HOWNOTTO: Name Your Band

Corrigan and I have been getting up before dawn for Morning Activity. While our significant others engage in gainful employment, we do some sort of... activity. Recently, we tried our best to come up with bad band names: the opposite version of one of my favorite activities.

So, we then did some analysis of the final list, of about fifty names, and found some general principles that one should avoid in naming one's band.

Here goes:

HOWTO: Name your band.

AVOID:
a) Incompleteness, superfluous suffixes. Example: "Distinctiveness."
b) Terrible puns. Example: "The Tree Tenors."
c) Narcissism. Example: "Welcome to My Mind."
d) Un-clever Imperative Verbs. Example: "Question Authority."
e) Trying too hard, over-exaggerated silliness. Example: "Day-Glo Waffle Monkeys."
f) Using more than one gimmick/ clever play per name. Example: "Budget Rent a Kar."
g) No. Just, no. Example: "I have AIDS, Please Hug Me."
h) "Songs R Us." Example: "Songs R Us."

There are a lot more bad band names where this came from. Many are on a piece of paper in my bedroom. The rest are on myspace.com.

PS- We also came up with some bad band names for Christian rock bands specific. The following two fit both in this category, and in the category of really good names for Christian rock bands made up entirely of gay men: "All Out for Jesus." "Fishers of Men."