Really bad band names

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I’ve always been fascinated with band names and they way in which they are created. For example, here are three bands that I’m currently listening to and the derivation of each name:

Vampire Weekend derived it’s name from the lead singer’s film of the same name. Admittedly a strange name for a band, but a memorable one.

Arcade Fire, according the great and powerful Wikipedia, reportedly got its name from an actual fire in an arcade. Sort of. When asked about this story, lead singer Win Butler replied, "It's not a rumor, it's based on a story that someone told me. It's not an actual event, but one that I took to be real. I would say that it's probably something that the kid made up, but at the time I believed him."

A good name despite the convoluted explanation. Don’t you think?

Bright Eyes gets its name from a 1934 Shirley Temple film that lead singer Conor Oberst watched on Turner Classic Movies in which the protagonist calls his love interest "Bright Eyes" as a term of endearment.

I like this story. The name Bright Eyes isn’t as memorable or unique as Arcade Fire or Vampire Weekend, but it’s not bad, either. I like it.

Bad band names are another story. I often wonder why some bands are capable of coming up with such interesting and memorable names while others don’t seem to try at all.

For example, check out this list of local bands appearing at a club in Madison, CT.

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I don’t think there’s a good name in the bunch, and a few are downright stupid.  I’m never a fan of bands simply named after their lead singer (The Dave Matthews Band, for example), but on this list, they are the best of the bunch.

Except for Langley Project. After the Alan Parsons Project and the John Tesh Project, haven’t we had enough projects?

Check out some of the names that aren’t named after the lead singer:

What Up Funk Rock Bottom Bud Bottleneck and CD

What kind of intriguing story could explain the creation of these gems?

What Up Funk. I actually found this band online. They refer to themselves on their website as What Up, What Up Funk, and The What Up Funk Band.

This is a problem.

They also write only in CAPS and use phrases as “LAST FREAKEND WAS ONE TO REMEMBER…” I also learned that their albums are named “As Funky As U Wanna B” and “Soulfunkful,” so it’s clear that this band has a problem with names.

I also found Rock Bottom online. Their homepage reads:

Sorry for the site problems!!! My computer crashed!!! We are now back on line!! The band has been practicing hard and working on some new music...see you soon at the next couple of shows!!!

Rock Bottom (Bryan, Jeff, Damin, Matt, and Greg)

At least the name appears to fit. Right?

Bud Bottleneck and CD have no website. I was not surprised. I’m guessing that they derive their name from something like this:

My name is Stew Johnson but I gave myself the name Bud Bottleneck because it makes people think of beer, and then they drink more, which makes us sound better. And Marty Finklestein, my lead guitarist, took the stage name CD so people will think of CDs and buy our CD. Great marketing, eh?

But the worst of all is The Rockaholics, a name that I would expect a ten-year old to invent for their band, only to be warned that the name is so close to to the word alcoholics (and just so stupid) that it should probably be avoided.

But no. I found this band online as well, and apparently they are actually playing up the addiction theme. Their homepage reads:

rockaholic (rah - ke - hôl - ik) n. - 1. a person affected with a rock and roll addiction; 2. one who rocks out habitually and to excess or who succumbs to rockaholism. pl. - Rockaholics, The. a hard hitting Connecticut based band that serves up an intoxicating blend of the best rock & roll from the 60's 70's 80's and 90's!!! The Rockaholics... Get addicted!

A couple items of note:

Check out the pronunciation guide to their name. If you were to actually use it, you would be pronouncing the name incorrectly. According to their pronunciation, rockaholic should be pronounced rockehholic.

I also adore the use of the triple exclamation point, always a sign of professionalism.

I know. All this seems kind of mean, and it is. These guys and girls are musicians, working hard and trying to entertain audiences, and nit-picking their websites and their extensive use of CAPS is petty and cruel.

But if they had given their band a decent name, I wouldn’t be doing this.

Justin Bieber and Albert Einstein in one place

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Digg,com, the social news networking site that allows users to determine which stories are the most popular, is an interesting and diverse site indeed, and it’s one of my favorites.

This morning’s top ranked story is a YouTube video of Justin Bieber (I heard this kid was young but MY GOD!) being struck in the head by a water bottle while onstage at a concert.

And the word water is spelled wrong in the title of the video. 

The second ranked story is a copy of Einstein’s 1939 letter to Roosevelt discussing the progress of the US nuclear weapons program and his fears that the Germans were also working on developing a nuclear bomb. 

The third story is this cartoon:

Out Of Sync

You can see why this site has appealed to me for so long. 

How am I ever going to explain Ghostbusters to her?

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There are certain things that I will never be able to fully explain to my daughter. Here’s one:

The theme song to the film Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. went to #1 on the Billboard singles chart and stayed there for three weeks.

This is not a song like Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, which, for all its sappiness, does not specifically reference icebergs, diamonds and the sinking of an ocean liner and therefore has an understandable life beyond the movie.

This is a song that only makes sense if you have seen the film. It’s a song about Ghostbusters, an occupation that only exists within the movie.

This is a song with lyrics like:

If you've had a dose of a freaky ghost You'd better call - Ghostbusters!

And yet somehow this theme song became a number one hit in 1984.

I can hear Clara now:

“Daddy, how did the theme to Ghostbusters become the most popular song in America for a entire month when there were plenty of other songs that did not rely on a specific movie for context?  I don’t get it.  You had Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Madonna, The Police, The Rolling Stones, U2, Bon Jovi  and dozens of other great musicians making great music in 1984 and the Ghostbusters theme song topped them all for an entire month?”

What can I say to something to a question like that?

She would be right. It’s inexplicable.

Instead of attempting to provide an answer (because there is no answer), I’ll attempt to distract her with this nugget of trivia about the song:

The song was nominated for an Academy Award in the best original song category and won a Grammy. But you won’t find the music video on the home video version of the movie Ghostbusters due to a plagiarism suit brought by Huey Lewis in 1984. Lewis charged that the tune to Ghostbusters was essentially the same as I Want a New Drug by Huey Lewis and the News, which had come out six months earlier. The suit was settled out of court in 1985, with one of the stipulations being that neither party would ever discuss the suit in public.

And because the world depends upon bizarre coincidence, Huey Lewis was originally asked to come up with a theme song for Ghostbusters but turned down the project, after which the producers approached Ray Parker, Jr.

Mired in hip-waggling and scat

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My wife and I spent the evening listening to one of her former students, now a senior in college, perform with her jazz quartet.

I left the bar mystified as to why anyone would want to be a jazz singer.  This young lady was clearly talented and she and her quartet put on an outstanding show, but a jazz singer seems to spend more time on the stage not singing than actually singing.  She opened up each of the songs with her incredible voice, and she returned at the end of each song to wrap things up, but in between, while the musicians were taking their solos, she just stood there, attempting to achieve that delicate balance between moving to the rhythm enough to give the appearance that she’s enjoying herself without moving so much as to distract attention away from her band mates. 

Not dancing, exactly, because if she were dancing, she would risk becoming the center of attention.  It was more like grooving, a feet-planted, subtle hip- shaking waggle to the beat.  And if I had clocked the amount of time that she was actually singing, I think we’d find that she moved her hips more than she moved her mouth during their set. 

As a singer, wouldn’t you want to find a medium that highlights your talents more?

And even worse, jazz singers must sing scat, that bizarre series of nonsense syllables sung in an attempt to sound like a musical instrument.  Yes, I know that improvisation is at the heart of jazz, but if you’re not actually playing a musical instrument, then either improvise using actual words or pick up a saxophone and take a solo. 

The beeps and boops and dah-deet-dah-dah-dee-dah-da’s are just ridiculous. 

Elysha wondered last night if there are classes on scat for people who go to school to study to become jazz musicians.  Boy do I hope so, because I would love to audit one of these classes, just to hear what is actually taught.

A quick search found plenty of CDs and DVDs that teach scat, so I must assume that actual conservatories also teach this skill.  

I have always found it quite telling that scat is also the word used for animal excrement. 

I think that pretty much says it all.

There is never a need to make Journey songs more accessible to children

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This morning, I brought Clara to her gym class and was subjected to the musical styling of a Journey cover band that transformed classic songs such as Don’t Stop Believin’ and Any Way You Want It into dorky versions of the same song thanks to the addition of a oh-shucks-golly-gee-wilikers lead singer. Same words. Same music. Terrible singer. I don’t get it.

What was wrong with playing the originals?

Even more befuddling was the cover of the Lady Gaga song Bad Romance that removed the word bitch.

While the removal of this word was sensible considering the age of the audience (children under the age of two), you have to wonder why Lady Gaga even made the playlist.

It certainly did nothing to inspire my seventeen-month old, who is unaware of the existence of Lady Gaga and could care less about her music or popularity. And it did nothing for me, particularly considering it was another dorky cover of the original song.

And since it did not appeal to anyone in the gym, what’s the point in including a song that needs to be censored for profanity?

And more important, what will be next?

Clean versions of Playboy magazine in the waiting area, with little paper dresses pasted over the nude models'?

A sanitized version of a Richard Pryor comedy routine on the flat screen television, dubbed over with the voice of Kermit the Frog?

Penthouse Forums in the restrooms in which all references to sex are replaced with references to rubber ducks, bath time toys and Tickle-Me Elmo?

There comes a time when certain things are better left in their original form rather than attempting to sanitize them for a child’s benefit.

Inexplicable loserdom

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Could someone please explain to me why the Alicia Keys and Jay-Z’s song Empire State of Mind causes a large percentage of men to high five, hug and slap one another on the back as if they are engaged in some meaningful, emotional experience? In Farmington, Connecticut.

Or North Granby, Connecticut.

Or Plainville, Connecticut.

Or anywhere. Yes. Even in New York, this behavior is ridiculous.

Musical quandary

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I must have listened to the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia a hundred times. If you’re not familiar with the tune, it essentially tells the story of a boy named Johnny who is challenged by the devil to a battle of fiddle-playing. If Johnny wins, he gets the devil's golden fiddle, and if he loses, the devil gets Johnny’s soul. Satan's and Johnny's performances are played as instrumental bridges during the song. No matter how many times I hear this song, I am unable to determine why Johnny beats Satan. They both sound pretty damn good to me.

You’d think that Charlie Daniels might have made the decision a little clearer cut.

The same color?

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Though I’m not a fan, I was always under the impression that the hip hop duo Salt-n-Pepa was comprised of an African American and a Caucasian, hence the name.

It recently has come to my attention that this is not the case. Cheryl James(now known as Cheryl Wray) and Sandra Denton are both black.

I don’t get it.

Paul McCartney was smart enough to get Stevie Wonder to perform the song Ebony and Ivory with him.  Why waste such a fitting multi-racial name on a hip hop duo band that isn’t made up of a black and white member?

A disservice to womankind

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This weekend, I was interviewing the longest married couples at a wedding, asking them if they had any advice for our bride and groom. One lady responded:

Do a lot of shopping. Buy lots of shoes, but keep them in the trunk of your car. Never bring more than one pair of shoes into the house at a time. Don’t ever let him know how much you’ve actually bought.

At first I found this advice amusing, and she admittedly got quite the laugh from the guests. But reflecting back upon it now, I find the advice demeaning and offensive to women. It reinforces a stereotype that women are materialistic, retail obsessed, and monetarily-focused. Why do women insist on perpetuating this stereotype with comments such as these?

I find myself harboring the same sense of disappointment and outrage when women requested Kanye West’s Golddigger and similarly degrading songs at weddings. It doesn’t take a genius to see how terribly offensive and demeaning a song like this is, yet for months women have continually asked that this song be played.  I feel compelled to ask them, “Out of the tens of thousands of songs that are written and recorded each year, why would you request a song that makes women sound like greedy, selfish, single-minded money-grubbing sluts? Please don’t tell me it’s because it has a good beat.”

They often do.

I find this frustrating and disheartening. When women are continuing to request songs like Golddigger or suggest that wives spend their time shopping and hiding their purchases from their husbands, what chance is there for change?

I’m guessing that this new level of consternation has a lot to do with my daughter. While I may have found these issues unfortunate and disappointing in the past, the prospect of my daughter growing up in a world full of these demeaning, degrading and unjust attitudes is upsetting to say the least.

When they originate with and are perpetuated by women, it’s doubly upsetting.

The rest of the story

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By request, the rest of the highlights of my lip syncing career:

In 1989, Bengi, Coog and I headed to Salisbury Beach in northern Massachusetts to create a lip syncing music video in a studio along the boardwalk.  I pretended to play the drums and sing backup to Skid Row’s Youth Gone Wild and Dokken’s In My Dreams.  The video was later shown at one of our parties and I didn’t hear the end of it for weeks.  I believe that Bengi is still in possession of the video, which frightens me to the core.

In 1990, Bengi, Coog and I entered a lip syncing contest at a dance club in Weir’s Beach, New Hampshire.  The club played exclusively dance music, but we decided to lip sync to Bon Jovi’s Raise Your Hands.  The highlight of the performance came when I lifted Coog onto my shoulders and carried him around the dance floor as he attempted to lead a stunned, confused and utterly non-participatory group of 18-22 year olds in the chorus of the song.  We were clearly out of place, singing a song that was unlike anything the club had ever played before and loathed by our audience, but I nevertheless managed to meet a redhead named Nicole Blais at the end of the night, and after laughing at me for my performance, the two of us got together and casually dated for almost two years.

The only good thing to ever come from lip syncing. 

In 1993, I entered a lip syncing contest in College Park, Maryland with two girls who I was living with while working in DC for the summer.  The place was actually a karaoke bar, but the television screen providing the lyrics to each song had stopped working a few nights prior, and so the owner decided to shift the format of his establishment to lip syncing until the screen could be replaced.  Kim, Rachel and I lip synced Love Shack and took second prize.  $100 that we promptly spent on drinks and food.

Two nights later we returned to lip sync Rock Lobster and were booed off the stage before reaching the second chorus. 

Thus was the end of my lip syncing career.

Memories I’d like to forget

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While playing Sweet Child O’ Mine at last night’s wedding, Bengi and I reminisced about a time when we were seventeen years old. We were both in high school, working for a McDonald’s in Milford, Massachusetts, and in an effort to build morale, management decided to sponsor a lip-sync contest, complete with a cash prize.

So began my long and shameful career in lip syncing contests.

The competition took place in a meeting room inside the Milford Public Library.

A lip-sync contest in a library.

There were four acts competing in the contest. I was in three of them. 

Bengi, a guy named Eric, a now-forgotten participant, and I lip synced Guns and Roses Sweet Child O’ Mine. Bengi was on vocals and I was on drums.

Bengi and I followed up this performance with a two-man tribute to Tesla’s classic Gettin’ Better.

The third act was me and a forgotten pair of girls who performed a favorite song of mine at the time, Under the Boardwalk.

The final act was six older ladies singing and dancing to Heard it Through the Grapevine.

The Sweet Child O’ Mine act won first prize that night, the only prize of the contest. $25 split four ways.

Thank God the video camera was not as ubiquitous as it is today.  The whole scene most have been utterly ridiculous. 

It’s just better

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I’ve been listening to a lot of rock music from today’s most popular bands: Bowling for Soup, Blink-182, Jimmy Eat World, Fountains of Wayne, Green Day, Avril Lavigne, Good Charlotte, and the like. Having grown up on popular 80’s rock and metal bands like Def Leppard, Poison, Tesla, Bon Jovi and the like (too many to name), this new form of rock was difficult to digest at first, more punk than metal and faster than most of the popular songs from the 80’s. But I found it to be good music for the treadmill, loud and up-tempo, and as I listened, I came to a realization:

This new brand of rock is vastly superior to the rock and metal that I listened to as a teenager.

This is not easy to say. Most people remain exceptionally loyal to the music of their youth, often declaring “those good old days” to be the best and continuing to listen to the music of their youth throughout their lives. But if given the chance to listen to Def Leppard or Bowling for Soup, Tesla or Good Charlotte, and even Bon Jovi or Jimmy Eat World, I’ll take the latter every time.

Sacrilege, I know. But here’s why I like today’s rock better:

First, the sound is less produced. It relies heavily on guitar and the sound is rawer and more real than almost every band from the 1980’s. While 1980’s bands tried to rid themselves of their garage band sounds, the rock bands of today seem to have embraced the sound.

Second, the lyrics are more intelligent. They contain humor, irony, self-deprecation and honest insight. They often acknowledge their musical predecessors through both praise and insults. These are songs that tell stories and convey clear imagery to the listener. And sure, there were a few of these songs in my youth, but rarely could you find a song and a band that didn’t take itself too seriously. The music that I grew up with possessed no humor or irony, and never was a band willing to make fun of itself for the sake of the song. While Def Leppard was singing about how unrequited love through Love Bites:

Love bites, love bleeds
It's bringin' me to my knees
Love lives, love dies
It's no surprise
Love begs, love pleads
It's what I need

… Bowling for Soup is singing The Girl All the Bad Guys Want, another song about unrequited love, but in their song, the spurned lover has started watching wrestling and listening rap metal in a desperate to impress the girl and “see her naked.”  But he can’t grow a mustache and is still stuck driving a moped and just isn’t cool enough for the girl.

See the difference?

Def Leppard’s song is overly dramatic, with references to blood, love and death, while the other conjures images of a loser on a moped, trying to garner the attention of Nona, a rocker with a nose ring who prefers tough guys in Trans-Ams who watch wrestling.

One image is real and tangible and perhaps even familiar while the other is not.

Lastly, the musicians of today have changed dramatically as well. While bands like Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, and Poison all looked about the same, skinny guys with long hair and back tee-shirts, the rock bands of today are all unique. Bowling for Soup has a fat guy on bass, something that you would have never seen in the 1980’s, and their costumes are often simple, everyday items of clothing (jeans, tee-shirts, football jerseys, and shirts advertising other bands) or ironic twists on something outrageous or bizarre, like powder blue tuxedos. The four members of Fountains of Wayne look like slacker office workers with un-tucked button-downs and loosened ties. Blink-182’s trio is tattooed, pierced, spiked, and angry. And the members of Good Charlotte have their own brand of the Goth look. Their music clearly possesses the same sound and the same approach to lyrics and performance, but to look at these bands, one would think that they all perform entirely different styles of music.

How refreshing to see bands avoid conforming.

So yes, I still listen to my 1980’s rock and metal bands from time to time (Bon Jovi seems to have transcended the decade and remained fresh), but more often I find myself turning to today’s rock instead, wanting to hear raw, ironic songs about real people. Songs that tell stories and reveal secrets. Not overly-produced, overly-dramatic and often indiscernible songs that suggest that I pour some sugar on someone, teach me that every rose has its thorn or tell the obscure and indefinable and stupid story about a sweet child o’ mine.

That’s right.  I even went after Guns n’ Roses.

Sacrilege.  I know.

A brief history of my favorite musicians

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I thought it might be fun to track the history of my favorite bands or musical acts of all-time.  Perhaps you could share yours as well. Here goes:

My first favorite band was The Rolling Stones. My evil stepfather had a collection of records that included a bunch of Stones albums, and though I didn’t know or understand everything that I was listening to, those records were the foundation of my introduction to the world of music. I especially loved Beggar’s Banquet, which included Sympathy for the Devil and Let it Bleed, which featured my all-time favorite Stones’ song, You Can’t Always Get What You Want. From the age of eight up until middle school, I would play these albums for hours.

In 1984, I finally bought a radio of my own and was thus able to unchain myself from my stepfather’s stereo and his record collection. I was twelve years old at the time, we had just gotten cable television in the house, MTV was in its prime video-playing days, and The Cars’ Heartbeat City had just hit the airwaves. Instantly I had a new favorite band. I loved the entire album, and thanks to MTV and my discovery of Strawberries Records in Milford, Massachusetts, I was able to find their earlier albums as well. You Might Think won Video of the Year at the first MTV Video Music Awards that same year.

God I loved that video.

Looking at it today, it’s clear that the director was on acid.

Other hit singles from Heartbeat City included Magic, Hello Again, and Why Can’t I Have You, though Shake It Up remains my favorite Cars song of all-time. Though I would grow to despise the synthetic sound of 1980’s bands like The Cars, I never stopped liking their music.

The Car’s number one standing did not last for long. Bruce Springsteen released Born in the USA in 1984, and though it took me almost a year to finally purchase the album, I was instantly in love with the Boss. I remember running out and buying Born to Run the next day, and a week later, I bought the only vinyl album of my entire life, Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park.

Through the years, other bands have taken the number one spot from Springsteen from time to time, but I inevitably return to him again and again.

One of these bands was Telsa. In 1986 I attended my first concert: Poison at the Worcester Centrum. While I liked Poison, I became infatuated with their opening act, Tesla, a band that I had never heard before. Within a week, they were my new favorite. Their album, Mechanical Resonance, was a metal album that did not scream like the heavier bands of the day, making it perfect for my borderline glam-metal taste. It featured their seminal hit, Little Suzi, as well as my personal favorite, Gettin’ Better, which I would lip sync to later that year, taking third prize in the contest. Tesla followed this album up with The Great Radio Controversy (1989) and Psychotic Supper (1991), as well as an acoustical album that gained widespread popularity. I saw Tesla play about five years ago at the Webster, and they were still going strong, and while I still love their music, their position at the number one spot on my list didn’t last long.

Def Leppard released Hysteria in 1987 and poured out hit after hit onto the radio, charting a total of seven songs (one of only three bands to ever do this). I was already a fan of the band after its previous release, Pyromania, but Hysteria sent this band rocketing to the top of my list. Songs like Animal, Hysteria, Pour Some Sugar on Me, Rocket, and Love Bites could be heard blasting from the windows of cars repeatedly during my junior and senior year of high school, mine included. When I think back upon that final summer vacation before my senior year of high school, the soundtrack of those memorable days and nights was Def Leppard.

At some point shortly after the summer of 1997, perhaps in late 1988 or early 1989, I went to my first Bon Jovi concert and my allegiances quickly shifted. I had attended at least two Def Leppard concerts prior to this, and while they put on a great show, with their trademark 360 degree stage and one armed drummer, Bon Jovi put on a show like I had never seen before. Def Lepprd seemed to be playing for themselves, and the audience was fortunate enough to be present to watch the performance. But Bon Jovi was playing for his audience, and somehow it seemed as if he was playing just for me. The albums Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi’s best ever, followed by New Jersey gave me plenty to listen to as they assumed my number one spot until well after high school graduation. Livin’ on a Prayer remains one of my favorite songs of all-time.

The music scene went to hell in 1991 as Kurt Cobain appeared, convincing the world that everyone should be depressed, dirty, and flannelled. The music that the grunge movement produced was awful, and more importantly, it drove bands like Guns and Roses, Bon Jovi, and Tesla off the radio. Bon Jovi would not release another album until 1992, so in search of new music, I found Meatloaf (thanks to my visits to the midnight performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Harvard Square), and specifically his 1977 release Bat Out of Hell. I loved it. Within a few months, I had scoured all of the independent record stores in the area and had managed to gather his 1981, 1983, 1984 and 1986 albums, some of which are still not available on CD or MP3 today.

I have yet to find his first album, Stoney and Meatloaf.

Admittedly Meatloaf can be a bit over the top, with the average song running more than five minutes and many of them sounding more like rock operas than rock music, but I loved almost every song from those albums, and in 1993 would fall in love all over again with Bat Out of Hell II, the second time Meatloaf would team up with Jim Steinman. For the period of 1991through 1999, Bruce Springsteen and Meatloaf alternated as my favorite musical acts.

In 1999, I began teaching elementary school, and in search of music that I could play in the classroom, I began listening to Simon and Garfunkel and then Paul Simon, and for about two years, these two musical acts, indistinguishable for the purposes of my list, assumed the top spot. Tired of hard rock and metal, I found their folky, under-produced, lyrically interesting music appealing, and this led the way for my appreciation of many other bands with similar sounds. I Am a Rock became my personal theme song for quite some time, only replaced in the last couple years by Cat Steven’s Can’t Keep It In, another artist of a similar vein.

In 2002, Bruce Springsteen released The Rising, reminding me once again why he belonged at the top of my list. Though Born to Run remains my favorite Springsteen album, The Rising is a close second, filled with music that meant something in our post 9/11 world. This album helped to cement Springsteen at the top of my list, and in 2005, I attended my first Springsteen concert of my life.

During the past seven years, I’ve had brief flirtations with Cat Stevens, Johnny Cash, CCR, Van Morrison, and The Beatles. Each made a run at the number one spot, and perhaps for a period of about six months in 2004, Bowling for Soup managed to briefly achieve number one status, but ever since 2002, Bruce Springsteen has essentially been my favorite.

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone could come along and take his place.

Brilliant band names

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Bon Jovi and Van Halen are ingenious band names. 

Both names are derived from the last names of the founding members of the bands (Jon Bon Jovi and Eddie and Alex Van Halen), but both names have also become separate and distinct identities in their own right.

That is, when someone mentions Bon Jovi, you don’t automatically think of Jon or his brief solo career.  Instead but you think of the entire band as a whole.  Bon Jovi is not one guy.  It’s a group of five guys.   

Similarly, when someone mentions Van Halen, you’re probably just as likely to think about Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth as you are to think about the Van Halen brothers.

Ingenious. 

In both cases, the founding members receive lead billing while avoiding the impression that the band is essentially a solo act with a less-than-important cast of backup characters. 

Of course, this apparently only works if your last name consists of two words, the first being of the three letter, consonant-vowel-consonant variety.

Unless I’m forgetting an equally brilliant band name. 

Anyone? 

8 simple rules for requesting music at a wedding

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I just finished meeting with a couple who is getting married in March.  They are very nice people who chose most of the music for their wedding, which will tie my hands a bit when it comes to taking requests that night.

This is fine with me.  I find the practice of requesting songs at weddings to be annoying and rude.  Brides and grooms spend a great deal of time choosing the music for their weddings.  Why screw it up with your stupid request for Diana King’s Say a Little Prayer?  Yes, it was cute in My Best Friend's Wedding, but you’re not Julia Roberts and it just doesn’t work as well in real life.

I have been the DJ at more than 300 weddings over the past fifteen years, and I am still surprised how often an impossible-to-dance song from a wedding movie will permeate the music scene.

But if you insist upon requesting a song at a wedding, please follow these simple rules. 

1. DO request your song early in the evening.  If you wait until the last hour of the wedding, the DJ is likely locked into a playlist of bride and groom songs, as well as the requests of guests who were smart enough to ask for their songs earlier.

2. DO request music during dinner.  Want to hear your own wedding song?  Ask for it to be played during dinner, and feel free to escort your spouse to the dance floor.  This is a perfect time to play slow songs, and even though people are eating, you are perfectly free to dance.

3. DON’T tell the DJ how important you are as a means of convincing him to play your request.  Everyone at the wedding is important, otherwise they would not have been invited.  “I’m the Maid of Honor.” “I’m the college roommate”  “I’m the bride’s favorite aunt.”  None of this means a damn to a DJ.  Unless you are the bride and groom or perhaps one of their parents, your relationship does not carry any weight with us if your request is lousy or we are running out of time.  

4. DON’T tell the DJ that the music that he is playing “sucks” when it is probably the  music that the bride and groom specifically requested AND the dance floor is jammed with guests. Essentially, you’re telling me that your friend’s taste in music sucks and that every guest on the dance floor has no taste as well.  

5. DO respect the wishes of the bride and groom.  If they asked that The Macarena not be played at the wedding, don’t go hassling the bride in order to have the song played after the DJ has refused.  Leave the bride and groom alone and find some other overplayed, utterly ridiculous song that allows you to engage in an absurd display of synchronized line dancing.

6. DON’T flirt with the DJ, offer to expand his view of your cleavage, or proffer sex in order to get a song played.  You’re probably not very good looking, the DJ is probably married or in a serious relationship, we’ve all seen enough cleavage in our lives to allow us to pass on yours, and women who are willing to offer sex in order to dance to a four-minute song from 1983 are not that appealing.

7. DON’T threaten to “kick my ass in the parking lot” when I refuse to play a fourth song by Chicago during the wedding.  It’s not worth it, and you will look foolish when I accept your parking lot offer, knowing full well that I am perfectly capable of kicking the ass of any man who likes a pop rock band like Chicago this much.

8. DO ask yourself:  Do I really need to request this song?  Is it worth altering the  bride and groom’s playlist in order to hear a four minute song that I can play at any other time?

If the answer is yes, get your self-centered ass over to the DJ booth and be polite, flexible and understanding.  If I have time and am allowed to play the song that you have requested, I will, as long as you have asked in a way that would make your mother proud.

Music critics: A dying breed?

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It occurs to me that the music critic is a relatively useless profession, providing the reader with meaningless information on a fairly regular basis.

Theatre and movie critics can help you to decide if you want to invest two or three hours of your life plus admission on a film or play.

Book critics can help you to decide if a book is worth an even more sizeable investment of time plus purchase price.

Food critics serve a similar function in the restaurant business.

But a music critic? Most songs run about four minutes in length, and rarely does a person just sit and listen to music. As a result, making the determination as to whether or not a song is good and worthy of purchase is hardly an investment in time.

Add to this that most songs are available for free on the radio, the Internet, or in thirty-second snippets at an online music store and the monetary investment in making the determination of worth is almost nonexistent. Why would we need a music critic to defend or destroy the value of a song when we can usually decide for ourselves in less time than it takes to bring out the garbage?

My wife argues that music critics often introduce listeners to new music, but with Pandora, Last FM, iTunes’ Genius functionality, and the good old fashioned radio, do we even require this service today?

Worse still, music critics seem obsessed with writing about why one musician is being real or achieving authenticity while another sounds too commercial or inauthentic. They spend time disaggregating the politics behind a Guns N’ Roses song or the symbolism in a Prince tune when all we really want them to do is tell us if the album is any good, and even that is a stretch.

I like culture and music critic Chuck Klosterman a lot and think his new collection of essays, EAT THE DINOSAUR, is outstanding (his essay on football is damn near perfect), but I don’t think I’ve ever heard words like modernity and authenticity used more often than in his essays about ABBA, Weezer and Kurt Cobain.

There comes a point when it’s just music, man. It sounds good or it doesn’t, and no amount of “millennial irony” or “post-modern sensibility” will change that.