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- Ask the indie professor: Why so many bad band names?
Last week's SXSW festival was full of terrible band names – about 173 of which used the words 'crystal', 'wolf' or 'kids'. Why? And how can bands make their names better?
How come so many bands at this year's SXSW festival had such awful names?
Jessamyn Cuneo, via emailWell, firstly I'd like to state that one person's awful name is often another person's awesome name. That's why suggesting an example of a "bad" band name can be the easiest way to start an argument. Still, most music fans and professionals do seem to agree that some bands have inarguably bad monikers.
So what are the factors people use to judge band names? I'd suggest the following: Is it original (Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles), memorable (Smith Westerns), what are the name associations (Dirty Beaches), can you pronounce it (Schlachthofbronx, but they are German so they have an excuse), searchability (Man Man), length (I Was Totally Destroying It), and does it have a good story, to name just a few.
Originality is more challenging than you might think. The longer the record industry exists, the great number of bands historically. Once a band name has been used, it cannot be used again without the prospect of litigation.
After the well-known American Nirvana had success in the early 1990s, a less well-known British Nirvana, a progressive rock band from the late 1960s, contested the usage of the name. British Nirvana filed suit against American Nirvana. The case was settled out of court allowing both bands to use the name Nirvana. Instead of a settlement, the result could have been a modification of the band's name to something like "American Nirvana" or even Dinosaur Jr. Dinosaur Jr were originally named Dinosaur, only to find out that there was a band named the Dinosaurs. This litigious issue is the reason why the Charlatans are known in the US as the Charlatans UK and Suede, the London Suede. Even the band I helped name, Mojave 3 had to be modified because of a previous incarnation of the name Mojave. The band were in Abbey Road Studios mixing their first album and realised that with a new lineup, a new label, and a new sound (the band were formed by the three remaining members of Slowdive), they needed a new name. Rachel Goswell had invited me to the studio and I came as they were contemplating new band names. My first suggestion was Mojave. They called the label only to find out there was a Mojave on the books and so Mojave 3 it was.
An inability to recycle band names means short names with musical resonance are in short supply. You can either go for something that hasn't been used before, create a neologism or go long. This could easily be how we end up with bands called Yuck (London), or Flosstradamus (Chicago) or Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (Springfield MO).
Another factor is searchability. This issue has changed during the last decade in its degree of importance. Bands would often chose a name that would appear near the front of album or CD stacks, not buried in the middle (Hello Abba and ABC). There are still bands that think about how to be the first in your alphabetically organised list of MP3s.
Of course, bands also need to consider how searchable their name is online. Using a common word (say, Brother) makes it very difficult for fans to find the band on the internet. It can work the other way. I've heard several people suggest that part of the buzz around the band Cults has been due to the difficulty in finding them online. Thus, making them de facto more obscure than the singular Slim Cessna's Auto Club (Denver). You have to wonder whether the band Games (Brooklyn) considered this when naming themselves one of the most oversaturated terms on the internet? Probably not, which is why they are changing it to Ford & Lopatin.
Last week I was at the SXSW festival in Austin, where bad band names were easy to come by. The one people complained to me about the most was Adam Arcuragi and the Lupine Chorale Society (Philadelphia). I see this has issues all around. It's long. It's difficult to pronounce and it seems too similar to the spate of bands with "Wolf" in the title (Wolf Parade, Sea Wolf, Wolf Mother, Wolf Gang, Wolf & Cub, Peanut Butter Wolf) as well as a certain tinge of "Twilight zeitgeist" pandering. The ubiquitousness of certain words in band names ends up making those bands sound unoriginal. At least 11 bands at the festival had "black" in the title and seven had the word "young." The Los Angeles-based Black Crystal Wolf Kids, an exuberant and self-effacing indie cover band, were parodying name trends.
My recommendation for a band name: An Exercise in Unhappiness. Any band can feel free to use it. You'll have a potentially interesting story (nearly every new band interview will include "how did you come up with your name?" as a question so it serves a band to have a better tale than "the bassist said it as a joke and now we were stuck with it.") and it will hopefully cause some debate as to whether your new name is awful or awesome. After all, those two different words have the exact same origin.
If you have a question for the indie professor then leave a comment below. Alternatively, email her at theindieprofessor@gmail.com or via twitter at http://twitter.com/indiegodess
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Loleatta Holloway: more than a voice
The late dance diva not only embodied clubland's utopian ideals but amplified them, bequeathing a peerless musical legacy
Loleatta Holloway, who has died aged 64, leaves behind a legacy as the finest diva in dance music history. The sheer power of the notes her lungs expelled turned mere singing into an emotional tempest, huffing and puffing until she blew the house down.
Her most famous track is Love Sensation, whose vocal line and jazz-inflected pianos were sheared off and airlifted into Black Box's Ride on Time; Holloway successfully sued them for their shameless unauthorised sampling. She smiled more favourably on Mark Wahlberg, reusing its vocal hook when appearing with him on Good Vibrations, and making his Marky Mark take on jacking house surprisingly credible.
Listening to Love Sensation today, or its excellent Shep Pettibone re-edit, the level of emotion is still shocking. Holloway sounds on the brink of madness, romping over a demented melodic topography and constantly unleashing her secret weapon, an almost polyphonic yell that acts as a war cry for love's constant battle. Compare her to, say, Fergie, submerged under digital trickery or colourlessly emoting when not; Holloway is a woman whom you suspect would never meet you halfway on anything.
Grace Dent recently noted in The Guardian how the winking sauciness of Blind Date has morphed into the straight-talking grot of Take Me Out, and a similar thing has occurred in divadom. While Rihanna bluntly announces: "chains and whips excite me", Holloway is far wittier. Delivered as if receiving some unexpectedly awesome oral sex, she sings: "you get down, you get down to the real nitty gritty".
Elsewhere in her back catalogue, her late-90s take on Shout to the Top with Fire Island is ludicrously empowering. Like Candi Staton, she started out with funk-filled tales of cheatin' men, such as Only a Fool; and when Whitney Houston needed a diamond-tough statement after her 'lost' years, she effectively covered Holloway's We're Getting Stronger with Million Dollar Bill.
Paradoxically, considering their vocal might, house and disco divas were often ciphers, mere tits-and-ass content delivery systems for the male production community. It's a trend that has continued right the way through UKG, trance and many other dance forms. Holloway's voice, however, full of strident indignation and volcanic sexuality, is always the dominant force in her songs, going toe to toe with even the most pounding pianos and lushest orchestras.
But the key to her appeal is that she doesn't push herself too far to the front. The pleasure of listening to divas like Whitney or Rihanna is that it's an aspirational experience – women want to be them, men want to be with them. Holloway is a different proposition: a collective experience, of mutual understanding and shared joy. She takes the utopian ideals of clubland – sex, community, abandon – and massively amplifies them back at the dancers, singing to each one of them and the club as a whole. As her voice surges onto and fills the dancefloor, it really does feel like we're all getting stronger.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Congo, where rumba meets r'n'b
Staff Benda Bilili's success in the west has obscured the reality of blinged-up stars and adoring fans in the dancehalls of Kinshasa
In cinemas now is the film Benda Bilili, a documentary telling the extraordinary story of Staff Benda Bilili. If you haven't been paying attention, Staff are group of mosty polio-stricken street musicians from Kinshasha who've ended up making it big around the world. This is undoubtedly something to celebrate – but with all due respect to the band, it is shameful that it takes a Congolese act to be disabled to make them of such interest. In many ways, the band's image reflects a very western perception of African music. The reality for the blinged-up stars and their adoring fans in the dancehalls of Kinshasa can often involve a very different, much glitzier story.
Back catalogues of outstanding Congolese music are largely ignored in the UK, yet few countries have produced such a rich seam of consistently innovative and socially meaningful popular music. From roughly 1960-1990, artists such as Franco and his band TPOK Jazz, Tabu Ley Rocherau and Zaiko Langa Langa were the biggest musical acts in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. In terms of musicianship, Franco's music is up there with the Beatles, yet if you ask 99% of people in Europe or America, they won't have heard of him.
In 2011 the music heard in the streets and bars of Kinshasa increasingly blends dancehall, hip hop and r'n'b with traditional rumba, while artists such as JB Mpiana, Ferre Gola and Koffi Olomide are as much about image, designer gear, waving wads of cash and bragging as they are about the music. The perceived inaccessibility of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with its extreme poverty, ongoing conflicts, corruption and lack of basic public facilities, provides a barrier to musical tourists. The irony is, of course, that the music is joyful and uplifting; anything but dark – although there is also a rich tradition of social and political commentary in Congolese music.
Lately a darker hindrance has emerged: groups known among the Congolese diaspora in Paris, Brussels and London as combatants, who have started blocking artists from performing in Europe. Angry at perceived support for the government, their threats of violence make it difficult for promoters to organise concerts.
Vincent Luttman is a radio DJ and host of Nostalgia Ya Mboka a weekly show on Resonance 104.4FM. His collection of Congolese rumba records is so large he has lost count, but he estimates he has around 14,000 tracks in total. A post-punk guitarist from south-east London, Luttman fell in love with the music of Congo when the country was still called Zaire in the 1980s. "I was initially drawn to the guitars. I felt the punk movement to be the death of rock'n'roll but in rumba I heard the power of rock'n'roll enduring", he says. "As my social consciousness increased I began to reject western music, which had a platform to speak but said very little."
Trawling through Vincent's collection we pulled out 10 contemporary and classic grooves straight from the streets of Kinshasa. Many of these records are released as limited pressings and finding them can be an arduous task. Our best advice is to try the specialist African music outlet Stern's.
1. This sublime track Elixir by Cindy Le Coeur – a protégé of the great Koffi Olomide – features synths and three guitars alongside congas. Reminiscent of Sade or Angelique Kidjo, Cindy could easily be a chart star in Europe given the right promotion.
2. Ferre Gola is one of the biggest stars of the new generation. This track, Madia Tambambi, contains elements of dancehall and calypso – reflecting Kinshasa's melting pot of influences and the hybridity that globalisation and MTV has brought to African music.
3. Classic Franco & TPOK Jazz from a TV performance in the mid 80s with vocalist Josky Kiambukuta's composition Tokabola Sentiment. An irresistible, mesmeric dance track.
4. Contemporary rapper Baloji dances through the buzzing streets of Kinshasa accompanied by the experimental tradi-modern bazombo music of Konono No 1. The song is called Karibu Ya Bintou
5. Singer MJ30 (known as Meejee) performs a song by classic chanteuse Mpongo Love.
6. Baloji again, here interpreting the classic hymn to independence from Belgian rule Independence Cha Cha first recorded in 1960 by 'Le Grand Kalle' Joseph Kabasele and the group African Jazz.
7. Antoine Wendo Kolosoy, the grandfather of Congolese rumba, with a re-interpretation of his 1948 song Mary Louise, re-recorded in 2005 three years before his death at the age of 83.
8. The veteran Papa Wemba and his orchestra performing version of the hit song La Reference at l'Hotel Venus in Kinshasa in 2010.
9. A dazzling performance by Lita Bembo and Stukas Boys from 1975, a classic example of the new wave of musical nationalism instigated by president Mobotu's decree of authenticité.
10. JB Mpiana – one of the biggest stars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a product of the Wenge school of musicians – with the title track from his 2011 album Soyons Serieux.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: Saint Saviour - Reasons
Everyone from Neil Tennant to him from Hurts are fans of this singer's incredible voice
You may have heard Saint Saviour's incredible voice – an alluring mix of Sinead O'Connor and Kate Bush – on the last Groove Armada album, Black Light. Or perhaps you saw the singer, real name Becky Jones, on their accompanying tour or when she supported Hurts after singer Theo Hutchcraft was so taken by her at last year's Little Noise Sessions that he personally asked her to go on the road with them. Oh, and Neil Tennant is a bit of a fan too. Following an appearance at SXSW in support of Sound It Out, a documentary by Jeanie Finlay about the last remaining independent record shop in Jones' hometown of Teeside (she also makes an appearance), Jones has returned to music with the EP, Anatomy. Below is an exclusive first showing of the video for Reasons, a fragile piano ballad that showcases that undulating voice to haunting effect. The video, filmed mainly in a working men's club in Stockton-on-Tees, isn't exactly a barrel of laughs so be warned.
Anatomy is available now from here.
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