What’s in a name? (I think Abraham Lincoln said that.) The answer is, not much, especially if your band sucks, which it probably does. (I said that.) Still, picking a good band name from the rapidly dwindling supply of word combinations available can be a tricky business, fraught with dead ends, desperation, and 31 flavors of WTF?. Therefore, I’m inaugurating a monthly edition of Hots On called, mmhmm, Band Slam!, wherein I attempt to break down the names of local bands on the club scene. The only rule is that I can’t have heard the band’s actual music, thereby limiting my judgment solely to the name they’ve chosen to represent themselves. So let’s take a jaunt through the club listings for this week and see who’s calling what what, wot wot?

07/06 Flamingo Cantina: Jetpaq Shakur
This tells me nothing. I’m envisioning a wannabe-Andre 3000 with an actual (simulated) jetpack made out of old vacuum cleaner parts, hopefully dressed as one of the Founding Fathers, spitting rhymes bawdy enough to make Red Foxx’s hair curl. More likely, though, it’s another dub band.

07/07 Parish: St. Vincent
There’s been a trend lately of indie bands seeking out the band name version of a white t-shirt—comfy, accessible, you can wear it under a blazer or you can clean up cat poop with it. In other words, a one-size-fits-all name. Now if St. Vincent is an actual person rather than a collective, this works a lot better because it shows that at least (hopefully) dude has some kind of religious complex. If it’s another indie quartet with a violinist, well, God bless.

07/10 Lost Controls
This is a neat little double-entendre; maybe somebody kicked the remote behind the sofa and the band’s a little miffed at having to get up every five minutes to switch between Nancy Grace and My Super Sweet 16, or maybe everybody has just TOTALLY LOST IT and they're wildin' out all over the place spitting Sparks at each other and raping their instruments. Either way, there’s something going on.

07/06 Elysium: Bombs Over Berlin
Sounds like emo, with a vaguely Clash-y political overtone. This idea was already done way better by the Saddle Creek band Sorry About Dresden (yuk yuk).

07/05 Emo’s: Haunting Oboe Music
This is probably the single best name I came across. It doesn’t necessarily make me want to track down their MySpace, though, since it sounds like they’re just taking the piss out of chamber-rock or something whereas the most clever utilization would be towards actual dirge-y, minor key chamber music. I visualize a lonesome, ghostly kind of Edward Gorey apparition dancing by itself in a creaky old house, playing the mournful theme from a 70s afterschool special on his woodwind with a mixture of sadness and self-aware bravado.

07/05 The Backyard: 311
I’m breaking the rules on this one, because unfortunately at a certain point in my indiscriminate youth I owned multiple 311 CDs. First of all, fuck using numbers as your band name. We’re not in kindergraden and we know how to read. That reminds me…back in 6th grade there were these wannabe-skinhead soccer jocks who listened to 311 because somebody told them the 11 stood for the letter K. 3-K = KKK. How in the world those kids managed to square that with the hippiefied pseudo-rapping that is 311’s M.O. should be the subject of a doctoral thesis. The other rumor is that 311 is the California penal code for marijuana possession, which is less offensive but just as stupid. This band ruined a perfectly good Cure song for no reason other than they weren’t getting on the radio anymore. They’re not just the Wonderbread of alt-rock; they’re the Wonderbread that’s been soaked in tap water and laid out on a paper towel until it grows fuzz. Fuck off and die, 311.

fridge photo from Flickr, courtesy of Tweek