Naming a band is an act of concentrated creative expression. Square Pig in a Round Hole exists to reward five favorite band names each week. Winners are (usually) listed alphabetically. Selection is wholly unscientific and subject to whim, with a bias toward wordplay, humor, and local flavor. In most cases, I won’t know anything about the bands at the time of selection. Thanks to the Seattle Times club listings for abundant source material!
How better to see out 2016 than with a celebration of band names? In a year that seemed to have no end of bad news*, this weekly roundup of creative thought in the local music scene gave me something to smile about on a regular basis. Here, then, are the final five of 2016, with a bonus special mention.
Subtract a tw0-letter prefix from a common, sputtered complaint to create an oxymoron, a classic form of band name.
I’m picturing a sober business firm founded 1916 by Mr. J. J. Laughing, a man who never smiled.
The funniest part of this is imagining a clothed walrus.
Wow, that’s some resolution!
As a science-fiction writer, I’ve spent a certain amount of time thinking about long space journeys and how to make them tolerable and cost effective. We throw around words like hibernation, statis, hypersleep. This is a blunter way to put it.
Bonus special mention:
I featured this band exactly two years ago, in my last post of 2014. At that time, I wrote: “A simple and obvious play on the It Gets Better campaign, but so punk and so often true.” Now it looks like an honest prediction of how 2017 might compare to 2016. Please, no.
*I can’t be too down on a year that brought my first published novel into the world, but I know a lot of people who can’t wait to see 2016 gone. Seriously, though, if you believe in Truth, Justice, Rock & Roll, check out The Gospel According to St Rage.
Karen Eisenbrey 