Concave Dwarf
Names, names, names.
I've been thinking about the power of names a lot lately. An anecdote:
I recently bought a CD largely because of the name of the band: British Sea Power. I had seen a blurb about heir new disc on The Onion. The blurb gave just enough information to suggest the band probably didn't suck and that they played a style of music I probably wouldn't hate. What really caught me, though, was the name. Due to my recent obsession with Napoleonic war-era historical fiction about the Royal Navy, I had an immediate reaction to the band's name of "Cool! They must be good!"
As it turns out, they are. I can't get enough of their most recent release, "Open Season," and the first album, "The Decline of British Sea Power," is artistically wonderful. And I got into them instead of the 100 other bands I read favorable blurbs about that month strictly because of their name.
It puts me in mind of back when the Monkey Units that made up Riley were trying to settle on a name. One of our prime criteria was that the name shouldn't conjure up any strong independent imagery, must not give the potential listener preconceived connections that might be betrayed by us sounding nothing like the anticipation. This is one of the reasons we scrapped the otherwise front-running name "Concave Dwarf."
In retrospect, this rule could have been a big mistake. If you get a hundred people to listen to the band because they thought the name was interesting, but then eighty percent of them only give you one listen because you aren't what they expected, that still leaves you with 20 more listeners than a band with a name that drew no notice. Now, we did things a little differently--we had a name that on the surface was free of hooks, but were able to parlay that into an advertising gimmick that showed up on posters: "Riley. Great music from the band named after a dog." Still, it makes me wonder what might have happened if the dog's name were, say, Dethpäw or Concave Dwarf.
Next up, names for instrumentals: where do they come from?
I've been thinking about the power of names a lot lately. An anecdote:
I recently bought a CD largely because of the name of the band: British Sea Power. I had seen a blurb about heir new disc on The Onion. The blurb gave just enough information to suggest the band probably didn't suck and that they played a style of music I probably wouldn't hate. What really caught me, though, was the name. Due to my recent obsession with Napoleonic war-era historical fiction about the Royal Navy, I had an immediate reaction to the band's name of "Cool! They must be good!"
As it turns out, they are. I can't get enough of their most recent release, "Open Season," and the first album, "The Decline of British Sea Power," is artistically wonderful. And I got into them instead of the 100 other bands I read favorable blurbs about that month strictly because of their name.
It puts me in mind of back when the Monkey Units that made up Riley were trying to settle on a name. One of our prime criteria was that the name shouldn't conjure up any strong independent imagery, must not give the potential listener preconceived connections that might be betrayed by us sounding nothing like the anticipation. This is one of the reasons we scrapped the otherwise front-running name "Concave Dwarf."
In retrospect, this rule could have been a big mistake. If you get a hundred people to listen to the band because they thought the name was interesting, but then eighty percent of them only give you one listen because you aren't what they expected, that still leaves you with 20 more listeners than a band with a name that drew no notice. Now, we did things a little differently--we had a name that on the surface was free of hooks, but were able to parlay that into an advertising gimmick that showed up on posters: "Riley. Great music from the band named after a dog." Still, it makes me wonder what might have happened if the dog's name were, say, Dethpäw or Concave Dwarf.
Next up, names for instrumentals: where do they come from?