{"id":172,"date":"2009-01-21T17:54:26","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T17:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp\/?p=172"},"modified":"2009-01-21T17:54:26","modified_gmt":"2009-01-21T17:54:26","slug":"by_any_other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/2009\/01\/by_any_other\/","title":{"rendered":"By any other"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a year and a half ago, one of my friends from college decided he was going to drop out of his Ph.D program at Columbia and start a band. Thus began a fairly insufferable period of friendship during which everything he encountered was a potential band name. We were at his parents’ house for a mutual friend’s wedding and his mom said something about packing up a porcelain horse carefully: “Porcelain Horse!!” he blurted. “That’s an awesome name for a band.” I believe another name possibility was “Rocket Ship” (??) and yet another was “Jungle Mode” (“The best band names are the stupid ones, Amanda. Like Radiohead.” Oh, kay.)<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s because I’ve had this evening marked in my Entourage calendar as LOST COMES BACK for the past 9 months, or perhaps for another reason, but this Flavorpill listing<\/a> for a band called Previously on Lost<\/a> caught my eye. They have a fairly prestigious quote sheet,<\/p>\n

“Great job y’all, its a good treble vocal sound on that, and there’s a
\nlot of depth to that production!” – Michael Emerson of LOST<\/p>\n

“It was like seeing the Beatles for the first time!” – A nice lady at the Kennedy Center<\/p>\n

“The songs are hilarious and cool, somewhat like a frantic mash of
\nFrank Zappa and Flaming Lips with a dose of old Disney musicals for
\ngood measure.” – Wired.com <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

…and 1566 friends, including John Locke, Matthew Fox, and Tom. The song (the single<\/i>?) “The Island Won’t Let You Die” has 22,701 plays. Fair enough, Previously on Lost. Fair enough.<\/p>\n

Another band name that caught my attention recently was Trampled by Turtles<\/a>; no reason, really, it’s just appealing to me. Of course there’s a special place in my heart for Alarm Will Sound<\/a>; any ensemble I’m forced to think about every time I exit the subway did a darn good job picking a name. <\/p>\n

\"Alarm-Will-Sound.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

What’s the point of band and ensemble names? We rarely know what they mean, or where they came from, so what is the artistic effect or marketing purpose? Hard-hitting investigative reporter that I am, I put my iPod on shuffle, and here were the first five band names that popped up:<\/p>\n

Supergrass<\/b><\/p>\n

Gorillaz<\/b><\/p>\n

(Hair<\/i> original Broadway cast recording…what a nerd)<\/p>\n

The Jealous Girlfriends<\/b><\/p>\n

Yo La Tengo<\/b> <\/p>\n

(Kathleen Edwards)<\/p>\n

White Rabbits<\/b><\/p>\n

I like all those bands, but out of the five, I only know where Yo La Tengo’s name comes from (c.f. Wikipedia<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Is the point of a name to get your attention or to keep your attention? That is, should a name be eye-catching or memorable? Must the name be clever – Alarm Will Sound – or can it simply invoke something that the group hopes to achieve musically – The Emerson String Quartet, for example? Should there be a eureka moment involved that makes for interview material – “My mom was packing up a porcelain horse…” – or can it be as simple as “we just thought the name fit”? How necessary is accurate advertising? Previously on Lost is…exactly what you think it is. Supergrass? Perhaps less so.<\/p>\n

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but am interested in a discussion: how important have names been in the success or failure of classical ensembles (and bands, for that matter) in the past, and are names increasingly or decreasingly effective as the music industry changes?  <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a year and a half ago, one of my friends from college decided he was going to drop out of his Ph.D program at Columbia and start a band. Thus began a fairly insufferable period of friendship during which everything he encountered was a potential band name. We were at his parents’ house for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}