a jazz band. But really that's not where it stayed. It quickly became:

The Striplizards, featuring their first album Boner Of Shame! Yeah, if this is a jazz band, it's a greasy and tired one, surviving on cheap bourbon and amphetamines, horning flatulent bloats out of their tarnished and dented brass pieces, all soul patches, knee patches and cabbage patches. A truly sad sight.

Say What?

Some days, the band names are just plain weird. Granted, in this place that's more often than not, but sometimes we're left scratching our heads and asking who came up with that? How did we come up with that? Why did we post it?

No matter. The first one we came up with while drinking heavily at a party last Saturday. We think. There was a lot of very good wine. And somehow something came up about doing something very unpleasant to someone for some reason. The details are murky, but someone agreed that it'd be worth it if they got a roofie out of it. Someone else said they'd be eating roofies like candy and then... Band Name:

Roofies Like Candy. This is obviously a trance or techno band, specializing in the rave circuit. They're sort of like a candy kid version of Daft Punk. Hey, where else could you use a band name that combines the words "roofies" with the word "candy"?

But that pales in comparison to the next one. Remember the last post where we talked about having dim sum with some old friends? Well, the very first band name that popped out of The Chemist's mouth was:

Cthulhu Nipples! On one hand, this combines to awesome things: Cthulhu and nipples!* On the other hand... well, the idea of combining a be-tentacled elder God's own mirth buttons just seems a bit dangerous. Make of that what you will, but they probably play fantasy rock and/or metal.




*And just what did you expect to find under that link?

I Like Chinese

So no shit, there we were, eating dim sum in a joint in Alameda, when Band Name Of The Day came up. Most of the people there were not heavily involved in this project (one had been in on the joke from the get-go, but had moved out of that strange house before the blog got started, and the rest were only peripherally involved), so they were able to come up with a whole list of band names.

And, since we were in a dim sum restaurant, some of these took on a certain, um, ethnic streak.

Oh, and one of the people there was military. Currently on leave from Kuwait. That didn't help.

Here we go:

The Dim Sum Debutantes- A San Francisco motown revue.

Jihadi Panda- This one's awkward. Frankly, there's no way to make this polite. It's probably a bunch of talented by crude college musicians who play middle eastern folk music and drink way too much.

The Custard Buns- Either a girly-girl j-pop band, or a girly-boy j-pop band in drag. Either way, probably really good at what they do and/or hilarious.

The Krazy Kuwaiti Kaffeeklatsch- Hip hop, pure and simple. Arabic, by the way, is a great language for rap!

Pornographic Hijab- Wow, we're gonna get whacked for this one. Jazz. Old-school. Cabaret style.

Bao Wow-Wow-a Chinese knock-off of Bow Wow. Only, unlike most knockoffs, he's actually better than Bow Wow, and only knocked off his look- for the most part, he plays traditional Chinese music and free jazz.

Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime Is On My Side

Ladies and Gentlemen, here at Band Name Of The Day we just ain't so good with the whole time thing. You may notice that sometimes we have a bunch of posts back to back, and then nothing for a week. Well, after the better part of a year, we've finally figured out that this thing has... Delayed Posting Options! Yes, this means we can now make a number of posts, and spread them out for your reading pleasure!

Take today, for instance: We haven't posted in a while, but we DID spend a lot of time with various friends, and new Band Names Of The Day/Week/Hour/Minute have been pouring in, which means we've got a whole damn LIST of the things for you! So we could blow the whole load at once like some sort of spurting hot band name bukake, or we could, y'know, spread it out.

So, keeping that in mind, check back in a few days for the next post! And so, without further ado, we have the Band Name Of The Day:

Tripe! This would be a great band name for any stripe of rock and roll band, or aggressive folk/trad band. Not only does it have a great meaning, but it's a nice, quick, hard-edge word, and most importantly, it hasn't been used yet! We couldn't find any band named Tripe on Wikipedia, AMG or MusicBrainz! Credit for this band name goes out to The Fiddler, who made a recently-rare appearance at a gig in Berkeley last weekend.

Then we have the Bonus Band Names Of The Day, courtesy of Mark, who suggests:

The Pignoramuses, and then continues to explain that they're to idiotic to know that the plural of pignoramus is pignorami. He's probably right. This can only be a bad, drug-addled punk band. He continued with:

Get Kraken!, but failed to include what they play. With a name like that, it's probably going to be either a bad pirate-themed band, or something clever and obscure, like a jazz band specializing in covering movie scores.

Finally, we'd like to give another shout out to Malaysia! It seems that Alfred, one of our Malaysian readers,  was so taken with Malaysia scoring so high on the reader list that he not only followed the blog, but did so publicly, cementing his dedication to Band Names Of The Day for all to see. Thanks, Alfred!

Dude Looks Like A Lady

So no shit, there we were, dressed up like Landsknechte and drinking various, um, non-alcoholic beverages, when the topic of insults came up. And then Mr. Mustache came up with a particularly awesome insult, which would make an even more awesome Band Name Of The Day:

The Hermaphroditic Apophallators! Yeah, that's got a really short Wikipedia link, so you know it's gotta be good! For those amongst you who are lazy, hermaphroditism is, of course, being both genders, while apophallation is the deliberate amputation of the penis in case of genital entanglement.

OK, take a moment and breath, get that image out of your head. Ready? Good, now go back and read it again. Yup, that's apophallation.

We imagine that these guys play the worst kind of gutterpunk available, and do it loud, proud and with chutzpa. Hermaphroditicly apophallated chutzpa.

Spam Spam Spam Spam

One of the big reasons this blog is still going has little to do with band names, or indeed bands, and a lot to do with the fans. Like any good band, we seem to have fans- perhaps incidental fans, perhaps die-hard fans, but fans nonetheless. Sometimes views are up, sometimes they're down, but there's always something going on.


And the weirdest thing is that it isn't local people who like this blog! We'd expect people we know to be all over this thing, and their friends, friends of friends, the sort of people we hang out with. You know, 20s and 30s, middle-class, internet-addicted, sardonic pop culture junkies from California. Well, that might all be true, but they're not all from California!

After the US, the single biggest number of hits in the past 30 days cam from Malaysia. Seriously- Malaysia. That's awesome!

Here's the breakdown:

United States: 104
Malaysia: 34
United Kingdom: 5
Russia: 4
Germany: 3 (Hi, Claudia!)
Austria: 2
Belgium: 2
Philippines: 2
United Arab Emirates: 1
Switzerland: 1

So that's really pretty cool. We can't recall anybody we know in Malaysia, so either some of our buddies are getting way to cozy with some sleazy South East Asian proxies, or we've got a serious international readership! If anyone from Malaysia's reading this, let us know! We'd love to do an all-Malaysian Band Name Of The Day post!

But enough of all that, let's have some band names!

The first band name came about through something that occurred while making fish tacos and, oddly enough, not drinking. Nevertheless, we can't figure out how it came to be, all we know is that the name is:

Dysfunctional Sheep! Clearly their first album must be named Everything's Better With Sheep. But what sort of music do they play? Some sort of comical experimental alternative nerd rock perhaps, sort of like The Halo Benders? Who knows.

And next we have yet another band name (partially) inspired by a Facebook conversation with Juggler. It spawned off of a comment by a friend of ours who happens to be a grad student in genetics, but that's probably coincidence:

The Leatherbangers! Yes, this sounds like some horrifically non-PC, if not downright dirty band name, but it actually came out of a discussion about making sausage (bangers) out of leather. And we swear, that's not a euphemism for anything!

They Told Me He Was Bad

Band Name Of The Day Staff Writer dropping in really quickly here to offload some band names for you.

Number one, straight out of Oakland, California, by way of Dr. Who (don't ask) is:

Bad Guy Boyfriend! This is an excellent band name- it could be a teenybopper band like Hanson or early Silverchair, all the way through to a true, adult-contemporary metal band. Not the over-testosteroned young hotheads that have spikes on every conceivable wardrobe item, but the sort that's been around for a while, knows how to pace themselves for a grueling tour and can rock the house like no other, night after night after night and still get up the next morning.

Then we have one flying in via text message carrier pigeon from Juggler (remember Juggler?), about 90 miles to the north-east of Headquarters. He suggests:

Traditional Shank Hand, and writes that they play traditional Irish music with a heavy rock influence. Sort of like Flogging Molly, but less punk and more Metallica before they started to suck. Apparently this was something that was come up with after a particularly grueling hapkido class.

The next one also comes from Juggler, but has somewhat more... nebulous origins:

Piss Window. Juggler writes that they absolutely have to play British punk and wear plaid pants and Doc Martens. Apparently nobody remembers how they came up with that one, but that's entirely fitting.

As Time Goes By

Hey folks,

This is going to be an "I" post. You see, I've been busy. I wouldn't say terribly busy- that would imply some sort of calamity, which isn't the case. Sure, there have been some trials and tribulations, so I wouldn't say I've been wonderfully busy either, but mostly I was just very busy. Work's been rather busy, and my commute's been a bit longer than usual lately, so I haven't been posting much during the week, and then I actually got out of the house and went away from the internet over the weekend! In fact, I even went away from cell reception (mostly)!

So I've got some band names for you now, and I'll post them forthwith. Not as many as we came up with (put 8 Burning Man and Renaissance faire junkies in a tight gang at a hippie festival and funny things WILL come up!) but quite a few nonetheless.

Our first Band Name Of The Day comes from one of our favorite cafes, the Blue Danube in Alameda. Plopped down, injected some caffeine in the eyeballs, and had a piece of their fantastic chocolate cake and bang! Like a bullet out of the blue sky, came the First Band Name Of Wednesday, July 27th:

Delicious Danger! Because that's really what this thing was. This would also make one hell of a name for a chick rock band. Sort of an updated take on The Runnaways.

The next one comes from a post on BoingBoing, which you can go read yourself. I think you can surmise the back story pretty quickly:

Robot Octopus, a band name that seems custom-made to a contemporary indie band, consider the current popularity of both robots and octopuses (and yes, that's grammatically correct!)

Next up, we have a couple of band names from Squirrel. The first one comes from said hippie festival and one of the Burners there:

Bad Cream. Bad Cream could be a modern punk band, but we're thinking more along the lines of classic rock. You know, like Cream but a bit further along in the rock and roll evolution- more 80's hard rock, the sort of thing that would make The Beatles blush and would give Ozzy Osbourne a dangerous hard-on.

*ahem* Moving right along, Squirrel didn't leave us hanging with just one band, but today came through with a second one:

Filthy Russian Keyboards, which seems to come out of the bowels of a silicon valley startup's IT shop, but would probably be awesome as Russian electronic and disco band. Sort of like a Eastern European take on Daft Punk.

And finally, we have a great one from a drummer friend of ours who seems to be afflicted with a classic Northern European disease: he heals too well. In fact, his body's healing something that wasn't even broken! And, because the bastard's part Scandinavian, it's not just healing: it's growing a spike. We, however, never afraid to make lemonade, looked at that and said "Hey! That's the Band Name Of The Day!"

And so, the reigning Band Name Of The Day, to make up for the past twelve (12!!) days of slacking, is:

Grinder and the Bone Spurs! Truly, a more epically hard-rock band there has never been! Think Rammstein meets the Flintstones playing a show on the world's biggest amplifier mating with an explosion in a World War II naval shipyard in full boom. The singer plays a diesel-powered angle grinder, and the rest of the Bone Spurs play any instrument that can be played with sticks, mallets, hammers or compressed air.

Stawberry Fields Forever

Oh man, do we ever have band names for you tonight! We'll just skip the excuses and whacky stories about the hows and whys and wherefores we haven't posted recently, and just jump into this gluttony of band names!

Up first, we have one inspired by a deeply embedded correspondent in central California. How, exactly, this band name came to be is up for debate, but suffice it that it includes a discussion on the new Google+:

Carnivorous Clowns, which can only be some sort of rock and roll horror show. Maybe something as passe and insipid as an Insane Clown Posse cover band, but probably more along the lines of Slayer crossed with Operation Ivy doing an arena show a la KISS' Psycho Circus tour.

Next up, we have one brought directly to us via that other social network, where our San Francisco source writes:

"Zonule of Zinn" has got to be the best anatomical name ever, and should be either the title of a children's book about wizardry, or a band name — possibly both.

Quite likely both, we'd say, in fact, a mid-70's style psychedelic trance outfit. But our source isn't done yet! He continues:

I was thinking 60's, but yeah: "On tonight's bill: The Strawberry Alarm Clock headlining; Zonule of Zinn opening."

Good times all around. Zonule of Zinn could be just about anything, but it would be far out, that's for sure.

Then we have another quick one stemming from another Google+ conversation, this with a certain punk from Oakland:

The Rocket Snails, who can only be some sort of indie or punk band. Wait, what's that? You want to see what inspired that? Oh, alright:

*ahem*

And finally, we have a truly great band name inspired by a spoonerism (of sorts) on tonight's NPR program:

A Switch At The Sleep. Boy oh boy, this could be be anything, from a blues band made up of power plant employees to a band of middle-aged banjo players toodling away in the folk music scene. Have fun, enjoy your weekend, and don't burn down anything that can't be replaced.

The Devil Went Down To... Mordor??

Some days you just gotta sit back with some good folks, have a few drinks and watch Torchwood. But that's no reason to let the blog sit and ferment like the Dead Marshes, but to post more! Because not everyone has Torchwood and booze, but is stuck reading the internet and... well, you get the point.

So without further ado, here's the first of the two Band Names Of The Day! Needless to say, it's somewhat inspired by The Lord Of The Rings, which is a fantastic novel, and umpteen inferior imitators:

The Orc Stompers, which is going to be nerdy no matter how you slice it or dice it, but would likely make a fantastic name for a metal or fantasy rock band.

The other Band Name Of The Day, the Bonus Band Name Of The Day, the BBNOTD, that is, is quite a bit more versatile:

The Devil Take The Hindmost! This is a fairly versatile one, but would probably work especially well for a bluegrass band or or any sort of country-influenced band- country, southern rock (a la Creedence Clearwater Revival, etc). That isn't to say that it couldn't also be used for something like indie rock or even an electronica band like Daft Punk.

Gotta Get Down On Friday

So here we are, another Friday. Fridays, before they were ruined by some lackluster yuppie, were great days. Now, they're great days once we get over the gibbering-in-the-closet-and-go-catatonic thing brought on by Ms. Black. Nevertheless, we do look forward to the weekends, especially summer weekends, that are drawn out by a late sunset into something just a little bit longer and a little bit sweeter.

On that note, we have a sweet Band Name Of The Day for you this Friday:

The Jelly Bean Mafia, which we envision as a techno rave group, sort of hyperactive, kandy-kid version of Daft Punk, but with a hard, coked-up edge. Cute, poppy, peppy, and addicted to an a rainbow of narcotics of legendary purity that have them mixing all night and recording all day up until the rainbow's end, when hard reality sets in.

Incidentally, they're not the first band to use jelly beans in their name. You can find a couple of others right there at the end of the Wikipedia article on the things, and of course through Google.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia has killed the second possible Band Name Of The Day, when they informed us that Harsh Reality actually exists. Apparently they're a little-known, proto-prog band born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire out of the remnants of the Freightliner Blues Band (formerly the Revolution) in the early 1960s. Too bad the name is taken.

What's really depressing about that, though, is that the name is taken by such a low-level band. It's a fantastic name, but reading the Wikipedia article makes it pretty clear that it's a band that did little more than squat on a great name, like those "websites" that have links to other sites that sell stuff just so they can legitimately claim to be "using" a domain name. And for what? Once you discount the masturbatory writing on the wiki page that sounds like it was created by a nostalgic member of this band,  it comes out that they released one single and one album, and disbanded. Have you heard of them? We sure haven't. But now that name is taken, and because they released and album, probably copyrighted. Bang, 32 years later nobody can come and redeem such a great band name.

And that, dear readers, is why we have this blog. Not to claim or to squat or to copyright anything, but to find these rare gems of band names and bring them to the light where they can be used, preferably by a band that's already got some chops and has the good sense to do more touring than cocaine, so that hopefully something like the Jelly Bean Mafia will go down in history with other great band names like The Stray Cats, Iron Butterfly and The Battlefield Band, and not with gobshites like Harsh Reality.

So What IS The Rumpus?

No shit, there we were, geeking out over Google+ like good little geeky things, when someone *ahem* said his life was a bit too proper.

As these things happen, people agreed. Well, what would you expect from people who come up with a band name every god damned day?* We're not the sort to enjoy being normal, common, pedestrian, or in any ways "proper."

This needed to be solved, opinions were stated, and the next thing we knew there was a club proposed and then instantly taken out back and shot, because what's more commonplace than a club? But this left us with a name sort of flapping in the breeze and not being of any use to anyone.

So we recycled it as the Band Name Of The Day:

The Rumpus Club, which could be anything really, but more often then not plays a swingin' sort of modern take on 1940's tiki-kitch-style "Hawaiian" music. They have a ballad about the Wild Things, and another one about Trader Vic, and yet another one about Woody Woodpecker, and supposedly a rude one about Santa Clause and one of the reindeer, but we can't substantiate that.


*Yes we do. Don't forget that we only post a small percentage of the band names invented every day, so don't think for a moment that we don't have at least one for every day! Hush, you in the back! Do not question The Blogger(s)!

Summertime, And The Livin' Is Easy

Well, it's well and truly summer. Long, hot days are here, it's the (in)famous Fourth of July Weekend, and that means long walks, playing at REI, barbecues, things of that nature. It does not, traditionally, include hanging around at home playing on the internet and posting to blogs, but it's been a while, so we'll put some new Band Names Of The Day up for you.

The first one comes from someone we know and love cleaning chipped toenail polish of her tootsies:

The Acetones, which can only... wait, what? It's already taken? Yup, seems there's The Ace-Tones, Acetone,  and even The Acetones! We can't use that, it's already taken.

OK, so, earlier in the day we were off on a long walk climbing Albany Hill, and in a pinch, that could do quite well. Especially since it calls out to "Blueberry Hill," made famous by Fats Domino. And with that in mind:

Albany Hill, which... is also already taken? God damnit! Stupid local boys using local names...

When in doubt, they say, look to inspiration from nature. Unfortunately, we're inside right now, so the nearest things to nature at the plants on the mantelpiece and Willie the cat who, incidentally, seems to enjoy hanging out inside the fireplace. Apparently he isn't black enough and need to track soot wherever he can. However, that in itself can lead to inspiration:

The Chimney Cats, who could be a hell of a blues or swing band. They could go old-time jugband too, or even more toward a contemporary hipster-style acoustic rock- really, quite versatile. And there's no band named The Chimney Cats that comes up in the first page of Google, so we've done due diligence and the Devil take the hindmost!

Sleeping With The Dog

The Band Names (because there are two) Of The Day today are, in a word, strange. Both of them come from friends of our who work the renaissance fair circuit, and are otherwise as different as different can be. One's an attractive and deceptively demure young lady from the bohemian quarter of Fresno (it's small, but dedicated), and one's an enormous viking who teaches mathematics for a living.

The first writes in to suggest:

Goth Cookies! How she got here we don't know, but it would certainly make a good band name for a "bubblegum goth" band, as she suggests. Their first album should obviously be titled "Tossing Your," with the follow up of "...With Icing." Amusing in any case, and the variations are truly endless.

Then we have one from slightly further north and from slightly further afield, with a bonus internet connection:


The Ragged Crows. We're told they're "morris/hobocore" and that "the dancers dance in rags and bells and carry rusty pipes." The Ragged Crow, of course, being a morris dance, and hobocore being a reference to Questionable Content, one of the best webcomics out there.

Great band names all around! Thanks, guys!

The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda

Here at BNOTD we don't particularly enjoy spending time indoors when it's sunny out, which is one of the reasons we haven't been posting so much- definitely more a couple of times per week than daily. We're mostly OK with that- we'd obviously love to get more great band names out there, but fresh air and sunshine definitely come first. So we squeeze them in when we can at work and after dark (or on the occasional Saturday evening when we had plenty of fresh air and sunshine earlier), and otherwise let it slide.

But here's a good one that we got from a friend of ours who tweeted this one a few days ago:

Crippling Nostalgia, which she describes as being "the name of... every cover band ever." She's probably right, it really is a very versatile one. Not sure we'd use it for a military band, though...

One the other hand, we have a Band Name Of The Day that sort of manifested itself out of nowhere, and really would only make a good punk rock name:

The Smoking Turds! We've all heard the phrase "a steaming turd," or a "steaming pile of..." Well, the Smoking Turds take that a (few) step(s) further, from steaming straight through to smoking! Yeah, they're weird...

Bark At The Moon

So we had a party over the weekend, and for a brief moment in time 60% of the Warped House was reunited under one roof (albeit not the one we're used to being united under).

Alcohol flowed, food was devoured, and the Vallejo Pirate Festival was discussed at length because a number of the guests had come from there straight to the party. Being who they were, they were sunburned, starved, dehydrated, half-drunk and naturally dressed like pirates in their fanciest (and fancifullest) rags. One of them had a particularly splashy rag, which led to the first Band Name Of The Day:

Swanky Jerkin, a folk-rock-quasi-historical band with a pirate/renfaire twist. They don't really know which it is, they just love going out to random historically-themed party events, drinking themselves silly and making a ruckus.

Then the evening wore on, more alcohol was consumed, food was eaten, and then, the Juggler came up with the second BNOTD:

Tomato Cthulhu Kiss. Where that came, from nobody knows. What it means, nobody knows. What sort of music they play, nobody knows. But Tomato Kiss would be a good hippie band name, Cthulhu Kiss would be a good goth band name, and Tomato Cthulhu would be... well, something.

They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha Ha!

We haven't posted in a while, and this time we have an excuse! We've been preparing for a hell of a party, and we're just about ready, so some folks came over to hang out, chat, help with last-minute helpouts and all that good stuff, and no shit, there we were, talking about how to get from Sacramento to the Bay Area, and someone referred to Highway 80 as being a retard zone and... Bang! Band Name!

The Retard Zone! This could be a hell of a punk or rock band, sort of classic, 90's style rock and roll, big guitars, bowling shirts, the whole nine yards.

And then, the bonus imported directly from Sacramento:

Holy Names, featuring John The Baptist on keyboard, St. Peter on drums, Adam and Even on lead and rhythm guitars, Jesus Christ on vocals, and Mather, Mark, Luke and John singing backup.

Your Own Personal Jesus

Sometimes, you've just got to be your own personal Jesus and save yourself. So it seems to be going with this blog- if we don't post, it doesn't magically get filled with brilliant posts by other people on the internet, so we'll just have to make due ourselves.

See, the windows were down, the hot air roaring through the cabin of the truck, bouncing off the speakers as Depeche Mode sang about reaching out and touching faith and bang! Band Name Of The Day:

Touch Faith, which is of course a Christian band. But the real beauty of this name isn't apparent at first- as it stands, it can really only be one type of music, until we start making minor alterations. Riffs, if you will:

Touch/Faith, for instance, quickly becomes a goth band. Maybe a Depeche Mode cover band, maybe just something dark and grinding that's consistently rumored to be satanic. Or we could have...

Faith Touch, who could a lead singer for a rock band, a perverted female singer/songwriter, hell, even a drag queen doing Broadway revue!

They'll Put You In The ASPCA!

It has been a week since we've updated. A full seven days. There hasn't been a lull of that size on this blog yet. It's oddly freeing, like a band that's taking a break from touring, and like most bands taking a break, we're looking forward to coming back and doing more of what we love!

In this case, that's posting ridiculous Band Names Of The Day, and this time we've got a whole slew for you!

In from Oakland, we have a strange conversation about weird TV shows pushing buttons on viewers like they're crack addicts, and bang! Band name!

The Crack Buttons! We imagine this sort of like a 1980's chick-rock band, all big hair and lightning bolts and spiked guitars!

*ahem* Moving along, we have one from Southern California:

The Perverted Mice, which sprang out of a Facebook (ah, Facebook!) discussion about mice nesting in someone's unmentionables and destroying large portions of her dresser drawer. This could be a great name for a punk band, or (if it's changed to Perverted Mouse), an adult alternative, soft-rock sort of sound.

Sliding back North, here's another one that oozed out of a certain Silicone Valley start-up company, courtesy of JF and C-Nap:

The Geodesic Turds. How the hell they came up with this we have no idea, but we're told The Turds play trip-hop-punk.

And finally, we have another submission from our Northern Allies in Seattle, who write:

The Napkin Zealots, An indie group who no one has ever heard of who sing about trying to save the world by encouraging people to use cloth napkins and recycle ziplock bags by washing and letting air-dry. Along the lines of Phish. And other over-the-top eco-friendly green-ness.

The Napkins Zealots sound like a strange group, but that's Seattle for you! Anyhow, we're back, having had a busy week and a mellow weekend in Lake Tahoe (well, not in Lake Tahoe, but near Lake Tahoe), complete with camping, booze, weird campfire songs ("Leaving On A Jet Plane" in a Scottish brogue, anyone?), funny costumes and lots of bufoonery.

Fifteen Men On The Dead Man's Chest

Ladies and Gents, we've gotta real treat for you today! Three band names, all with a certain je ne sais quoi, that little something extra that makes it special, like the bounce soles in Doc Martens, or the mold in blue cheese.

The first one we have is from the Northern Guard, from K (With The Hair And The Laptop), who sends it down from Seattle:

The Trustfund Pirates, a grand name inspired by Ms K and her favorite undertaker taking a walk and discussing the possibility of stealing an unmanned paddleboad and descending upon rich crew rowers and yuppie joggers for their ipods and fancy Patagonia jackets. As a band name, it'd be great for a political folk band or (better yet) a political punk band.

Next we have one from the bowels of Silicon Valley, where dwells a folk singer and dancer of fine fettle, who suggests:

The Neo Sporrans, named after the famous Scottish nut-pouch. This is obviously some sort of modern Celtic band, but probably more dance and house leanings than the traditional rock and punk. Imagine the halfway point between Flogging Molly and Daft Punk, and you've got it.

Finally, from the flood planes near Sacramento where stands the Warped House, there comes a missive from one of the denizens of that infamous abode. The Juggler suggest:

Pizza Sadface, and says that they "play whiny emo music about being anorexic." Pizza Sadface, indeed.

The theme of the day is cyberpunk! Cyberpunk has been getting short shrift (ha!) in current science fiction as everyone seems to be falling all over themselves to write "steampunk novels." So we say forget the gear, go digital!

So without further ado, have some cyberpunk band names!

The Skinjobs! If you've ever seen Blade Runner, you'll get the idea. Dark, fuzzy, dirty club rock, like Rammstein with a (slightly) lighter touch and English lyrics.

Captain Electric, who play darkwave and heavy electronica.

The Fiberoptic Club- pure techno.

Replicant Replicant- driving, bassy house rhythms, heavily sampled and overlaid with 80's drum machine loops and surprisingly insightful lyrics, frequently with a political bent to them.

Cilicon Chips, who made her name as a singer-songwriter of the post-industrial era, mixing theramin and warm electric guitar sounds into soulful social commentary and ballads of lost love in the urban jungle of Silicon Valley.

And finally:

The Glass Electric Transistor Band, who push an an analog take on contemporary, overproduced club music.

Bewar the Cat Man

Ah, long weekends! They're an amazing thing. As usual, we came up with a bunch of great band names, and as usual the majority of them got lost in the mists of the bar and are now haunting Berkeley's oldest pub.

We do have one on file from that night, however:

The Froofy Fuckgnomes, which are based on a hilarious photo some friends of ours on long patrol in Europe took. Apparently there's a shop in Amsterdam that sells little garden gnome statues that are joyfully flipping off the camera. The photo had several in different colors. Bang, we had a band name and an album cover! The Fuckgnomes probably play some sort of electronic Euro-pop, like a Dutch version of Daft Punk or something.

Staying on the theme of bouncy electronic music, we've got one on the books from god knows where, although there's talk of it coming from one of the people who were present that night. Unfortunately, it got entered sans name or date or back story or even memory, so it must have been a good night indeed:

Instant Fun, probably another electro-beat outfit, maybe a J-Pop band or maybe an insanely popular underground rave DJ (remember raves?).


On a slightly more sober (though decidedly less serious note) we have another one of our many band names born from Facebook. Someone who shall remain nameless had a new chiapet that was particularly bulbous and speckled much like new chiapets are before they grow mold and plants and stuff. It was sufficiently new that there was some doubt about what it was, and someone thought it was a huge cheese ball that someone had drawn a face on. Some slightly syntaxical reorganization later we have:

Cheeseballs with Faces! This can, of course, only be a hippie jam band. Only hippie jam bands come up with names that are that bizarre and awkward while still evoking a clear (and someone terrifying) picture.

And finally, we have a brief incident where a cat was happily curled up on a neoprene computer sleeve on top of the drier. Band name:

The Neoprene Cats, which is arguably the best Band Name Of The Day, and quite possibly the Best Band Name Of Quite Some Time. This could, of course, make a fantastic adult alternative or light rock band, as well as a bubblegum pop outfit, or even any stripe of jazz band. Good stuff.

Autobahn

This is going to be an I post. Usually this blog is written in the second person because it really is a communal and collaborative project, even if I do all the actual writing. Nevertheless, this post's a bit introspective, and communal introspection just isn't our bag.

I've been posting on here less and less lately, and it's starting to show. Fewer posts, fewer band names posted, but also fewer hits and fewer band names coming in. Sometimes I have the feeling that the joke's gone on quite a bit longer than it was funny, and I should just quietly let it peter out, or that I'm investing way too much time into something that's patently useless. At other times, though, I come across a really great band name (like the one today!) and just can't wait to post it. So for the time being, I'll just keep trundling along on here, but be warned that I'll continue to update as the mood strikes me, so it will continue to be erratic.

I like this project, and I like the collaborative aspect of it. Originally, I was determined that I would not be the only one posting on here, that we'd have three or four people all posting all the time and it would be hilarious and argumentative and obscene the way we usually are, but that didn't happen. Partly because the other people I was originally collaborating with just aren't that into blogging (at all, really) and partly because I moved out of the shared house shortly after it got started, so all of a sudden we lost a certain dynamic. When you live with people, you develop in-jokes and running gags, you know just how far you can push things, and that was what made the original Band Name Of The Day so hilarious- partly because we did it to crack each other up, and were always pushing the envelope of good taste, and partly because we had this stalwart facade of creating One Official Band Name Every Day, when it really was more like half a dozen at a time every time we hit the bars, for a total of maybe 24 band names a week.

So now I'm losing a bit of steam as the dynamic is receding further and further into the distance, and the joke goes old. And frankly, the posts have become a bit stale, all pretty much the same style of writing, a template of a short bit of background followed by a band name and some commentary. And yet...

And yet, that's how things become entrenched. We become accustomed to things, and they seem to become stale until we try to take them away, and we realize how much we'd been relying on them. Views have dropped, certainly, but I'm still getting a few hits every day, sometimes none, other days as many as 8 or 10. If I can be happy cracking jokes for one person, then I'll certainly keep doing it for 8 or 10.

Anyhow, I'm certain you're all here for the Band Name Of The Day!

No shit, there we were, driving through a freeway maze in San Mateo desperately trying to get to a decent sandwich shop before the lunch break expired, when we were stopped at a red light and staring upward at the gargantuan floating ribs of the flying overpasses above us. We commented on how they really were just a bunch of glorified mud and rock, and then someone added that they also had steel in them, and then bang! We had a Band Name of The Day:

Mud, Rock and Steel, which would be a crackin' name for an urban industrial blues band, a real working-man's ensemble that brings classic blues sounds to inner-city rock and roll and industrial music. Loud, slow and crunchy, just the way we like our music and our craw fish.

Forty Licks (And Counting)

Hey, we're back! The rapture didn't really suck us up into the big space vacuum, that was just a vicious rumor circulated. You'll be able to appreciate it when we tell you that nobody here at BNOTD is in any danger of the rapture, and we're not talking about scientifically.

It's been another good weekend, including a night of Pirates of the Caribbean IV, a night of bottomless sake in a sushi joint, and a night of carousing in the world's best tiki bar. And then, back home, we found another great band name from our agent in Fresno, California, who writes that

From highly caffeinated, partially disturbed conversation that I can't really replicate with any sort of integrity comes tonight's Band Name Of The Day After The Rapture Didn't Happen:

Not the Licking Kind. This is a fantastic band name because it's incredibly versatile, has that strong edge of denial, and yet has that word in there, that licking, which implies all sorts of potentially naughty things without ever actually giving them up. Perfect.

I'm A Closet Disco Dancer

Thank God It's Friday! It's also the rapture tomorrow, supposedly at 6:00 pm, but the prophet dude who's proclaimed it keeps changing his story whether that's in a given time zone or section by section. We suspect that they've got that all figured out up in Heaven (hell, they've got 2,000 years to prepare for it!), but down here? Not so much.

Some people have suggested leaving empty clothes and "smoking" shoes full of dry ice on the sidewalk, while others have suggested filling blow-up dolls with helium and letting them drift to the heavens, but that would be a bit tasteless.

However, this might make a fantastic take on The Chipmunks return tour: the whole band sucks on helium balloons before singing each verse. They would be called:

Helium Blow Up Love Dolls, and would most likely be unshaven men dressed as hookers. Utterly hilarious, deeply creepy, and with all the sharp social commentary that sort of low-brow act is known for.

*ahem*

Since we haven't posted in a while, we'll just keep right on riffing with this sort of heretical rapture-inspired band names. By the way, did you know that the words "rapture" and the word "rape," as well as the word "raptor" (which denotes a bird of prey) all come from the Latin root "raptus" which means "to take"? It's true, look it up. We wouldn't deign to make commentary on the Church (or even a cult) but it strikes us as interesting that the second coming would have much in common with predators and sexual assault. Perhaps the Catholics are on to something...

And on that note, here's your official (if belated) Band Name Of The Day for Thursday, May 19th:

Floating Skyward, which is and can only be a Christian rock band. Or maybe a Christian new age band, with a name like that. They're nothing like Daft Punk though, that's for sure.

And finally, since it's clearly party time, we've got a 70's-tastic band name for Friday, May 20th:

The Pink Go-Go Boots, which would be a hell of a band name for an all-girl disco band, don't you think? Platforms, glitter, strobe lights, flashing dance floors and pixie sticks full of cocaine! Rapture? We've got heaven right here, baby!

Sharp Dressed Man

A certain handsome and dashing fellow who is fond of a good pint, a fast motorcycle and a dangerous smile, and who also happens to be comrade-in-arms to a good number of your tawdry hosts was approached today and asked for pocket change. In Oakland, California, this is nothing new.

What was new was that the beggar in question was wearing a fine set of tweeds complete with hat and natty, well-trimmed beard and was tapping tobacco out of his pipe, which had gone out.

There's a band name in that:

The Tweedy Beggars, which we envision to be an English-style folk-rock band in the vein of the Fairport Convention or Jethro Tull with less blues. A bit of skiffle, perhaps, or even some jazz influence, but certainly class (well, working class) and hot licks.

Medical Lovesong

It's been a few days again, and here we are, posting right as the rain comes in. Sunny days = slow blog days; rain days = blog posts. There may be a pattern there.

Anyhow, we have some fantastic Band Names Of The Day for you today! The first one comes from a mysterious and suave character we can only refer to as G., but rest assured that this person has some serious knowledge about band names.

Also, G. has studied biology, and was inspired by a recent content label from a package in the lab. This is our first Band Name Of The Day, which we hope will tide you over the weekend:

Diagnostic Specimen Packs, which would be a fantastic name for an electronica band, sort of like Daft Punk but with surgical masks instead of helmets and a creepy laboratory feel to them.

This segues nicely into our next BNOTD, which comes from a Facebook discussion about infant botulism. Apparently it can lead to "floppy baby syndrome." The discussion linked to a rather disturbing image labeled appropriately enough "how to tell if your baby is dead." The second BNOTD, for Monday, May 16th, 2011 is:

Floppy Baby! According to the FB discussion they play R&B, which we suppose stands for "something and baby." We're a little worried about what "something" is.

In The Park After Dark

As many of you will know (though perhaps few may care), we're coming up hard on May 21st, the infamous Day Of Rapture, as foretold by Holy Billboard. The Day of Rapture is one that many of the more rational readers of this blog are looking forward to, since that will be the day when the True Believers are finally lifted from their reverie and shown that utter dunces they've been. It's not going to cure of them of their duncery of course, but at least it'll give the rest of us a good reason to point and guffaw.

Anyhow, this has prompted a writer friend of ours to come up with some fantastic Band Names Of The Day, specifically for Day of Raptor. Rapport. Rapture. Ahem.

The VelociRapturs, a band of smart asses that dress in dinosaur costumes and sing hymns in horrible overwrought stylings, specifically to rub the other guys the wrong way. Who are of course:

The Rapturettes, a Vegas-style religious revival chorus line who high-kick their way into the afterlife. We suspect they may have misconstrued the term "chorus line," but that's pure conjecture.

Western Union? Not So Much!

We were looking at the lineup for this year's Outside Lands festival and arguing about the proper pronunciation of the name of the band !!!. Although we later found out that Wikipedia says it's pronounced "chk chk chk" (which is really not much better than !!!), we settled on Bang Bang Bang.

That, of course, derailed the conversation into a discussion of an internet classic, a typographical poem about a system error:

< > ! * ' ' #
^ " ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * < > ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , ,  SYSTEM HALTED

This, of course, only makes sense if you pronounce the character's names, and explained by About.com (by "sense" we mean "has a rhythm and a rhyme" and by "names" we mean "slang terms for").

However, this put us on the track of some truly outrageous and unique band names! For instance:

' ' ! * (Tick Tick Bang Splat, rockabilly)

The /!s (The Slashbangs, punk)

# to the $ (Pound To The Dollar, a rap outfit or a smooth jazz band of bankers, you choose)

The @@s (The AT-ATs, a star wars band)

144< (144 Karat, a hip-hop artist)

0=2 (Not Equal To, a political band for just about any cause)

And many, many more. Have fun, and suggest new ones in the comments!

Intergalactic Planetary

This morning some of us congregated in the Magical Snack Room at work and babbled about anything we could think of that had nothing to do with work. One of the folks brought up a recent scientific discovery of a planet that's the same size as earth, but twice as dense. That makes it nearly as dense as lead. Setting aside for a moment the idea of a lead ball larger than the earth, we need to ask the question just what this thing's made of.

Considering that the Earth is largely composed of magma (for lack of a better term, granite, that is to say, dirty silica), this beast has to have some pretty dense stuff on it to average as dense as lead. Consider how much less dense something like, say, iron is. Now consider how much more dense iron is than, say, beach sand. Or water. Or gas. Remember, a lot of planets are made of gas. To get that sort of density, it must have a lot of really heavy metals in it, many of which are highly radioactive.

Have they found... Krypton?

But more importantly, what does that mean for the music world? The band world? They've discovered a place where all walls are made of sound, the home of Ziggy Stardust, the origin point of Jefferson Starship, in short, it is a Band Name Of The Day made tangible:

Heavy Metal Planet, which can only be a metal band. A very, very heavy metal band. Unlike all the other heavy metal lite bands that sing about dragons and unicorns and Atlantis and stuff like that, this band sings about nothing less grandiose than other worlds. Other worlds made of heavy metal.

Take Five (Technically: Take Two On The Sixth)

Today we have a follow-up to yesterday, which is really entirely too appropriate for the day after Cinco de Mayo. In fact, it's even a food-themed band name! But in the interest of not having this hanging over (hah!) you, we won't bore you with details. Suffice it to say, our long scout in Fresno has struck again with some prime intel:

I am having ice cream for dinner. Not a bad band name. And in that vein... and she included a link for us.


Ice Cream For Dinner would indeed be a great band name, and a truly useful one to a broad swath of musical tastes. Alt-rock, sure! It might be a bit awkward for punk, but would be great for a cappella or a singer-songwriter duet. Second-rate for rap and heavy metal, but truly classy for an electronica outfit like Daft Punk.

She also included a link to a fabulous page full of ice cream band names! We're not not entirely certain if these are ice cream names that sound like bands, or band names based on ice cream, but hey, music and ice cream? We are so there!

The Lord Of Mayo

So today is Cinco de Mayo the umpty-up anniversary of some battle in Mexico. It's no big deal, really, in Mexico, but huge here in the US, mostly because of beer commercials. Mind you, had they won, Napoleon's army would have had a foothold in Mexico to help out the CSA in the American Civil War.

So, perhaps a Mexican-Americana Band Name would be more the appropriate today.

But what...? Got it! Montezuma's Revenge! It'd be perfect, a 1970s bluegrass band that plays big festivals and draws huge crowds and... wait, what, they exist?

Well, crap.

Never to be outdone, we've come up with a new Band Name Of The Day:

Montezuma's Hat! They play Spanish-language punk music in Mexican wrestler masks and sing about local authority.

Dragula

Skittering in just before bed time on this gorgeous Wednesday evening, we've got some Band Names from a good friend of ours who just so happens to look exactly like a miniature Hagrid. Please note that by "miniature" we mean only about 6'5".

We must also apologize for being particularly remiss about posting new and amusing band names. This has largely to do with it being gorgeous weather, so we tend to go and play outside, rather than marinading in the glow of the screen.

Anyhow, back on topic!

We have three (Three! Ah, ah, ah!) band names from Mini Hagrid today, and all three of them are classic, 80's metal band names. They are:

Edit! We Mini Hagrid's lovely spouse has chimed in with just what sort of music some of these classic 80's bands play!

Kingdomfist! A classic 80's metal band. ‎Kingdomfist does metal remix covers of classic hymns and has an album out of original tunes for the Psalms; their first hit single was "Onward Christian Soldiers".

The Cloudy Shrine! A classic 80's metal band.

And...

The Skulls Of Winter! A classic 80's metal band. The Skulls Of Winter wear black velvet Santa hats onstage.

Needles And Pins

Today we have a prickly band name for you, brought in part by Fail Blog. Fail Blog, for the uninitiated, is a wonderful platform for laughing at those less clever, lucky, well-off, intelligent or just plain fortunate as we are (we imagine), and generally revels in pain.

Here's a great example: This fine gentleman appears to have gotten a bit to familiar with a patch of jumping cholla, and inspired the horrible Band Name Of The Day of:

Cactus Attack! Cholla, as you may know, is the only cactus that is not only capable of sentient thought but also of physically leaping to attack its prey, and furthermore is naturally belligerent and mean-spirited. It never shrinks sinking it viciously barbed spines into palms of hands, soles of feet and careless elbows, but the real goal of this horrible plant is to wreak merry havoc on the seat of your pants. Or, more to the point, the contents thereof, and is more than robust enough to stab straight through denim like a needle through cheese.

Farstucker

Today we've got some rather bad band names for you, so if you're the sensitive type of reader, we suggest you cover your eyes and stop reading, right now. That means you. Yes, you! Both of you.

OK? Good.

See, we're back on the road to our usual outpost in Oakland, and we'll just pretend that's the excuse for not having posted one yesterday (really, going to go play at the climbing gym had more to do with it, but for formality's sake, we'll just pretend it was because we were traveling).

Anyhow, we got a text from base camp yesterday: New euphemism for man sauce, also possible BNotD:

Slut Dressing. Wow. Where do they come up with it? Well, to be honest, they probably find these things in a vodka bottle, but that's neither here nor there. Anyhow, Slut Dressing is a pretty obscure sort of thing, so it could be just about any sort of band, but probably not something that'd ever make it too big. Some sort of indie band, probably a local secret with a tiny but fierce following.

Anyhow, we got a follow-up message today, which happens to be the perfect reaction for the morning after seeing a Slut Dressing show:

Guilty Hate, which can be nothing but a death metal band, unless it's a goth band. Dark, to be sure, and probably loud and violent sounding.

And there you have it. Two Band Names Of The Day, for today and yesterday, both straight from the root at the Warped House.

The Zoo

For today's Band Names (yes, plural!) Of The Day, we have a whole cage full from our agent in the armpit of California Fresno!

She, apparently, was driving down an alley in a desperate bid to go somewhere, when a swarm of bees blocked off the alley and forced her to slow to a crawl while they interrogated her windshield. Just think what would have happened if she's driven a bit faster. We could have had real-world experience with our band names! Which are:

Bee Goo, which is probably more of a Nick At Night sort of band name, but might still work quite handily for something like a jam band or some sort of hipster side project. Still, not as cool as:

Suicidal Swarm! This must and can only be a powermetal band. A batch of leather-clad, strung-out screaming freaks with long black locks and guitars with spikes coming out of them. Truly hard core.

Still, this balances out the other story we received from the same deeply embedded source, who came home to find a package from something she'd ordered on Etsy. It had a stamp on the wrapper, of an owl with hearts for eyes and a love letter in its beak. Bang:

Lovesick Owl, which is a hipster band of course. A real shoegaze group, addicted to owls, passive emotions, heavy glasses and having hair in their eyes. No match for Suicidal Swarm here.

The Four Horsemen

Some days beg the question about whether there should be such a genre as musical deconstructionism. Not the snooty, philosophical sense, but in the sense of a musical theme for destruction and apocalypse.

Of course, it really doesn't hurt that we have friends like Jeff & Greg, a friend and a friend of a friend respectively, who got back to us with some suggestions which we, being enterprising bastards, combined into a band name and an album name. Because we're good like that:

Melodious Wreck, a band specializing in crunchy electric bass, steel drums (as in, oil barrels), found instruments and really loud amplifiers. Their first album will be called Of Course You Want A Blowtorch, and will most likely come with welding goggles. Or perhaps some tool of destruction, because protective gear really doesn't go with the theme here.

Little Red Riding Hood

Sometimes, you just gotta wonder at the things office workers talk about. It seems that superpowers come up a lot, and they very frequently have very little to do with office work. Invisibility seems to be a popular one, as is talking to squirrels.

Wait, what?

Yes, someone in an office building right here in Northern California suggested that talking to squirrels would be an awesome (although admittedly useless) superpower. Why? So you could raise an army of squirrels, of course!

Just like that, a Band Name was declared found, an email was fired off with all the precision of a squirrel sniper, and then, bang!, the Band Name Of The Day is:

Army of Squirrels. They're artistic side project of Army of Gnomes' singer and guitar player, and play cutesy art-rock popular by women with awkward dresses and men with even more awkward mustaches. They have a good name, and the skill, but not the style.

Te Dum, Te De

We have two band names for you today! One is strange, and the other one is, well, a bit stranger.

Story the first:

Some of us were in the kitchen, cheerfully making a delicious leek/broccoli/kale stirfry, and the comment was tossed out "you're a great kitchen gnome!" This, of course, was not acceptable to an individual of this particular stature, and the comment was returned: "Gnome? I'm like a whole army of gnomes!"And there you have it:

Army of Gnomes: a groove rock band from Kansas City, in fact, the only groove rock band in Kansas City. They're very good, and have a great name, but, well, they're in Kansas City. Or would be, if they existed. Prove us wrong, please! Create a band called Army of Gnomes in a place where they could actually go places!

Not that Kansas City is a dead end or anything, we'd never suggest that! It's just that in our experience, there's nothing there.

The second Band Name Of The Day, the Bonus Band Name Of The Day if you will, is:

The Neurotic Guinea Pigs! We're not exactly sure where this came from, but it seems to have emerged somehow from a conversation about eating frog legs, no doubt spawned by watching The Triplets Of Belleville, which is an excellent movie. This is a comedy act, of course, a sort of quirky jazz group.

I Drink Alone

So no shit, there we were (and "we" in this case not being the crew of the warped house as oh-so-frequently advertised, but just a single member surrounded by the rest of the company he works for) when word went out: 3:30 is beer:30, get your orders in!

Yup, the CEO was going for a beer run for anyone who was still left by 4:00 pm on a Friday (protip: in a startup, that can be very few!)

This, of course, inspired us for a Band Name Of The Day:

Executive Beer Run! They play all kinds of music, but specialize in quitting songs and slacker music: Bang On A Drum, It's A Five O'Clock World, Money For Nothing, stuff like that.

People Are Strange

In the words of Monty Python, the world today seems absolutely crackers*. Just today the news came through that Apple either screwed up or is using it's rather massive power for evil, and tracking iPhone users. Needless to say, this is "not cool" as the kids say, and clearly the best way to raise awareness and protest a computer company's use of your phone as a computer is create a band name for it. Or, better yet, a game!

To create your own personal Band Name Of The Day Apple Screwed Up, just select a word from each list, and combine them to form a band name!

List One (noun)
Apple
Network
Cellular
iPhone
Software
Cell Tower

List Two (bridge word)(optional)
Software
Programing
Uplink
Tracking
GPS
Administration/administrative
Nation

List Three (singular or plural)
Fiasco
Screwup
Spy
Treachery
Oops
Fuckup
Disaster
Mistake

And there you have it! You can create all sorts of neat band names this way, such as iPhone Upling Oops for a pop band, or The Cell Tower Administration for electronica (like Daft Punk). If you wanted to go a bit more punk rock with a tech twist, Apple Uplink Fuckup would be grand. Go wild, give us the best ones in the comments, or add new words to the list!


*The rest of that song is rather patently offensive, but we like it anyhow.

Splish Splash, I Was Takin' A Bath

Band names, good band names, are frequently thought up my musicians. I know, it's an odd thing, but when you think about it, it's not that odd. Consider who all has input into the naming of an album: musicians, of course, but then there's also drummers, girlfriend, managers, producers, lawyers, all sorts of people who really have no place in naming a band.

Let alone an album!

So it's with great joy that tonight we can present to you a Band Name, and an Album Name Of The Day, inspired by the famous Mr. Lee Presson of Lee Presson and the Nails, and finalized by the whistler Barnabas Truman!

See, Mr. Presson suggested creating an atmosphere of "instant fun" by putting a strobe light in the shower. The words "wet disco" were thrown about, and Mr. Truman applied the coup de gras:

Wet Disco!: the new album from Shower and the Strobe Lights! Come on, how could this NOT be an awesome, rockin' disco band! Now, given the somewhat ...interesting implications of the name itself, we suspect it's probably going to be contemporary disco and take itself a bit less serious than anything you might have seen in a John Travolta movie.

On a slightly more serious note, we're not aware of any currently available recordings by Truman, but Presson and his band The Nails have quite a collection of excellent swing and dance music which is, if we're not much mistaken, available on their website and on the iTunes store (but we recommend the website, because the band gets a bigger cut and we want them to keep making music). We've got all their albums and play them a lot.

Komputerwelt

Keeping a blog of fresh, unused band names is strange- some days, it just happens on its own, we've got a name (or five!) and can't wait to post the damn thing, and other days, we've got nothing. We'll either break our brains to come up with something awesome, or we'll go back to the file (which is getting thin, by the way! Send us more please!), or sometimes we just say "fuck it," and don't bother for a day.

Then there are days like today, where we really should post one, and we know there's something great out there, we just haven't found it yet. Sure enough, a text came in from some of our deep scouts in Sacramento. It seems the usual suspects had been discussing how humanity is going down the drain (read: cyborgism, genetic engineering, and other cool stuff), when someone said it was just a mater of time before we were all over run by... well, by our Band Name Of The Day:

Cybernetic Ligers, which can only be a nerd-core band. Because, really, who else knows what ligers are? OK, we do, and the deep scouts do, but that's besides the point. The Cybernetic Ligers probably have created an entire cover album of the Robocop soundtrack, done on synthesizers and ukeleles.

Bigger Harder Faster Stronger

So there we* were, careening past a nasty bit of construction on the highway 92 flyover in the Bay Area, and thinking about how there hadn't been a band name posted in a whole 24 hours. It being Friday, this clearly had to be a good one, but what?

Then, there in the middle of the construction, perched on a pile of earth like a rusting crown upon a crumbling king, was a filthy, ancient bulldozer. And bang! There was our Band Name Of The Day:

Post Industrial Noise Machine! This is, by the very nature of the name, defined as a contemporary (post-industrial) noise band with a heavy elecronica influence. Imagine, if you will, a really, really crunchy Daft Punk. Yeah, sort of like that, with some of Pink Floyd's "Welcome To The Machine" undertone noises, and perhaps a touch of Rammstein's heavy guitar work layered over a bleeding edge, ultra-contemporary futuristic sound.



*"we" in this case being just one of us.

Tequila!

Well, perhaps not tequila just yet, but it's certainly spring time, and that invariably leads into summer. Summer, when the days are long and the nights are warm, the drinks cool and the bars open late. We like summer here at BNOTD, and not just because we're all raging alcoholics.

Nevertheless, we have had a suggestion for a band name from a good friend of ours, who came up with it based on one of our favorite summer pastimes. She suggested that "Tuesday Night Mojitos" would make a good band name. She's right but something seemed not quite right, so the band name got put in the file for a while as we carefully considered this conundrum. On the one hand- it's a good name and with a wonderful homage. On the other, our guts kept whispering that it could be improved somehow.

If there's one thing we know, it's to listen to our guts when there's alcohol involved. The guts were right, of course- it was an imperfect band name because it's limiting! No good band name limits you to drinking one night a week! So ladies and gentlemen, with a slight tweak and a hefty apology to Ms. K. K., we present to you the Band Name Of The Day for Thursday, April 14th:

Mojito Nights, which could be just about anything with a hefty Latin flare. We see this as a younger, sexier version of the Buena Vista Social Club, a band that would still play all night, but then doesn't spend the wee morning just sitting in cafes or taking a nostalgic walk through Havana.

Once a good thing gets rolling, however, it rarely stops. Naturally, we had to push the envelope and see if we could make this band name even less limiting by changing it to The Drinks. Alas, it looks like that's already taken, and The Drinks are, in fact, a California rock band signed to the Pure Greed label. So much for The Drinks.

Face Come Out Of The Rain

Spring has definitely hit California. We know this because everyone's blowing their noses and dabbing at oozing tear ducts as plants attempt to procreate in our sinuses. Ah, seasonal allergies!

An allergy is defined as " having an allergy or peculiar or excessive susceptibility (especially to a specific factor)" by Princeton's WordNet. They go on to give the example of being "hypersensitive to pollen," which exactly what's going on.

In short, pollen particles are exploding from flowers, wafting through the air, and settling gingerly in your sinuses. If you're a normal human being, your body goes "huh, that's a pollen particle. That shouldn't be there. We'll just gently increase mucus creation until we blow our nose and the pollen particle gets expelled." If, however, you're as allergic as several members of the weird bunch responsible for this blog, your body's reaction goes more along the lines of "OH HOLY JESUS THERE'S TREE SPERM IN MY NOSE! WE MUST FLOOD THE AREA WITH HISTAMINES AND BLAST THE PARTICLE TO KINGDOM COME WITH A VERITABLE SNOT EXPLOSION!! AND THEN KEEP DOING IT JUST TO BE SAFE! AND THEN ADD MORE SNOT TO BLAST AWAY THE SNOT!" Spring making your eyes itch and your nose runn? Yup, that's allergies.

See, that's really all that pollen is. Tree sperm. Which means that the trees are... wait for it... yes. Exactly.

And the Band Name Of The Day is:

Tree Bukake. No, we're not explaining that. You can look it up. But not at work. And make sure your child filters are off.

A Wim Ba We A Wim Ba We

Sometimes, we have a funny story that leads up to a band name, and some days we have a really boring or idiotic story that leads up to a kick-ass band name.

Today is the second kind.

See, we were crashed out on the couch after a tasty dinner (what we had is immaterial, but suffice it to say that it was fantastic) and watching Secondhand Lions, which is a truly great movie. I mean: lions, sword fights, pesky relatives, the French foreign legion, crotchety old Texans, biplanes, helicopters, shotgun fishing, this film's got it all! But really, the neat stuff was all happening on the screen and really had very little to do with the people lolling on the couch in a food coma. But then! Inspiration struck, and we had the Band Name Of The Day:

Lions In The Cornfield! This needs to be a soul band, or maybe a southern blues band. Hell, you could swing it as an African spirituals band, if you wanted to! In any case, it'd be a great name for any body doing that sort of rhythmic soul sound, marrying the deep south back to the African roots both in name and philosophy.

Or you could make it a self-conscious reggae band from Kansas, but that just wouldn't be nearly as fun, would it?

Inna Gadda Da Vida, Baby!

Sometimes, we find band names in the weirdest of places. Sometimes (OK, frequently) those band names come out of mocking people. Today, both are the case.

See, first we were mocking hipsters and hippies and other holier-than-though cultural crusaders. This is hardly unusual for us, but it set the stage very nicely. Then, someone brought up Gwyneth Paltrow. Ms Paltrow, despite her occasionally excellent acting, has been a favorite bashing target for years due her her sweet but generally bumbling nature which tends to put her at odds with anyone with more cynicism than targets.

Specifically, that person linked to a review of Paltrow's cookbook. Wow, does that woman come off as clueless and entitled! Granted, through some no doubt cherry-picked quotes, but still. That's all beside the point, though, because she gave us an awesome Band Name Of The Day:

Hippie Shame Spiral! Really, this is a great band name! It combines an iconic cultural movement, a visceral emotion anyone is familiar with (we less than some perhaps), and that holiest of holy weird new-age quasi-religious shapes, the spiral! Ideally, we see this as a band of repressed hippies-in-recovery trying desperately to atone for their sins at the last Phish concert while still hoping to get a slice of the rock and roll pie. Which would be a good band name in and of itself.

The saddest thing about all this, however, is that Blogger's/Blogspot.com's spell check accepted "Phish" without so much as a squawk. Tells you who runs those companies.

The Four Horsemen

It's been a fat day here in BNOTD Land.

First, we got a great link to an article which a crack journalist investigates how difficult it is to come up with original band names and how weird they end up being (Crushed Bunny being the one they used as an example).

Then, in a completely unrelated incident, we got a whole list of band names from that person's husband, who writes:

Random band names, courtesy of Dwarf Fortress's random fortress name generator:

Staffbolt
Mansionvoices
Rootbridge
The Rough Authors
Praisedhall
Crystaltalked
Chapelclasped
Diamond Lens
The City of Radiance

We're no great players of Dwarf Fortress here, but we do recognize good band names when we see them! Most of these would, of course, make great fantasy metal names, but The Rough Author would be great for a literary band of some genre (cowboy music, maybe? They close each show with the Lone Ranger theme from the old radio series...), and of course The Diamond Lens would be a great name for a steampunk band, an acid jazz ensemble, an electronica band like, say, Daft Punk, just about anything really.

But the true Band Name Of The Day, picked for true crusty creep-factor, comes from a friend of ours who's a docent, currently at Alcatraz (we think). She suggests:

Fistulous Withers, which just sounds like some sort of horrific heavy metal band. Then we asked where in God's name that came from, and she told us. We'll do you the favor and not describe it here.

The Timewarp

Whoah, how did it become Tuesday already? Granted, we're hardly fantastic about getting stuff posted up here every single day, but we don't generally go more than a day or two without delivering something to the slavering masses.

(bnotd monday: the slavering masses, a group of slavic working-class rockers. yeah, we've got nothing today)(we'll get to sunday later)

Anyhow, Saturday involved, um, not much really. Sunday involved more not much, and then a bit of a reunion with some of the Warped House. While good friends, those reuniting never actually lived in the house at the same time. Nevertheless, good times were had, drinks were drunk, and games were played- specifically, and interesting thing called Arkham Horror. It's a long, confusing, complicated game taking place entirely within the Lovecraft-brand of warped horror, and this leads us to the BNOTD for Sunday night:

Arkham Bafflement, which is naturally a Steampunk band (like Abney Park, but not much like Daft Punk), complete with ruffled shirts and strangely glazed looks.

Anyhow, moving right along into Monday, we had:

The Slavering Masses, the aforementioned band of immigrant rock and roll, which leaves us with today.

Today. Ah, yes, today. See, one of the BNOTD  staff (in fact, the one writing this post) has a degree in English (Ed: this is why I do all the writing). Every time said English major makes any sort of typo, the gang (and we do mean "gang!") of friends jumps all over him in gibbering glee to point out the mistake. Occasionally, this makes for truly epic band names. Like today:

Peace Corpse, which is a hoodoo-influenced hippie band from New Orleans. They're like the Grateful Dead, but a bit more dead than grateful.

Farstucker

Some days, we just need to be rude here on Band Name Of The Day. Not because we're actively trying to promote an atmosphere of hostility, or of tasteless jerkiness, but just because that's the sort of folks we are.

Not everyone in this world is squeaky clean, thoughtful and believes that the way to a better planet is by offending nobody. Some of us know that it's important to get along with our fellow humans, but it's also important to push the envelope a bit, to open people's minds to other options. Put enough ideas in someone's head, and their mind will expand whether they like it or not. All of a sudden, things that used to be utterly alien to them and shocked them nigh unto death are suddenly just a bit eccentric. Hell, look at earrings! It used to be that only sailors and carnies wore an earring, but these days nobody blinks if a man's got a brass hoop through his earlobe.

We're not the only people in the world who think like, this, and this leads us to our Band Name Of The Day:

Shredded Clitoris, which is an all-grrl gutter punk group from nitty gritty old London. They know that the world benefits from the occasional shock, and that the mere mention of things will bring them into the mainstream. So far from being some sort of ultra violent, misogynistic bunch of sociopathic sadists, the members of this band are loud, screeching, feminists who change the world in a better way inch by painful inch.

Finally, we'd like to close by saying that this band name was proposed to us by a regular reader who has asked to remain anonymous. Nevertheless, we'd like to say thank you for a chance to spout off a bit of our immature amateur philosophy.

No More Mr. Clean

Well, ladies and gentlemen of the press, it's another Friday night, and that means it's time to find a bar clean the house to prepare for the weekend! We're not huge fans of cleaning here at Band Name Of The Day, although we fully admit to the usefulness of clean sheets, especially vis a vis "editing" the cleanliness of said sheets.

*ahem*

Anyhow, we've got another BNOTD out of Oakland today, courtesy of the housemate of yesterday's BNOTD! This one, oddly enough, came about at her job at a major national corporation. Not the sort of thing that would normally condone this blog, but it seems the employees have been enjoying it in a sort of quiet revolt. We approve of this. They came up with:

Lysol Bomb. They add that it's Either a grunge band, or little old lady christian ballad folk rock. We're not sure about that, but this is another one of those great band names that hasn't been taken*, so please, feel free to use it! In fact, if you do, we'll absolutely link to you!


*as far as we know, and we know only what we can establish with less than ten seconds worth of googling.

A-wooooooooooooooooooooo!

Band Name Of The Day coming in from Oakland, California, with a wicked sense of the macabre humor:

Gingerbread Massacre! We have no idea what sort of music they play. Neither does the audience. Neither do they. Every set and every song is different. They'll play Tejano one minute, and classical string quartets the next. A few weeks later, they'll do the same songs, but this time it'll be heavy metal and jug band style. Loose cannons to the max.

The Band Was Playin' Live Music

No apologies tonight. A confession, perhaps: this band name could really have gone up earlier, especially after the slacking of the past few days, but then again it really couldn't have. See, BNOTD was off at (*gasp!*) a live concert! That's right, we were off seeing Karen Savoca and Pete Heitzman doing their thing at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. And wow, can they bring down the house! Seriously, with nothing more than a conga, an (admittedly excellently played) blues guitar and an impressive set of pipes, these two put on one of the best concerts in years. Only advice we've got: next time, scrub the opening band and play a double set. The opening act was fantastic, no doubt about it, but not even remotely in the same caliber.

Anyhow, you'll be wanting a band name, you greedy beggars. Since the evening's entertainment had a distinct Southern flavor to it, ranging from flat-out country (opening act) to the awesome blues and floating soul vocals of Karen and Pete, we'll reach back to a band name we came up with all home-grown in the Warped House Gang:

The Swamp Trolls. These guys are straight-up southern rockabilly, a little bit country and a whole lot of soul, sour-mash whiskey and clothesline guitar strings. They play the old songs like they're new again, what Creedence Clearwater Revival could have been if they hadn't been from San Francisco and hadn't had more than three teeth in the band all together. They'll out sing you, out dance you and drink you under the table all in one evening.

The Psycho Circus

Well, we've been busy lately, and it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, but we're still cramming in band names whenever we can! In fact, there had been rumblings of just throwing in the towel, giving in to the lord ennui (now there's a band name for you!) as it were, when we got some more awesome submissions, and really, we just can't resist that. So BNOTD lives to amuse another day!

First, we have one from Oakland, with some assistance from a San Mateo start up company and a new mother in Davis. Suffice it to say that it's been a long day, but it's finally lead to our first Band Name Of The Day:


Babycrack! Babycrack! is a hard-hitting electronica/punk rock hybrid band, the sort of thing that sounds like, well, music played by people who thought Babycrack! would be a good name.

And then we have a submission from a dear friend of ours, a frequent guest of the warped house in Davis, who came in out of the blue with: How do we submit band names...? 'Cause I think "The Clown Slappers" rocks. She's  right, of course, it's a good question. But first, the band name:

The Clown Slappers are are dirty, grungy sort of string band outfit, a bit more folk than jazz, and a bit more dirt than anything else.

Good questions deserve answering: You're welcome to submit band names in the comments forum attached to this blog, via Facebook to anyone associated with the blog, via email if you know it... really, there's no formal submission process, but it ain't hard to figure out.

Walk Around And Catch The Thrill Of Streets We Call The Zoo

So, you might recall a passing comment we made back on Thursday about a band name from a manager. Specifically, this fine gentleman had been off in Africa, and brought back souvenirs, including canned zebra and wildebeest meat.

Well, completely ignoring that (method of preservation) + (exotic animal) + (the word "meat") = awesome band name, the comment was made that canned wildebeest meat as much more "anonymous" than canned zebra meat. And... Band Name:

Anonymous Wildebeest! Think swing with an African beat to it, a funky jazz combo like you'd find in New Orleans in the Jamaican block.