What's in a Band Name? Everything, Baby, Everything.

The best band names use wit and pop culture to create memorable monikers

I once heard a radio story about a company in New York that did nothing but come up with names for other companies. They didn't design the logos or develop their marketing plans. That was all done by someone else entirely. These guys – and there were several of them – did nothing but research what the company wanted to do and then came up with names the company could choose from.

And they got paid for it.

With guys like this in the world, it makes one wonder why there are still companies with names like Gianus or Molex (Real names. Look it up). Even if you can't afford The Name Guys from New York City or whatever they're called, you could have at least passed the name around at a cocktail party before the second round of drinks was served. Asked your sister-in-law, maybe? Written the name on a legal pad and ran it by some friends at lunch? Gianus? Molex? Come on.

But goofy company names have been around for as long as there have been companies. Why else would so many businesses have the moniker "Don't Let The Name Fool Ya?"

First rule of marketing: If the name is going to fool anyone, CHANGE THE NAME.

"We're Crappy Jack's BBQ! Don't let the name fool ya!"

"We're Expensive Cars! Don't let the name fool ya!"

I just don't get it. Pick a name that says what you do.

Although, rock bands have long dismissed that notion with a wave of their non sequitur hands.

Those who know me well (first, my condolences) know that I take up entirely too much space in my brain thinking of unusual names for rock bands. I will break up conversations after hearing a phrase to say "Hey, cool. 'Carotid Artery.' That would make a cool band name. "Mitch Suture and the Carotid Arteries." My friends will look at me and awkwardly move on, leaving me alone to imagine the band's logo, their look, what genre they might fit into, etc. I'm not saying it's normal. I'm just saying it's what I do.

This has been a hobby of mine since I was in Junior High School. When I first started picking up a pencil to draw, I was designing logos of bands that didn't exist. Or redesigning logos for bands that did exist, who I thought needed a makeover. My first big design project, at 14 or so, was an album cover for Leon Redbone. (Redbone has never had an official logo as far as I know – nothing like a flying V guitar ramming it's way into a heart, like Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. No, Redbone was far too understated, so I went to task on his facelift.) I ended up designing his entire press kit, something I didn't know bands actually had, but I recognized an industry need. As I finished the package, I remember thinking, "Leon needs me. How do I get this to him?"

My dear friend Edgar Cruz, a world-renowned guitarist, was born a few months before me in grew up in Oklahoma City. Like me, he was raised on 70's guitar rock, and idolized many of the same bands. On a recent trip to his home, I was delighted when he pulled a large box out of his attic to share a similar childhood hobby. Edgar produced hundreds – I mean hundreds – of miniature album covers of nonexistent bands. These were pieces of art created by yet another Rock-struck American teenage boy with clearly too much time on his hands. Like me! Edgar's collection was archived into groups, each band having it's own career arc, with branch-off solo projects by members of each band. Edgar created the name of the band, complete with each players' name, the bands' logo – even liner notes! It amazes me that he ever had time to become a master musician. The time he had to have spent on these pieces of micro pop culture had to have been enormous.

The evolution of the band name is pretty fascinating to me. In the 40's, there was simply no room for imagination. It was always just "So and So and His Orchestra." Boooooring. That changed in the 50's as bands tried to interject some frivolity and fun into their monikers, like The Playboys, The Drifters, The Ventures, The Platters, always adjectively trying to describe their wild, wayward personalities. I was never sure how a Platter might behave, other than offering guests hors' dourves, but it was their name, and they were entitled to it.

The 60's elaborated on the theme, instilling it's own psychedelic and inexplicable names like Captain Beefheart, Creedance Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, 1910 Fruitgum Company, and on and on.

As a musician myself, I like to find out where bands get their names. Of course, there are some bands I wish had never divulged their name's origins. Good bands. Some of my favorite bands. 10cc, Steely Dan, to name a few. But we won't dwell on that here. It is what it is.

The 80's brought the use of obscure references to literature and film, with bands like Duran Duran (a character in a Jane Fonda film), or Trout Fishing in America (from a Richard Brautigan novel). It's a practice that abounds today, expanding to all forms of pop media, with band names like The Rubber Nipple Salesmen, which will no doubt cause my fellow Ren & Stimpy fans to perk up.

A favorite classification of mine is when a band piggy backs onto another celebrity's cult of personality, often morphing two celebrities into one. Elvis Costello did this years ago. Marilyn Manson did too. But have you heard of The Shirley Temple Pilots? How about Willy Nelson Mendela? Willie Nelson is in a class all his own with new bands who have borrowed his status to ride out a career of their own. I have always thought that The Nelly Wilsons had a good thing going with their name. Blind Willy Nelson maybe not so much.

Bands like The Wynona Ryders don't even bother using a clever twist of any kind. No irony. There it is. Just take Wynona's name and make it plural. Badda bing, badda boom, instant moniker. The band Sharon Stoned comes close, basically just adding the letter d to the celebrity's name. The band, Sandy Duncan's Eye? Well, that's just sick, a reaction I'm sure the band was banking on. Haven't heard the band, but the sonic component to the imagery leaves little to be desired.

A good band name will lure me in every time. Here are some bands you may not have heard of (yet) with names I wish I had thought of:

We Were Promised Jet Packs
The Beverly Beer Bellies
Bongzilla
Boris The Sprinkler
Hockey Teeth
Rhythm Method
And maybe my all time favorite:
Shorty and The Disappointments.

I have an uncle who swears he thought of velcro before Nasa ever came up with it. He also "invented" magnetic tools. Over the years, I have heard of bands whose names I came up with years previously. Great minds think alike, as it turns out, whether it be my Uncle and Nasa, or me and these guys:

Ice Cream Headache (I actually had that name idea as a kid, back in the 70's.)
(and their 2nd cousin) Brain Freeze

Joan of Arkansas (This is a song I wrote which appears on my band's album, Trailercana. There is also a band with the name. Interestingly enough, they hail from Birmingham, Alabama. Doesn't appear that they've ever been to Arkansas.)

Jody Foster's Posse (Well, the actual band is called Jody Foster's Army, but it's close)

Phlegm Fatale (True. I had this idea years ago. I was amazed when I discovered a real band with the nerve to use it.)

The Pink Slips (After hearing the story that the British band UB40 named themselves after the ubiquitous unemployment form issued in England, I thought a pink slip would be a good name for a garage band, down on their luck, fired from their day jobs. Their press release would say, "With no safety net, they are determined to do or die.")

Zu Zu's Petals (From the classic It's a Wonderful Life, you remember Jimmy Stewart's oddly named daughter Zu Zu, and the petals from her dying rose that he put in his pocket? And remember how it was the seminal moment in the film when he realized he was "back?" He searched for Zu Zu's petals and was ecstatic to find them in his pocket where he had placed them before meeting Clarence the Angel. Well, I love symbolism, and I always thought that would be a great name for a band, and it's a pretty good band too.)

So, what's in a name? A lot, apparently. Or nothing. Musicians can spend a lot of time thinking about it, or not. It works either way. It's all about the music after all. The band Crowded House came up with the name because they, well, lived in a crowded house. No ironic inferences to literature there. The Beatles, arguably the best band in rock history – certainly the most enigmatic – changed an e to an a and the rest is history.

It's a big world out there, and there are millions of garages filled with millions of musicians writing millions of songs, making a lot of noise.

Back in 1993, there was a garage in Kentucky with a guy who was raised in a trailer park banging away on a guitar with his friends. He named his band The Trailer Park Troubadours. I still have friends who give me grief about it. But it's my little corner of the cul de sac and I kind of like it around here.

When asked what he thought of other comedians, the late Sam Kinison said, "Man, it's all a big rainbow. We pick a color and we just go with it."

I like that analogy. Here's to all the colors of the rainbow, with all their various names.