Category: Band names

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 30, 2019

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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 occurs to me I am a few weeks into the 10th year of writing this weekly blog, which began on November 6, 2010 and featured All Time Low, Armed with Legs, Aurora Roarers, Excruciator, and Rat City Ruckus. Back then, I was writing on a Blogspot page and more bands were on MySpace than Facebook. Other than a few holiday weeks when the pickings were slim and I did a retrospective, I have not had to repeat myself. As long as bands keep supplying good material, I plan to keep sharing it. Just like this:

Sunset Moon
Moonrise at sunset

Ghost Moon

Veiled in cloud, drifting spookily through the night. (By my count, this is at least the 27th moon-themed name I’ve featured.)

Go Fetch

The succinct beginning of a quest.

The Stand Stillers

Don’t move. Just sing. (Although I generally respect the rules of English grammar and syntax, I love how you can completely disregard them and still make sense.)

Total Fu**ing Bummer

The absolute depth of disappointment and height of NW Loser Pride. (Censorship courtesy of The Seattle Times.)

YOB

Your own … bottle? Battle? Brother? Bother? Whatever it is, bring it.

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, upcoming events, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first four issues and subscribe here for future issues.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 23, 2019

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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!

Barbara+and+the+Rage+Brigade+Front+Cover
Cover art by Maggie Gauntt

I’ll start with the shameless self-promotion right out of the gate. Tonight beginning at 5 pm, I’m celebrating my newest novel, Barbara and the Rage Brigade (sequel to garage-rock fairy tale The Gospel According to St. Rage) with a launch party at The Neverending Bookshop. I’ll read some excerpts, take questions, give away a book or two, sign books, hand out download codes for the associated 4-song EP, and perform acoustic versions of the entire St. Rage catalog of eleven songs, because what’s a party without music?

We’ll be all done no later than 7 pm, so you can easily get out to a dive bar and hear a well-named non-fictional band on the same night. The pickings were somewhat reduced by the holiday next week, but I managed a pretty good harvest even so:

Bone Spurs

I’m partial to band names involving body parts or medical conditions. When that medical condition is also part of the national joke, you know you’ve got a winner.

Family Worship Center

As it happens, my book features a creepy cult disguised as a wholesome mega-church. My church-girl protagonist is not fooled.

Moon Duo

Moon Heist

I am fond of the moon and have written about at least 24 moon-themed band names in the past nine years. Now it’s at least 26, because I hadn’t done either of these before. They go together: one’s about an extra moon, the other about a moon that’s missing. In either case, the world would be a very different place. Maybe we have only one because another planet heisted the extra. Lookin’ at you, Mars.

Rabble House

Change one letter and the act of agitating common folk becomes a church I’d much rather attend than the Family Worship Center (happens they’re on the same bill).

 

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, upcoming events, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first four issues and subscribe here for future issues.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 16, 2019

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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 have an appointment at Bloodworks NW this afternoon, so no mosh pit for me tonight. But my fictional songwriter protagonist and I did write a song about blood donation, which I am happy to share:

Please donate if eligible! But if you’re not a pint low, find a well-named band to support, like maybe one of these:

Atrocity Girl

Is urban women rocking out a war crime?

Convent Bonfires

I like the rhyming first syllables followed by similar consonant sounds. But I have to wonder–are the nuns having a folksy outdoor worship time, or are they plotting to dismantle the patriarchy, then destroying the evidence?

Montlake Traffic

When you have to wait while a single boat goes through, pour your frustration into a really loud song. (There’s no localer flavor than some kind of bridge traffic, and Montlake is the one I happen to cross the most.)

Okay-ish

I love the qualifier on an already lukewarm adjective. Also, I gather the band includes or is entirely made up of middle-schoolers, an age when okay-ish might be as good as things get but being in a band would surely help.

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For Halloween, I went as the aforementioned songwriter protagonist going as my other, wizard-girl protagonist. I made myself a long, hooded wizard cloak, which I know is different from a robe, but close enough.

 

Barbara+and+the+Rage+Brigade+Front+Cover
Cover art by Maggie Gauntt

Shameless Self-Promotion: Barbara and the Rage Brigade, sequel to garage-rock fairy tale The Gospel According to St. Rage, releases next Tuesday, November 19! Paperback and Kindle editions are available for pre-order now, online or from your favorite independent bookshop. Join me for the launch party at The Neverending Bookshop on Saturday, November 23! In addition to reading from the book, I plan to perform the entire St. Rage catalog of eleven songs, because what’s a party without music?

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, upcoming events, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first four issues and subscribe here for future issues.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 9, 2019

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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!

My concerns that we were in for a sunny, dry November were apparently unfounded. Oh, well–the dark, damp season is perfect for holing up in the shelter of a bookstore or dive bar and discovering your new favorite thing. Maybe one of these:

Liver Down the River

The addition of one letter transforms an instruction to abide lower in the valley into a comical and unexpected rhyme of organ and watercourse.

Shelter in Place

This emergency directive is probably more pleasant to enact when the place in question is a bar, especially when the bar is called The Funhouse!

Stereo Embers

The warm, comforting glow of audio components in the winter dark, whether vacuum tubes or red LEDs.

Windchime Weather

Gentler breezes than our typical November storms, unless you want to destroy your chimes as we have.

Wolf & Bear

Could be a two-kid cub scout pack, but it’s more fun with more.

Barbara+and+the+Rage+Brigade+Front+Cover
Cover art by Maggie Gauntt

Shameless Self-Promotion: Barbara and the Rage Brigade, sequel to garage-rock fairy tale The Gospel According to St. Rage, releases next Tuesday, November 19! Paperback and Kindle editions are available for pre-order now, online or from your favorite independent bookshop. Join me for the launch party at The Neverending Bookshop on Saturday, November 23! In addition to reading from the book, I plan to perform the entire St. Rage catalog of eleven songs, because what’s a party without music?

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, upcoming events, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first four issues and subscribe here for future issues.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 2, 2019

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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!

Barbara+and+the+Rage+Brigade+Front+Cover
Cover art by Maggie Gauntt

The moment we (or anyway, I) have been waiting for: I can finally reveal the cover to my novel Barbara and the Rage Brigade, sequel to garage-rock fairy tale The Gospel According to St. Rage. The book releases on November 19; the Kindle edition is available for pre-order now, with hardcover and paperback to follow in about a week. Join me for the launch party at The Neverending Bookshop on Saturday, November 23! In addition to reading from the book, I plan to perform the entire St. Rage catalog of eleven songs, because what’s a party without music?

 

That party is a few weeks off but there’s plenty to celebrate in band names that aren’t even fictional:

Cedar Sap

Sibilance and local flavor, sticky and resinous.

These three represent Halloween continuing into November to hold the line against too-early Christmas:

Coffin Break

Dracula’s siesta in the middle of the worknight.

Dead Ghosts

The end of the afterlife.

Ghost Heart

Repackaged Valentine candy for your creepy trick-or-treat sweetie. (The actual science-y definition is also beautiful: a heart’s collagen matrix stripped of living cells, on which to grow a brand-new heart almost from scratch. Like it’s the future or something.)

 

A War in the Sky

Could be a futuristic space battle in low orbit or the WWI Flying Ace vs. The Red Baron. The sky has been a battlefield for a sadly long time.

 

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, upcoming events, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first four issues and subscribe here for future issues.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)

Square Pig in a Round Hole-October 26, 2019

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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!

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I’m excited to get my author face out in public tonight for a Halloween event that’s been in the works since last spring! Join me and other Washington and Oregon authors at The Neverending Bookshop as we share spooky, magical, or otherwise supernatural excerpts from our work. There will be snacks and music, too. Costumes encouraged! Details here.

But before that, here’s a treat sack of band names:

Grim Statistic

Like when the Mariners clinched not losing 100 games this season. It’s gonna take a lot of Cracker Jack to get over that one.

The Jephries

I was hoping for a group of guys all named Jeffrey or Geoffrey, but it’s actually being used as a last name a la The Ramones. The tongue in cheek nature of their Facebook page makes me suspect a fiction.

Penelope Isles

Nice mythic vibe going on. This could be a single mysterious character or a whole mist-shrouded archipelago.

Some Rules

There might be 10 but we haven’t counted them. They’re more like guidelines, anyway. Remember to use things and love people, and you’ll probably be all right.

Subatomic Sound System

These speakers may be tiny but they are powerful.

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, upcoming events, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first four issues and subscribe here for future issues.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)

Square Pig in a Round Hole-October 19, 2019

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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!

Now we’re into the truly dark, wet days. I for one am grateful for bright leaves and clever band names to lighten the mood. This week’s top picks:

LáGoon

The accent mark makes it clear, this is no body of water, nor a mere oafish henchperson. It’s a really high-class oafish henchperson.

Racket Man

You don’t have to be Sir Elton to make a din.

Soft Cheese

Sprig

I probably would have picked either of these had they not been on the same bill, but together, they make a nice appetizer with a lovely garnish.

Via Combusta

Without even knowing this was some kind of astrological thing, I like how the Latin fails to obscure the meaning: the burning way. Evokes energy and danger.

 

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, upcoming events, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first four issues and subscribe here for future issues.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)

Square Pig in a Round Hole-October 12, 2019

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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 actually went to a show! To celebrate our anniversary, Square Pig and Spouse saw past honoree Prom Queen at The Triple Door. The old-timey nightclub feel was a perfect match for the retro-style music (and guitars). And it’s an easy bus ride from HQ, so we didn’t have to park or designate a driver. But if you’re looking for a bar band in a dive, we’ve got lots of that, too:

Circles Around the Sun

The orbital dance, counterclockwise and (not) in heels. Also, technically elliptical. The spouse and I have completed 33 of these since our wedding day.

Luna Moss

As green as the moth of the same name, flourishing in moonlight.

Moon Age

4.51 billion years, give or take 10 million. Thanks, Google, not what I was looking for. Perhaps a subset of the Space Age, back in my childhood when we were landing men on the lunar surface.

The Mystical Hot Chocolate Endeavors

Groovy plus cozy. Comfort when your spiritual work gets weird.

Simple Minded Symphony

Self-effacing oxymoron (there’s nothing simple or simple-minded about a big orchestral work) built on a happy accident of homophony.

 

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first four issues and subscribe here for future issues.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)

 

Square Pig in a Round Hole-October 5, 2019

· 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’m taking a short break from fiction writing while a few trusted readers take a look at my latest novel-in-progress. My big accomplishment this week was making shelf space for my stash of my own books so I could get them out of boxes. (If you want a signed copy of any of these direct from the author, please let me know. I need to make room for Barbara and the Rage Brigade, which releases on November 19!)

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Enough shameless self-promotion! We’re really all here for the band names, and once again, the listings did not disappoint:

Before I Had Wings

The lack of punctuation leaves this open for interpretation: “I used to be grounded,” or “Back then, I could fly.”

Checkered Record

Vinyl FlooringAn unsavory past or my dream floor pattern. And it rhymes!

Criminal Hygiene

Scrubbing away all evidence, or grooming so impeccable it should be against the law.

Rat Paws

Considering the paws automatically makes the animal seem cuter. Remember Remi in Ratatouille cleaning his paws before eating or cooking? (The instigator’s description of themself as “29-year-old teenage lima bean” caught me off guard. In the mid-’80s I created a picture book about a family of lima beans on a picnic. Is this a descendant???)

Trashcan Sinatras

Alley cats serenade in a full moon’s spotlight. Rats clap their paws.

 

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first three issues and subscribe here for future issues — #4 will be out soon.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)

 

Square Pig in a Round Hole-September 28, 2019

· 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!

The past two weekends were unusually packed, so a brief afternoon event and a few errands were about all the outside activity I could tolerate today. Just because I’m not going out to a show doesn’t mean I won’t talk up some great band names, though. Just look what I’m missing:

Bear Call

Making noise to attract bears rather than warn them away seems … ill considered.

Plague Vendor

I like this kind of wordplay, where changing a few sounds in a common phrase twists the meaning in an unexpected direction. Not just infecting others, but selling it to them. That’s a clever rat.

Sleep On It

Trash Boat

I might have chosen either of these anyway, but seeing them on the same bill created a funny picture. A garbage scow is an honest, hardworking vessel but probably not somewhere I’d want to sleep. But let me think about it.

Succubass

There’s a sex demon in the rhythm section! Not the player, but the instrument itself.

 

One last thing before you go: I share highlights from this blog in my quarterly author newsletter, The Storypunk Report, as well as news of what I’m writing and reading, and other goodies. Click the link to check out the first three issues and subscribe here for future issues — issue 4 will be out in a couple of weeks.  (Or just follow the blog for your weekly dose of band names.)