Category: Band names

Square Pig in a Round Hole-November 18, 2017

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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!

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

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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 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

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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!

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

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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 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

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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!

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.

Square Pig in a Round Hole-October 14, 2017

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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’ve been on vacation this week, and spent part of the time recording two songs by St. Rage, the fictional teenage garage band featured in my debut novel The Gospel According to St Rage. (Thanks to Your Mother Should Know for sitting in for the fictional musicians.) In the book they record and release a 4-song EP, but three other songs are mentioned. We recorded one of them over a year ago: “Something of Mine,” which is about blood donation. Once these last two are finished, all three can finally get out into the world. It seems appropriate that I have an appointment to donate at Bloodworks NW this afternoon.

Blood donation precludes going out and standing up for hours, but I hope these well-named bands all draw appreciative crowds:

afterspace

Enjoying the typographical play: there is “space” but no space after “after”.

Bird Concerns

Food; water; mate; safe nesting space; clean windshield to mess up. Have I missed any?

Devoured by Flowers

From horror to beauty, the rhyme makes it an almost acceptable way to go.

ECHO OHs

Sonic and visual echoes built into the name!

Preyer

Comes across as more spiritual than predator, but someone else still gets eaten. (Also on the bill: Square Pig faves Power Skeleton!)

 

 

Square Pig in a Round Hole-October 8, 2017

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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!

After a post-equinox return of summer, it feels like we’ve suddenly turned the corner into fall for sure. Friday night’s wind filled our yard with leaves and inclined us to turn the heat on. Meanwhile, band names sprout like mushrooms in the dampness:

Dopey’s Robe

Dopey was always my favorite dwarf. Because he was the youngest? Because he didn’t talk? Because his robe was too big? Dunno. Maybe because he got kissed twice.

Galaxy Research

This one combines two of my favorite things: music and space science. They’re never short of wonders.

Moon Human

Cultures differ on whether the face in the moon is a man or a woman. I like this egalitarian approach, though it leaves out those who think it’s a rabbit. (Based on the Facebook url, I suspect I picked them before under another name, Rainy Day Splish Splosh Band.)

Screature

Horror-movie two-fer: monster and sound track both.

Variety Pack

A variety pack somehow renders the mundane (cereal, chips) special. Is it the variety, or is it the pack? Maybe it’s the tiny packages.

Square Pig in a Round Hole-September 30, 2017

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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!

This was the only weekend this month that wasn’t booked solid. There were a plethora of interesting events we could have gone to. The most appealing turned out to be staying home. But if you want to go out, don’t let me stop you! These and other bands would appreciate your presence:

Niagara Moon

The most overtly romantic name I have seen in a long, long time. Somewhat but not completely undercut by the misspelling in the club listings that implied a kinship to a well-known ED medication.

Old Foals

There’s something you don’t see every day: a double pun that’s also an oxymoron!

Reptaliens

B-movie vibe doesn’t get any better than this.

The Thrown Ups

When maturity makes you barf. (Included in honor of a young adult I know who has anxiety that manifests as if it were food poisoning. As he approaches the end of school and the start of job hunt, it has gotten suddenly worse.)

Voodoo Glow Skulls

By happy chance, my spouse took this epic photo of a tiny shaker as he left our music studio Monday night. I don’t know about voodoo, but it was a magic moment.

Beadbrain
Beadbrain

Square Pig in a Round Hole-September 23, 2017

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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 must really be fall: last weekend, we turned off the AC, then three days later, we turned on the heat. Also, there’s stuff going on every night of the week, some of it involving music, and much of that, thank deity-of-choice, involving band names. These five caught my attention this week:

Fashionism

Style we can believe in. (I’m an anti-fashionist myself, but I’ll make an exception here.)

Herb & Jellyfish

Music duo or tomorrow’s cuisine from warming oceans? None of those rural jellyfish for us.

Lost Eyedentity

Reminds me of that time they had me take off my glasses for a driver’s license photo. It’s a good picture but I don’t recognize me.

Serpentent

When you’re sorry you talked to snakes.

Swedish Finnish

Happy chance that one letter turns it from a flooring choice to the heritage of at least one of my friends.

Square Pig in a Round Hole-September 17, 2017

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Square Pig

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!

It was still summer on Friday when we drove across the state to take one of our young adults to Eastern Washington University. Early Saturday morning, it was cold enough for frost at the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge. Today, it’s raining again in Seattle; summer is officially over even though we’re still a few days from the equinox. Fortunately, band names know no season. Here are this week’s favorites:

At Both Ends

I’m too old to live this way anymore, but I respect the hold-nothing-back attitude.

Bobaflex

Bounty hunter discovers the real money is in exercise equipment.

Caked Up

Literal sugar high, with candles on top. (See above, At Both Ends.)

Harmful If Swallowed

Equally applicable to chemicals, flattery, campaign promises, or a box of hammers.

Orphaned Land

A whole melancholy story in only two words.