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.