Tuesday, August 28, 2007

What's In A Name? (Pt. A Bazillion)

During our recent stay in New Mexico, Jess' dad showed me a little fan-produced written history of Nine Inch Nails and the making of Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral that he'd picked up some time ago.  Inside was a section on the origin of the band name (spoiler: no true significance revealed) that resonated strongly with me primarily for its declaration that choosing an appropriate artist name is one of the hardest things a musician is faced with.  Apparently Mr. Reznor went through literally hundreds of possibilities over a period of years before settling on NIN.  His criteria included the usual suspects: memorability, imagery, spellability- holy crap, sorry: I think I just invented a new genre!

[Scene: Art Gallery Basement, 3AM]

A pair of bespectacled, heavily tattooed greaser-types stand hunched in the dim light behind a worn conference room table.  Barely visible among the tangle of wires and electronics paraphernalia splayed before them are the vaguely familiar contours of at least a dozen red Speak-n-Spells, now heavily bent.  Otherworldly and entirely atonal bleeps burst from a pair of PA speakers at the far corners of the room, only to meet their end against the massed and motionless crowd gathered in the shadows just out of view.

A torn one-sheet by the entrance to the room reads: "First Annual Spell-A-Billy Showdown"

Yeah, that's right: Spell-A-Billy.  Holy shit I'm brilliant!

Anway... OK, I got a little sidetracked there.  The original point of all of this was:

1) To recap that choosing a name is hard, and
2) to list a couple more options to consider.

...which are:

Caesar Cipher
Shale

I kinda dig the sound of the former, though I don't know how I feel about the implications of nobility and power.

Band-name associationists- have at it!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like Caesar Cipher.

Anonymous said...

So, I'm guessing DJ Ve-G isn't even in contention anymore?

Arianna said...

I dunno. On the one hand, I like the idea of shale meaning something with layers. I think that's a connotation any musician would love to have.

On the other, though, shale is ultimately just soft rock, and that makes me think of what they play in orthodontists' offices. You certainly don't want THAT.

Sarah said...

Unfortunately, shale is the color of my favorite eyeshadow (yes, leave it to me to provide the shallow perspective. Right)

Anyway, while we're on the subject of rocks, I was trying to remember the name of that clear flaky rock. So I googled it, and instead came up with some rock from Mars, refered to in bold as the "Flaky Rock Called Mimi."

And then I laughed, because THAT would be a band name.

Sarah said...

I was thinking of Mica, in case you're wondering.

Anonymous said...

Shale makes me think of kale; I like Caesar Cipher.
And I put together a mix of songs as part of a wedding gift for some friends of mine, including "The Distant Glow." They like it; your Baltimore fan base is growing.
(Hooray for semi-colons today, apparently.)