The Usual Shop

Posted by Steve on January 4th, 2008 in Uncategorized

(Originally published Monday, October 23, 2006)

A Guns N Roses by any other name would still rock as hard.

I’ve been thinking lately about cool band names. It began when we started discussing the definition of the real number system in my History of Maths class. For centuries people used the real number system without being able to clearly, technically define it (the same thing happened with limits). Finally some dude named Dedekind figured out a way. He defined the real numbers by defining all the rational numbers to one side of it (all the rational numbers less than the real number). Sets of rational numbers defined that way are called “cuts”. I decided then that if I’m ever a famous rocker, I should serious consider the name “The Dedekind Cuts” for my band.

I’ve always liked The Yuzhual Shoppe (pronounced The Usual Shop) as a band name. That was the name of a band that never quite came into existence.

Today my sister accidentally misspelled “Question” and it came out “Quesiton” and when I read that out loud I thought that sounded like a cool name for a rock band.

I’ve always been better at creating band names than at creating bands. Another band that never quite came to be yet had a name was Symphonic Whore. I liked that one a good deal. I liked that one for the extremities it represented.

Dave Barry often writes about potential names for rock groups. In his novel, Big Trouble there is a band called The Seminal Fluids. I thought that was funny. Especially considering it takes place in Miami where there are actual Seminole Indians… I wonder if they take offense. I wonder if the band steals Ghost Orchids.

Also, I like the idea that the word “buckle” can mean two very different things. For example, to buckle a seat belt means to fasten it. While when your knees buckle, it means they essentially collapse, or fall apart. I’ve been toying around with something like The Buckling Knee Belts or something like that, but nothing’s stuck as of yet.

When I was in physical therapy after my shoulder surgery I thought a lot about the mythological character Tantalus. He was the one who was condemned to spend eternity, or 8 to 10, or something like that with water up to his neck but every time he went to take a drink, the water would reside. He couldn’t ever get any, the poor (anti-) sot. Also there were branches with fruit and granola and whenever he’d reach for some food the branches would pull back.

That, of course, is how we get the word tantalize. Anyway, I liked the idea of Saving Tantalus or Drowning Tantalus or Kicking Tantalus in Teeth, or something along those lines for a band name.

I also like Pink Floyd, but I think that might already be taken.

I like band names that reference something cool. For example one of the early genises of heavy metal was the band Steppenwolf. They’re named after that awfully good, yet quite bizarre book of the same title by Herman Hesse. There’s also that band Dead Eye Dick. There’s a book called Dead Eye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut, but I don’t know for sure that the band is named after the book. And then there’s Steely Dan. I like that a progressive soft rock group names themselves after a literary sex toy.

So a good name for a band might be Mack and the Boys from my favorite book Cannery Row… Or how about (along the lines of Hall and Oates or Seals and Crofts) Wormwood and Screwtape from C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters.

As soon as I get the talent and the co-conspiritors, I’ve got plenty of available monikers (How about The Monikers, kind of along the lines of No Use for a Name or The Honorary Title).

Okay, I just thought of one other: If I was in a great Russian band (like The Pet Shop Boys), we’d definitely call ourselves The Creme De La Kremlin.