Failure™ Magazine

Battle of the Band Names

Battle of the Band Names: The Best and Worst Band Names Ever, by Bart Bull, Abrams Image.

Review by Dave de Angry  Filed under Book Reviews

Looking to name your new reggae outfit Ranking Dread? Taken, dude. How about dubbing your tribute act Def Repplica? Sorry man, it’s been done. Have designs on creating a new sound called noisecore? Whoops, already exists. Better check out “Battle of the Band Names” before your band settles on a moniker—or genre.

Penned by Bart Bull, a former editor at SPIN and Details, “Battle of The Band Names” takes The Name Game chapter of “The Book of Rock Lists” and expands it exponentially. Covering almost every musical style, this obsessive, smart-ass, and at times uproarious collection is made up of long lists of band (and artist) names, organized under 35 chapter headings. Marketed as a resource for musicians brainstorming for a handle, the judgments made here have nothing to do with commercial success. If they did, “… probably the eighth best band name ever would be Celine Dion, and [then] we’d all know … that the Book of Revelations was kicking full effect,” quips Bull.

“Battle …” opens with a sampling of the “worst”—names that range from the banal (like Business Card and Menswear) to pun-loving (William Penn and His Pals) to the downright painful (Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies). Some of the acts listed eventually came to their senses. Surely you remember Elston Gunn and His Rock Boppers, and Dr. Zoom and The Sonic Boom, right? If not, you may be familiar with their later manifestations—Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, respectively.

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