November 23, 2014

Due to a shortened holiday week, the pickings are a little slim in the club listings, so I'm taking this opportunity to do a Thanksgiving Retrospective of some favorites from the past. I have selected from Square Pig's first year in two categories: Names that are still Hands-Down Brilliant and Bands that have Been on a Bill with Your Mother Should Know. Here's what I had to say way back when:

Hands-Down Brilliant


Eighteen Individual Eyes
(from November 13, 2010) I have delighted in this name for months, so I'm thrilled they came up this week. The inclusion of "individual" makes it for me -- it's not just "eighteen eyes" but "eighteen individual eyes."  Is this an eighteen-eyed creature, each eye functioning independently? Eighteen one-eyed creatures? A nine-piece band? It's also fun to say -- all those vowels just roll off the tongue.

Out Like Pluto
(from November 20, 2010) I like Pluto. I'm sorry it got demoted from the planet club. On the other hand, it's so far out, maybe it doesn't want to be in our lame club.

High Class Wreckage
(from January 8, 2011) Yay! I've been waiting for these guys to show up. This name trips off the tongue, yet feels like an oxymoron. Full disclosure: I've seen High Class Wreckage twice. Their shows are reliably loud, dumb, full-on fun. Expect high-jinks and physical contact. (Technically, HCW was on a bill with YMSK, but before my tenure so I'm not counting it).

Garage a Trois
(from April 16, 2011) The perfect relationship in the garage-band capital. Way to pull off a foreign-language pun! (I'm also amused that the band is a four-piece).

Gazebo of Destruction
(from May 14, 2011) This one belongs to the opposing images school of band names. "Gazebo" is refined, elegant, civilized. "Destruction" is everything but. It doesn't hurt that "gazebo" figures in a couple of running family jokes.



 On a Bill with Your Mother Should Know

Ancient Warlocks
(from February 5, 2011) This appeals to my fantasy-novel side. Music and fiction are the closest to magic we can get: something out of nothing. It also evokes Spinal Tap and their tiny Stonehenge, and that makes me smile.

Black Plastic Clouds
(from November 5, 2011) As if black clouds weren't threatening enough! Any mention of black plastic reminds me of the ultimately ineffective weed barrier the previous owner of our house used in the front yard. We were digging pieces of black plastic out of the ground for years.


Curtains for You
(from December 4, 2010) Full disclosure: I'd heard of this band years before I saw them at the Columbia City Theatre (which has a stage with actual curtains), and the keyboard player has visited my house. But I think I would list them even if that weren't so. I like how the name references another era and aspect of American pop culture. (I tend to pronounce it "coitains" like the gangsters in old Bugs Bunny cartoons.) 


Pouch
(July 2, 2011) I've been hearing about these guys and liked the name from the start. Pouch is one of those words that's fun and funny to say. (I'm planning to go hear them at EMP today, so it seemed like a good time to drop them into the blog.) I hope to see more bands named for hand luggage.

July 16, 2011

I'm on vacation! Among other things, that means I get to see at least one show next week, on a "school night," and it should be a ripsnorter! I've already blogged about two of the bands on the bill, and the third appears in this week's list.

Big Crinkly Trio
I like the word "crinkly." Considering this outfit is appearing at Gallery 1412, the word could very well describe at least some of the sounds they make. It sounds like a friendly way into improv.


Doseywallips
Local flavor -- one of our great NW place names.


Moraine
Gritty residue that remains when the glacier recedes. These rocks haven't just rolled; they have been ground.

South Sound Bureau Chiefs
This one has a particularly wonky vibe that makes me smile. Serious journalism invades the dive bar scene . . .

Your Mother Should Know
It's too early for a Web presence, but this band opens for Pouch and High Class Wreckage -- it should be a great, loud, fun show. I wasn't blogging yet the last time YMSK played out, or this name would have appeared a long time ago. Now is better, though. Full disclosure: I share a full set of parents with the bandleader, and the next time YMSK gets a gig, that'll be me, the Square Pig herself, behind the drums. (This show came up too fast for the latest incarnation of the full band to learn the set). I feel I can legitimately blog about it because I thought it was a great name the first time I heard it, before there even was a band. As the instigator was inviting people to join, a potential recruit listed "Your Mother Should Know" as her favorite Beatles song. She ultimately did not join up, but the name stuck, even through multiple personnel changes and near collapse. It works as a band name because it's a song about a song, about getting up and dancing, about the longevity of good music. It's a piece of advice: "Listen to your mother -- she should know." One of us actually is a mother, and we all have offspring in the age-range of our probable audience. And two out of three bandmembers share a mother; it was on her guitar that the leader learned to play, back in 1983, the last time we had a family band. Just goes to show, it's never too late to get up and dance.

February 26, 2011

The big news is that the Square Pig got out of the hole last Sunday and saw a great show at the Comet. Four bands, all strong and with pretty good names, too! The Downstrokes, The Blue Ribbon Boys, and Hollywood 77 all paid homage to late-'70s New York punk, with spirited Ramones covers and other music that was loud, fast, and raw. It warms my heart that people who weren't even born in 1977 appreciate music that no one else in my high school dug. (The Downstrokes also won me over with a great Ramonesque take on Sam Cooke's "Having a Party," one of my favorite songs from before I was born.) Meanwhile, High Class Wreckage was pure Seattle Sound: a little louder, a little faster, a little heavier than anyone else. Draw a straight line from the Sonics through Mudhoney and you hit High Class Wreckage.

Now for this week's list! Continuing last week's theme, these are all plural nouns. They all refer to ordinary things and lack the definite article. The sheer generalness makes them quirky.

Baths
Is this the mundane weekly chore, or the soothing luxury -- Saturday-night or bubble?

Braids
The strands come together to form a neat unit. Or do they?


Hotels
Luxury and pampering, or standardized anonymity?

Ships
Cargo, cruise, or space?

Swans
The least ordinary of the bunch. Swans are elegant, with a long literary and artistic pedigree, but also big and aggressive if provoked.

Finally, the Bands Who Should Have Been on the Same Bill but Weren't Award goes to:
Just Like Vinyl and The Broken Records.

January 8, 2011

This is one of those weeks when every band name is from a different planet. It's amazing that there are still so many different ways to think about the same thing.

Corpus Callosum
A band named for a bundle of nerves. I appreciate the geekiness required to even know the term.

High Class Wreckage
Yay! I've been waiting for these guys to show up. This name trips off the tongue, yet feels like an oxymoron. Full disclosure: I've seen High Class Wreckage twice. Their shows are reliably loud, dumb, full-on fun. Expect high-jinks and physical contact.


Salinger
I re-read Catcher in the Rye last week, so I couldn't very well leave this band out. There's a lot of rock & roll attitude in the book, and anyway, I always have a soft spot for literary references.

Terraform
It's hard to pass up a good sci-fi connection. I think I've mentioned before that I came to rock music and science fiction at around the same time, and I'm still into both. This name particularly strikes me now because I'm writing a piece that involves terraforming and had to learn about it recently.

Turd Helmet
This is absolutely too gross to imagine! But the name wouldn't go away, so it makes the list. Happy now?