Sunday, December 17, 2006

What the Heck?

I am baffled by weird, silly, non-sensical names for musical groups. It seems like in times of complete blank-mindedness, musicians are wont to select words completely at random from the dictionary. I'm not passing judgement on music quality, but here are some examples of musical groups that just boggle the mind:
- Neutral Milk Hotel
- Architecture in Helsinki
- Be Your Own Pet
- Death From Above 1979
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- Handsome Boy Modeling School
- The Boy Least Likely To
- Saves the Day
- The Receiving End of Sirens
- Dogs Die in Hot Cars
- A Tribe Called Quest
- Goldie Lookin Chain
- Get Him Eat Him
- The Academy Is...
- Cute Is What We Aim For
- Panic! At The Disco (The exclamation point is what annoys me about this one)
- Jimmy Eat World

I'd love to hear explanations of some of these. I mean, there's a fine line between creativity and desperation for novelty. "The Who" and "The Rolling Stones" actually have clever connotations. I don't believe "Architecture in Helsinki" can tell us much about the band, other than the fact that they're weird.

5 comments:

gbz said...

Have you ever listened to an "Architecture in Helsinki" song? Maybe you should before you claim their name is meaningless. Anyways, by being nonsensicle (fuck...spelling) they are adhering to their chosen genres that are supposed to be all edgy and ambiguous.
Persoanly, I'm a "Panic! at the disco" fan and think the name is extremely fitting, albiet very open to interpretation.
I also think your long standing and well known bias against modern music has something to do with this particular tirade.

Gavrich said...

Okay smart guy, what about the song makes the name "Architecture in Helsinki" make sense? Because frankly, I see no way to understand. Edginess and ambiguity are no excuse for nonsense.

It's "nonsensical."

I take exception to tha last segment of your comment. Yes, I'm not a fan of modern music, but I tried to think of older groups with similarly asinine names. The only one that approaches it is "The The," a British rock group from (I believe) the late 1960s.

Juicy said...

Panic! at the disco makes sense because they're an emo rock group (i think) and thus, the opposite of disco (which was the anti rock in the seventies) and causing panic. then again to me they are totally a pop-rock phase so if that really was their intention its pretty ironic...

i think the yeah yeah yeahs is a decent name, seeing as yeah yeah yeah is actually an expression, youre right about some of the others though...though i am a Jimmy Eat World fan. you realize theyre all probably just injokes among band members?

the the is just taking it too far...

gbz said...

Panic! is not emo rock

Terra Shield said...

Maybe this is what they wanted... people to actually remember their names (and perhaps blog about it!)