My band was stuck for a period of several months trying to come up with a name for ourselves, so I've done a fair bit of thinking on this subject. It seemed we just couldn't move on until the matter was settled. It's ridiculous really, that people who just want to play music should become immobilized because they have to think of a nonsensical title for themselves - as if we were a football team or something. But it's a cultural fact that if people get together and make music they have to choose a name for themselves like Jefferson Airplane or The Darkness or Squarepusher and other such nonsense.
Some aim for being pleasantly nonsensical - a dribble of consciousness as it were, like "Strawberry Alarm Clock." Some are in the spirit of a sports team, invoking some mascot or animus like "The Mavericks" or "The Eagles," "San Fancisco 49ers," "Bay City Rollers." I don't blame those who take the easy way out and use an eponym like "The Dave Brubeck Quartet." The jazz crowd seems to have less concern about clever names - perhaps because it's often focused on virtuosity of particular musicians, or maybe because their rosters rotate so much that they don't think of temselves as discrete bands. There are hybrid versions of this too, like "Brian Auger's Oblivion Express" or "The James Orr Complex" (yes, that exists so I can't use it.)
The clever names we came up with were all a bit too clever. There's not much worse than a band name that is a joke, because it will quickly cease to be funny. Something that has a wink of humour but still a nice ring, like "The Who," is better.
Some of my suggested names went for a retro feel, in the spirit of "The New Mastersounds," but the group nixed any of those candidates as being too gimmicky and hard to take seriously. On the flipside, if you're going to be serious you better be able to back it up! If you call yourselves "The Jazz Messengers" you must be a a world-class group (luckily they were.) "Death" would have to be the hardest metal band going, and for its time it was.
With nothing else to go on, perhaps we should reflect on the band itself. What are its qualities, ones we would want people to know when they read our name on a poster? There are four of us. We play funk, jazz-funk, and a little jazz. We bring a modern sensibility to the sound, choosing a repertoire that beat diggers will enjoy, using turntables. Much of our strength lies in our selections, which consist of very good and little-known music. I have ambitions of taking the spirit of this music in new directions with some originals. We have no singer, and a focus on instrumentalism and soloing. We have Andrew, who is a budding young celebrity on the sax.
But "Hornucopia" is super cheese. We need a name that burns, but unfortunately "The Burning Sensations" is taken (possibly too funny as well.) "Hunks o' Funk" has a clever double meaning cause we're handsome.
The best names are easy or fun to say - beautiful pieces of language in their own right. "Cellar Door" would be a lame choice but that's the kind of appeal I'm talking about. "Joy Division," "Fine Young Cannibals," "The Sex Pistols," and "Bon Jovi" have this quality. They have a musical sort of cadence to them that rolls easily off the tongue.
Sometimes a band chooses a name that is too long or elaborate, and the fans simplify it for them. "Skynyrd" (Lynyrd Skynyrd) and "The Chili Peppers" (The Red Hot Chili Peppers) are good examples of that phenomenon.
Some bands go for a cultural reference in order to let people know they attended university. Any name that needs to be looked up is probably a mistake; its charms should be apparent upon first hearing. "Dionysus" from Fredericton didn't even know who that mythical character was; they just liked the literary feeling that it created. My old band "Soma" was my highschool way of letting people know I'd read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and as a result I ended up explaining it to too many people. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that "The Doors" is a bad name for a band. I remember first hearing it in grade school and thinking it was stupid. They chose it because somebody had read another Huxley book, The Doors of Perception.
"The Doors" doesn't sound stupid to me now. Once familiar with the band we don't think critically about the name. Sort of like that girl Meleesa who lived on my floor in residence. When I first met her I thought her name was retarded, but in time it disappeared and became the signifier for that person. By the time a band becomes famous, the name is less important.
In the end we went with "The Quadrafonics." It sounds cool, first and foremost. It has a cool reference, in that quadraphonic records were a curious chapter in vinyl history. Plus our first album could be called "In Stereo," which is hopelessly clever. It conjures up the idea of retro bands like "The Delfonics," and other soul groups whose names ended in "fonics."
In conclusion, here's my advice to bands questing for a name. I hope it helps.
