HANNA CHU
A&E Editor
There are some pretty strange band names out there. For example, Leftover Salmon, Army Navy, Apollo Sunshine, Antigone Rising and American Eyes are all names that up- and-coming musicians on MySpace have decided to call their band. It’s always been a wonder what kind of rhyme or reason there is to some of these name choices.
If you go to the band’s Web site, you’d think that they’d explain how they got their name in the biography section, but I’m finding that this is very rare.
If I were in a band, I would be very painstakingly meticulous as to what my band was called because it would brand who I am and what I’m about. You can’t just pull it out of thin air and randomly say something like, “I’ve decided to call my band The Oneders” because then you’d just have a really stupid name. O-knee-ders. It’s too confusing. Just call it The Wonders.
Naming a band is a similar situation to naming a child. Most of the time, parents put a lot of thought into your name, unless the mother is someone like Gwyneth Paltrow who reportedly named her baby Apple because her friend named her baby Apple, and Gwyneth thought it was cool. If Chris Martin was not such a great musician, I would have blacklisted her in my celebrity book.
My parents named my little brother Arnold after the governator Arnold Schwarzenegger. My dad, who used to be a bodybuilder, thought Schwarzenegger was a rockstar in the bodybuilding world. See, a lot of thought is needed.
Also, I know a guy whose parents named him “Crophil” because they combined “cross” and “phila,” which means brotherly love, and now he has name that always has to come with an explanation.
Bands have pulled this trick too of combing two ideas to make one name.
When I was in elementary school, Guns N’ Roses was my favorite band. But when I tell people that, I always have to try to change the subject soon after making that statement so that I don’t have to explain that the only reason they were my favorite band was because I thought that their band name was cool.
As a child, naturally, roses were my favorite flowers, and adding “guns” for their name just seemed so awesome at the time. Little did I know that their name derives from two bands that the original members played in: Hollywood Rose and L.A. Guns.
I also recently found out that Guns N’ Roses is a hard rock and heavy metal band.
Maroon 5 is one of my favorite bands, so I tried to find out how they got their name. It’s a pretty catchy name.
Sadly, what I discovered was that Maroon 5 originally wanted to be called Maroon, but there was already a band named Maroon, so they added “5” because there are five people in the band. Ingenious, eh? Not really.
But I’m glad they decided to go with Maroon 5 instead of Kara’s Flowers, which is what their band was first called. I would never buy a CD called Kara’s Flowers. It sounds too much like it’s a sexual reference.
If I ever learn to play an instrument well, like the tambourine, which, by the way, is the most underrated instrument, I’m going to start the coolest band ever named … well, I have to think about it more. I’ll get back to you.
02-16-2006
