Down There At The Pawn Shop

Well, it's been a slow day in the office. Worked some customer support, wrote some documentation, got in a nerf war, that sort of thing.

And here is the Band Name Of The Day, courtesy of of a friend, officemate and manager:

Dimestore Muse! This is the sort of band we could see playing contemporary folk with a country twist, a sort of San Francisco jug band, the kind that plays a washtub bass, drinks rye whiskey on the rocks and has a Facebook page.

And then, because one is never enough, here's the Bonus Band Name Of The Day:

Chocolate Orange, in honor of the confection powering the blog(ger) today. Chocolate Orange is probably a precise down-tempo electronica duo, sort of like Daft Punk on downers.

Move It On Back, Move It On Back

So, maybe you remember a couple of days ago when Brian gave us a couple of choice band names from his list? Well, ladies and gentlemen, he's gone and posted the whole list on his blog for your enjoyment! And let us be the first to say that there are some choice names there! Not all entirely work-safe, but screw it, life ain't work safe! It's not like he's going around with anything nearly as bad as these guys on his list. And they actually exist!

And on that note, a bit of philosophy...

Here at Band Name Of The Day, we do try very hard not to post any names that are or have been used by actual people in actual bands, or in any way publicized prior to this. In addition to being worth a chuckle or two (or significantly more, in the case of Brian's list!), we sincerely wish to create a database of sorts where newly forming bands can come to be inspired and perhaps find a band name. Maybe they're arguing about whether to go by The Marshmallow Burglars or The Sewing Machines (both are up for grabs, by the way), or perhaps they're particularly uninspired (although if you can't even think of a band name, you'd better be an all-instrumental group). Maybe they're just plain lazy, or they don't speak English. Whatever the reason, these are available free and clear. You don't even have to tell us if you use one, although we'd sure appreciate it.

Please note, however, that when we say things like "we try very hard not to post any names that are or have been used," what we mean is "we thought about it for thirty seconds and couldn't think of anyone who's used it before and declared it fair game." We strongly recommend googling the hell out of anything here to make sure it didn't show up in the footnotes of some sleazy sci-fi book that flopped back in the seventies. Can't have you guys getting sued.

Anyhow, the Band Names Of The Day (for there will be two, just in case we don't make it back to a computer in time for tomorrow) come to us out of the deepest pits of the Corporate World.

Literally. The person who came up with them works in a basement in San Francisco.

She says:

I’m not certain what was actually said but it had to do with too many files on a server – such as an embarrassment of riches (we are rich in files, although embarrassing we don’t know what they are all for!)

An Embarrassment Of Witches! Clearly, this will be an emo band. Who else would call themselves embarrassed? Yeah, OK, it could also be a neopagan choral group, but those are just a bit too weird even for San Francisco. Berkeley, maybe.

And hey, look at that, we even have a bonus for you! The same lovely source who gave us An Embarrassment Of Witches also turned us on to the concept that every corporate project will have a certain amount of unavoidable, essential mayhem. Bang:

Essential Mayhem, the latest heavy metal band from Chicago, headlining tonight with An Embarrassment Of Witches!

They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Ha!

Hey, folks, it's late, and things are busy and all that, so we're relying on you folks for Band Name(s) Of The Day(s).

Here's a great one from our friend who works in a nursery. I'll let her tell it in her own words...

Alright here's the backstory.  I'll leave it to you to make it sound better, if you like.

Near the end of a long day at work, the other two folks in my department and I were out planning the design of our outside display area.  We were talking about how to display our coco baskets (metal baskets lined with coconut fiber).  I threw out the idea of mounting them on the wall and using artificial plants to make them pretty, and Scott said something about getting defective/broken toys from his mom's store (she has a toy store), which I didn't really get at first, until he said monkey.

So we started talking about building a faux coconut palm tree with a few coconuts hanging from it, and maybe even a few monkeys.  Explaining this to the owner "I'm going to see if my mom might have some defective monkeys, or something."

I really wanted to say "Band name of the day!", but realized my co-workers wouldn't understand.

There you go.  The Defective Monkeys.

The Defective Monkeys, a pop-punk band, probably out of Orange County. Or they could be a swing band from New York, or the house band of an insane asylum. Anything, really, and therein lies the awesome.

And now, to bed.

Take It To The Limit

Ladies and Gents, today we busted 500 pageviews. Ah, feel the pride flowing like cheap whiskey at an Irish funeral!

Anyhow, enough boasting, let's have some band names! And today, we have a smorgasbord, courtesy of a dear friend who once rescued us after we got a 2x4 plank through the windshield, but that's a different story.

Anyhow, this fantastic gent also comes up with band names, and writes:

I have a list somewhere of funny band names I came up with awhile back. My favorites were

 Ass Full Of Planets... This is, of course, a punk band. It might be made up of one of those scientists who study planets. Planetologists or something, there's a word for it, but who can ever remember it? Anyhow, their biggest hit is probably covering TMBG's "The Sun (is A Mass of Incandescent Gas)."

Unaided Volcano Insertion... We really don't know what to make of this one. Sorry, pal, you're on your own here. Readers, any idea what sort of outfit would call themselves Unaided Volcano Insertion?

and 700 Pounds Of Uncooked Beef.  This would probably be a good old-fashioned hard rock outfit, three guitars, drums and a singer who really shouldn't be allowed in public without a shirt on.

Thanks for the great band names, amigo, and remember folks- keep 'em coming! In fact, if you include a link to a web page, blog, MyFace account or online porn library, we'll happily link back to you!

Good Day Sunshine

Yesterday was a gorgeous day in Oakland, California. We lazed about, some of us road tripped out to Concord to pick up a book shelf (and subsequently spent several hours amending that damn shelf to where we could follow the included instructions), other stayed home and created posters for the EBBC. In the evening, we all went out for some awesome sushi and then the local dive bar (tag line: Good Spirits for Bad People. We'll happily whore ourselves out give props to any establishment with that sort of humor).

In addition to (or possibly because of) all the swearing and drinking, the day was rife with misunderstandings. Somebody said something. Somebody else said "what? Finger squirrels?" "No, no, finger soreness!"

And so on and so forth. Naturally, finger squirrels became a thing, and the misunderstandings compounded until we got the Band Name Of The Day, which was:

The Red Felt Finger Squirrels! They play skiffle and wear silly costumes. Also, look for red felt finger squirrels on Etsy in the near future. I'm certain they'll appear.

Which leaves us wanting a BNOTD today, but since it's early yet and the most exciting thing we've done is swear at a shelf, we'll have to look to our backlog.

Ah, here's one! Fittingly enough, it was also the product of a misunderstanding (and probably drinking- I don't remember much about how it came to be), but it's much better than The Damn Bookshelves. No, no, this is:

Embezzled By Nuns, a contemporary art-rock band the likes of which the world has never seen. They've got a rabid cult following of music theorists and pretentious youngsters, and are beloved by DJs and loathed by record company execs everywhere for their wicked way with words and general orneriness with mere mortals.

So Take A Letter, Maria

Good Evening, and Happy Friday!

Here at BNOTD we've recently passed two three important milestones , and are rapidly approaching a fourth.

The first one we noticed, was that we now have a follower. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mark Ungar is our first follower on Blogger! This is how that whole viral thing works, so it's up to you guys to follow us, pass us along to your friends, suggest band names, and generally make a ruckus in favor of your favor band of miscreants*.

The second milestone is that today is the first day we've gotten the "stats" section of BlogSpot to work. Booya!

The third is that a few days ago we passed 30 posts (this is #34), in about 43 days. So not quite a post a day, but I suspect a bit more than a Band Name per day, on average. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go back through all the posts, tally up the total number of band names, divide by days the blog was active (first post: December 6th), and post a comment with the total number of names, total days, and band names per day average.

And the fourth is that we're coming up hard on 500 hits (468 as of now). That's a bit over 10 hits a day, which isn't too shabby for something like this. So thanks!

Anyhow, we'd like to take the occasional bit of time to chat about what this blog's all about sometime in the relatively near future. That won't happen tonight, but look for it. We promise it'll be brief. We'll also incorporate some other stuff, like links to bands and musicians, important, amusing to strange music and band news, reader commentary, stuff like that.

So please, don't hesitate to contact us with, well, just about anything, really. We'll be polite, and we promise to answer. Well, we'll answer.

And so, without further ado, the Band Name Of The Day!

So no shit, there we were, two of us in the kitchen working on tiger prawn pasta thing that smells absolutely delicious and the third sitting on the settee and masturbating over thinking about blog statistics, when there was a scrabbling and the kitchen door started flapping back and forth. Perched on top of the door, was Willie the ninja cat. He has leaped a good five vertical feet from the window sill to the top of the door, and was now balanced on it.

From there, he made is way onto the top of the door frame, and then the windows frames, so so halfway around the room. At this point, his mother owner charged in with the cat wetterizer, which dear, sweet, innocent Willie the Ninja Cat instantly recognized, and he moonwalked his way backwards around all the window frames, and then swan-dove onto the couch.

The Moonwalkin' Kats, which is naturally one hell of a swing band.

And with that, we'd like to thank you all for reading, exhort you to pass on the URL to whoever you think would enjoy it, and ping us back whenever you want. After a month we're only enjoying this more and more, and very much plan to keep it up.

Cheers,

-The Band Name Of Day Blog Staff Writer Person Thing











*in the interest of full disclosure, it should probably be noted that your current narrator is technically the only person who's been actually writing these damn posts, so we might slip into the first person at some point. We apologize for this. However, first person or not, this the inception of this blog was very much a group effort, and that continues as we take Band Name Of The Day submissions from you and of course from the various cofounders. Including this one here.

So Why Don't You Slide?

Ah, yes, it's starting to pick up speed! It's the course of any blog, band, fad, person, what have you- they start small, then other people start to contribute, and it gather speed. And speed! And SPEED!

*ahem*

Anyhow, we're stockpiling an increasing (slowly) list of band names of potential future band names, and it's thanks readers like you.

Lately, a lot of those readers have been musicians, which is awesome. Today, one of those musicians gave us:

The Snodules! This is a rare and fantastic BNOTD because it's so fantastically versatile. The Snodules could be a skiffle band, a jazz band, a punk band, a folk band, a nerdcore band (especially if they became S-Nodule), a... well, ok, it would be lousy for a hardcore rap outfit, but it'd be great for folk, swing, country, spoken word (in an ironic sense), a capella, even a broadway revue!