Square Pig in a Round Hole-December 23, 2017

· 1 Comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

Christmas, Winter Solstice, and Star Wars all teach the same thing: darkness will not overcome the light. To quote Rose in The Last Jedi, “It’s not always about fighting what you hate; it’s about saving what you love.” Music is always part of that. May we continue to sing out, and to name our bands as well as these:

Age of Fiction

The storytellers will rise at last.

Meanderthals

Just us cave people out for a directionless stroll.

Not Til Tomorrow

Answer to “When can we hang our stockings?” We’ll open presents the day after that.

Splitting Silence

When it’s so quiet, your own thoughts are deafening.

Steel Beans

Structural legumes: no amount of soaking will soften them enough to eat, but they do hold their shape.

Square Pig in a Round Hole-December 16, 2017

· Leave a comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

At this dark time of year, the light of creativity is a gift. There was a lot to be found in the club listings this week; these five shone brightest:

Breakneck Love

A thrilling and dangerous romance.

Dr. Hellno and the Yesmen

Classic X and the Y structure in perfect balance.

Hi Crime

It’s a lot less threatening spelled this way.

In Aisle Eight

Cleanup? Meltdown? Fight? Breakneck romance? The setting is provided. Imagine the story.

Necronomidol

For that time of month when you’re dead.

Square Pig in a Round Hole-December 9, 2017

· Leave a comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

It’s a cold and sunny day in Seattle, now that the fog has burned off. Enjoy it while you can; it’ll be dark before you know it! And yet hours to go before the music starts. While you wait, consider these fine band names:

Figure It Out

A ready answer to any question that begins “How do I . . .?”

The Oxford Coma

As a grammar/punctuation nerd of long standing, I can’t pass this one up. When the struggle with how to punctuate a series causes the brain to shut down. (Would like to see them on a bill with past honoree Iffy Comma, also playing this week.)

Pretty Gritty

I like the near rhyme of seeming opposites. There is beauty in the unscrubbed. (Would like to see them on a bill with past honoree Grubby Sweetheart, also playing this week.)

Sundressed

It isn’t really the season for sundresses or to be dressed in nothing but sunlight or to eat plain salad on the patio, but I did see someone this morning walking barefoot around Green Lake.

Super Saturated Sugar Strings

A fun science experiment that by happy chance alliterates. It also sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon about a team of candy-colored violinists with uncanny powers.

 

Square Pig in a Round Hole-December 2, 2017

· Leave a comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

At last, it is no longer too early for Christmas music and holiday decorations. If you’re already stressing about gifts, don’t. Get everybody music by your favorite local bands or books by your favorite local authors. And if you need a suggestion, I’m not above recommending my own garage-rock fairy tale, The Gospel According to St Rage. Now that’s out of the way, we can get on with the celebration of band names!

BFFs Forever and Ever Amen

An abbreviation turns into a redundancy turns into a prayer. These best friends are emphatically BEST.

Starcrawler

Either the slowest spaceship, or Skywalker’s daycare nickname, before he could walk.

Surf the Pines

A beautiful, impossible dream born of camping in the piney woods where the wind in the trees sounds like the ocean’s roar.

A View of the Earth from the Moon

When you need perspective. (I have a personal fondness for extra-long band names, especially when they reference an image I have loved for most of my life.)

White Shark Cafe

AKA the beach on Amity Island on the 4th of July. (Actually a region of the Pacific, but whatever. Apparently even sharks need a place to hang out and work on their novels.)

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 25, 2017

· Leave a comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

If you’re over your food coma and down from your shopping binge, let’s get back to the business of celebrating bands and their names. There’s still lots of weekend in which to enjoy some live music!

BoobooLaLa

Endearing either as baby talk or backing vocals.

Dark Time Sunshine

At the dark end of the year, remember to treasure those sun breaks.

Hairstorm

Fun and energetic, and maybe a little bit dangerous. I dare you to come up with a more fitting name for an ’80s hair-rock tribute band.

I Wish I Was a Punk Band

I love that the wish is not to be IN a punk band, but to BE a punk band. That would certainly simplify rehearsal scheduling.

Odyssian Monday

Some weeks are like that: you get back to work, take one look at your inbox, and assume it will be ten years before you see your home again. (I can’t find any online presence for a band of this name, so it’s possible this was an error in the club listings and they actually meant Odyssian.)

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 18, 2017

· Leave a comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

As we approach Thanksgiving week, I’m grateful for the continued vitality of the literary genre Band Names. Every week since November 6, 2010, I’ve had at least five things to smile about, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Keep up the good work!

In the Company of Serpents

“Why’d it have to be snakes?” Also pleased to discover it’s a two-piece, my personal favorite size of band.

Leftover Pie

This one might be better suited to the weekend after Thanksgiving. There is comfort in knowing the goodness continues.

Nekro Drunkz

I’m enjoying the humorously metal spelling, as well as the dark-magic way of expressing how wasted a group is.

Porch Cat

Nothing more chill than a cat on its own porch. I always offer greetings.

SAINT WKND

Blessed are the days off. (As the instigator of the fiction and music project St Rage, I’m happy to give props to a fellow saint.)

 

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 11, 2017

· Leave a comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

I spent this morning sharing the good news of truth, justice, rock & roll with a book club that kindly accepted my offer to meet with them if they wanted to read my book, The Gospel According to St Rage. For most of us in the arts, there is very little fortune or glory; there is only, sometimes, connecting with an audience. And that is a very good thing. So please, read indie authors and write reviews; buy your friends’ bands’ records; go to a show, pay the cover,  and cheer for the musicians, whoever they are. Maybe one of these:

The Bang-up Jobs

Rarely seen in the plural, but a perfect fit for garage punk, at least from a drummer’s point of view.

Elbow

I’ve long been a fan of band names taken from single body parts. Elbow has always struck me as a funny word (and even contains the proverbial funny bone). How would we play most instruments without it?

MurderCycle

Not even a helmet will save you.

Suitcase

Here’s another for that special category of bands named for hand luggage. Also includes Square Pig faves Pouch and my own erstwhile folk project, Train Case.

Yogurt Brain

Insult, or enhanced intelligence from eating the latest superfood?

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 4, 2017

· Leave a comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

Don’t forget: tonight is that great night when you can stay out till 2 am and still be home by 1. If you don’t set your clock back, you run the risk of showing up an hour early for church tomorrow! Side benefit: it’s a great opportunity to join the choir. Meanwhile, it’s always a good time for band names:

Dark Matter Noise

We can’t see it but the signal gets through loud and clear.

Fuzz Mutt

So much to like: two monosyllables with a repeated vowel; two four-letter words each with a double consonant; the way it makes perfect sense as a lovable mixed-breed pet or as distortion-heavy mixed-genre music.

Limberlost

Whatever limberness I had is being lost to age.

Microwave Surveillance

One of the great jokes of our national nightmare lives on.

ProbCause

When the party’s so good, everyone ends the night in jail.

 

Square Pig in a Round Hole-October 28, 2017

· Leave a comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

I assumed I would be writing some kind of Halloween-themed post, but the band-name fairy had other ideas. Without further ado, here’s what’s in my treat sack:

A Will Away

Where there’s . . . Can also be sung as the backing vocal to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

Left Turn on Blue

I would have picked this even if I wasn’t writing about a fictional teenager learning to drive. Mundane instructional sign transformed by color change into something that swings.

Mystery Skulls

This one’s a little Halloween-y. Inside every person you’ve ever loved is a spooky, scary skeleton. The skull isn’t even buried that deep.

Thieves of Sunrise

Lately I’ve been enjoying awesome sunrises during breakfast. Soon enough, winter and overcast skies will rob me of this small pleasure.

Trout Steak Revival

Halloween thought: once something is a steak, do you really want it revived?

 

Square Pig in a Round Hole-October 21, 2017

· Leave a comment ·

Square PigNaming 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!

Considering how much time I spend thinking about bands and band names, it’s pretty rare for me to leave the house of an evening. (This is what being a middle-aged introvert does to you.) Tonight I’m taking part in an event that, while not strictly musical, is punk-rock in its own way. My brother and band-mate is a few years into a seventeen-year project of performing James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake one chapter at a time, from memory. This evening is a reprise of chapter 2, first presented in 2015. (Chapter 3 will be reprised on November 18 at Gallery 1412, and chapter 4 presented for the first time on December 16 at Chapel Performance Space.) Chapter 2 ends with a song and I’m helping out with the drum part; does that make it a Your Mother Should Know gig? Probably not, but I’ll bet the Wake is full of band names waiting to be harvested. Meanwhile, here’s the cream I skimmed from the club listings:

Golden Toads

Our massive random mix of everything includes a nature CD of frog and toad calls. These tracks tend to punctuate and reset whatever was going on before. Good to see our amphibian friends crossing over to play human venues.

Koo Koo Kanga Roo

Irresistible goofiness. And it rhymes!

Moral High Horses

When cliches collide, they both improve.

Superfun Yeah Yeah Rocketship

Unapologetic silliness launches it over the top.

The Wonderfool

Here’s one in the Joycean spirit. The fool can safely mock the monarch. The wonderfool works the miracle of getting the monarch to listen and act.