A musical outfit or an artist's chosen moniker can be an extremely effective way of encapsulating them in a single word or short phrase. You'll sometimes know straight away if a band is up your alley by what they choose to be called.

I knew immediately that Suicidal Tendencies was not the name of a Christian folk band wearing matching Pendleton shirts, strumming guitars in the sand at Newport Beach, and bowing near a makeshift shrine to John Denver when they got home.

If a group has a semi decent moniker then the chances are fairly good that they at least know how to play their instruments. An exception to that rule would be The Dwarves, who may have not even seen real guitars prior to recording their first album.

Unfortunately, you also have bands who seem to have spent so much time practicing their arpeggios, trills, paradiddles, licks, triplets, hammer-ons, and rolls that songwriting has taken a permanent back seat. Bands of that ilk usually Rush toward any name that isn't already taken.

Geddy Lee to Alex Lifeson one fine day six-hundred years ago: "I got one! How about Peter and The Test Tube Babies?"

Alex grunts musically, "Ehhhhhh, it's too long."

The Beach Boys have a fairly unimaginative name, and some of their earliest material is right up there with Peter, Paul and Mary. Then again, almost everything they did after Pet Sounds (1966) with the exception of the track Kokomo (1989) was utterly breathtaking. I'll put Pet Sounds right up there with Reign In Blood by Slayer.

You think I'm kidding.

A band name works when it's visual-fills your head with images, so that whenever you see hear someone say Aha you quickly make the association.

Agreed, very few band names, (except maybe Air Supply), make you think of nothing whatsoever when you hear them for the first time. However, whether you enjoy a certain band's songs or not, you'll have to agree just sorting out a name that sticks is half the battle for them.

Here are a handful of artists who I think came up with decent things to call themselves: Lucy Fur, Rudimentary Peni, Vaginal Blood Fart, Midget Handjob, A Cat Born In An Oven Isn't A Cake, Nuclear Assault, The Jackofficers, Electric Vomit, Electric Teeth, Asshole Parade, Assuck, Lorne Greene's Wet Nipple, Henry Kissinger's Tits, Lee Harvey Keitel, JFKFC, Frank Snotra, Thurston Howell's Boner, Willie Nelson Mandela, Yoko Ono's Ass, Urinal Mint, The Black Jewish Homosexual Experience, Fat and Fucked Up, Dogs With Jobs, Haircuts That Kill, Cat Butt, I Played in Anal Spew, Wookie Lust, Useless Pieces of Shit, Barney Rubble And The Cunt Stubble, Melt Banana, Afro Chinstrap, Foreskin 500, Crispy Ambulance, The Do I Look Like I Give a Fucks, Pansy Division, Anus the Menace, Doggy Style, Cherry Coke Enema, Fields of Shit, Phil Da Agony (a rapper), My Dog Has Hitler's Brain, Out of Godzilla's Butt, Ludichrist, Econochrist, Diet Christ, Hermaphrochrist, Jesus Chrystler, Impaled Nazarene, Fuckpriest Fantastic, I Wrote The Bible, Pontius CoPilot, Jehovah's Waitresses, The Crucifucks, Sodom & Gomorrah Liberation Front, Pabst Smear, Gregg Turner and the Blood Drained Cows, Shower of Smegma, The French Are From Hell, Projectile Afterbirth, The Horrid Farts, Not Now I'm Naked, Facial Defecation, Swollen Members, Meat Shits, 69% Female, Fuck Taco Bell, Alcoholics Unanimous, Lubricated Goat, Much Ado About Shit, Rage Against the Coffee Machine, Ken Dodd's Dad's Dog's Dead, Inflatable Grandpa, Strangulated Beatoffs, The Vibrators, Butt Full of Dick, Millions of Dead Cops, Stupid White People, The Three Honkeys Hung Like Donkeys, White People Lie, and Bloodcum.

Yeah, so quite a lot of this is inspired by violence, genitalia, sacrilege, and trips to the toilet, but what about Husker Du or The Outlaw Scumfucks? Then there's one of my personal favorites, Jason's Gay Haircut.

So many times I've come home with an album by an artist I've never heard, but I've been eyeing for weeks, and finally broke down and purchased something by them just because of the name.

I did that with Guided By Voices - it was their moniker, and their aura as a band, which seemed to come from a whole 'nother era, when rock and roll was pure.

Napalm Death, at the time I bought their Mentally Murdered EP (1989), seemed like the most intense, severe, passionate thing you could ever want to name yourselves. The appellation, and then the music, made me pause and almost void my bowels. Nowadays they're semi, semi tame up against the likes of Origin, Brutal Truth, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Anal Cunt, or their large number of fans that have started tribute bands (let's be honest).

Why is it that the most worthless, asinine groups in existence usually have equally corny or unspeakable names? Examples: Barenaked Ladies, Crash Test Dummies, Foghat, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Bitch Funky Sex Machine, Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray, Vanilla Ice, Seven Mary Three, The Doobie Brothers (an exception to the above rule), Matchbox 20, Papa Roach, Limp Bizkit, 'NSYNC, Captain & Tennille, and Barry Manilow.

I write for other online and print magazines ranting about musick, and get quite a few albums sent my way for reviews prior to them hitting the shops. Once upon a time, Ashtray Babyhead's record company sent me a copy of their debut Radio. They wanted to get some advance notice on the album, which would help it sell...to the deaf or clinically insane perhaps.

Yes, it was horrible. It was so utterly appalling and generic that it almost sounded as though they were making fun of a certain group (Weezer), and the 36 million other groups that were briefly chafing their nipples (I might name names if it weren't so boring).

Not being one to kiss even a little ass ever, I reviewed the album with blunt candor, and you can actually read the review in a back issue here of Cosmik Debris:

http://www.cosmik.com/aa-june01/reviews/review_ashtray_babyhead.html

Then I pointed out what a great name they had. I guess since The Diarrhetix, The Douche Lords, Sperminator, and Slymenstra Hymen are already taken; why not go for the next best thing?

I submitted this same review to a couple of magazines and music sites, and whenever anyone did a search on the Internet for Ashtray Babyhead they would see my review, and little else. AB's retaliation was to put a link to this very site with the review, and make an Anti Jason Thornberry page, giving their four fans one of my email addresses. There are so many wonderful things I never knew about my mother that the band's supporters hastened to tell me.

A month later Ashtray Babyhead announced that they were changing their name.

I'm still wishing I could go back in time and have a word with Michael McDonald.

(C) 2002 - Jason Thornberry

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