The Band Name [Book]

The Band Name Book by Noel Hudson is exactly what it sounds like. The book breaks its self up into several categories like, “animals” or “death stuff”* and then lists the bands that the author found relevant in that category with a short blurb. I found that if I scanned for a band I wanted to know more about I’d usually see something I wanted to know about before finding what I was originally looking for. From there I’d generally see something else funny and once I exhausted one train of thought it was easy to move onto another one.

The book advertises on Amazon as being a reference book where you can have the origins of every band at your fingertips. After spending some time with it however, it’s clear that Noel would rather regale you with the thousands of stupid and often hilarious names of bands you’ve never heard of, than actually give you any substantial history on the ones you know.

Although I was disappointed when bands I wanted to know about were missing, to the book’s credit, there was usually something amusing listed alphabetically where “Pop Will Eat Itself” or “Atari Teenage Riot” should have been Although it’s disappointing and frustrating to see that your favourite bands have been missed, it’s also really clear that the author doesn’t care. He’s way more psyched about “Fake Shark Real Zombie” or “Crack Horse” (because Crack Horse sounds like “crack whores”) than he is about writing music history. So maybe the best way of describing the book accurately would be to say what it isn’t, and it isn’t one of those Rolling Stone compilation books or a companion to rock documentaries. It’s not using band names as an excuse to talk about the bands, it’s actually about band names.

There is an art to band names that I never fully appreciated until I spent time with this book. The author is a Canadian who takes pride in having been in weirdly named bands since he was 16, and is arguably more enthusiastic about band names than he is about music. A lot of the bands listed will probably never be heard from in any significant pop culture capacity, but certainly deserve to have their names go on record.

The Band Name Book is available for about twenty bucks after shipping on Amazon and if you’re the kind of person who likes to read the local music papers when you’re visiting other cities, or you spend time browsing MySpace for new bands and are generally amused by indie music scenes and music culture this book will be a good thing to have kicking around. It’s nice to pick up while you transit or to browse while you eat your cereal or take shits or when and wherever it is you do your casual reading (you’re probably there right now reading this magazine!).

*ION stole the book back from me before I finished writing this article so this probably isn’t an actual category but you get the idea.

Words: Kellen Powell Illustration: Calen Knauf