Wednesday, September 15, 2010

'rock bands' or 'frock pants'

With the Cult-fest fever all set to take charge across campuses in India,the youth audience are surely gearing up to be a part of this annual madness.

One of the major attractions of these cult fests are the Rock Shows which typically stand out; be it the promos,the prize money offered or the sky high per capita weed done before any event by the very promoters of these shows.

They surely do depict the talent that India possesses.But what they also portray is the creativity the performing bands possess;not in their compositions but in christening themselves.

India today has over 17000 bands performing across a wide spectrum of genres.Leaving aside the wanabe cool dudes who seem to form a significant number, there are still around 6000 serious bands operating from different parts of India;as they say Music has no caste ,no religion and no language !!
But if you ask most Industry pundits as to what draws them first towards these bands, the reply is almost unanimous-their names.
A prolific guitarist from a very popular mumbai based band said in a conversation I had with him-"Band names portray the message the members want to spread"

I agree with your idea Sir but why do the names of more than 90% of these functional bands proclaim vehemently that they lack basic sense.What message does "arctic monkeys" give you-a bunch of men jumping around scratching their hairy bodies in the arctic? Or just monkey faced men with frozen brains. I dont intend offense to them as I am myself a huge fan but they play psychedelic and alternative rock  and only some insane intelligence can decipher the reason why they named themselves monkeys.

Another lead vocalist of a Pune based band comments on similar lines-"The name is what the band loves to do".
One of city's  upcoming bands with some very talented artistes calls itself Morphine.
Ahem!

And to add to the insanity we have softwares calling themselves ROCKBAND NAME GENERATORS where u log on and generate random names which the makers refer to as funky.(God bless them !) And wat seems to be further torture is the fact that many bands actually use these tools to christen themselves.

The only plausible  reasoning that seems befitting here is that the christening these days is done with 'two words necessarily not related to each other'.Vapour Sunday,Narcoleptic Filter Skank, Velvet Revolver,Inside Tonks, Hand-Shoved Whores, Nocturnal Sunlight etc.
It feels like someone's not been been fed for years and asked to name a band.

I thought musical geniuses were never known by the 'funky quotient' of their names.It was plain music-beyond languages,beyond boundaries and thats what I thougt appealed to people.

Anyways,I am no journalist raising an isue.I am just an inquisitive musician who'd love to get opinions and comments on the above to actually educate myself in the strange science of rock band christening

Hope bands in future name themselves with traces of sanity intact instead of making a fool outa themselves.


........an average yet die-hard musician

2 comments:

  1. personally i think that rock bands like having their names to be all scary and gothic types.. like Pentagram,Black Sabbath

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  2. wow something about rock bands n yet i slept off reading :P good job :P

    ReplyDelete