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Who else hates when someone beats you to a name?

#41
My wife and I (well, mostly me) play the Band Names game often. She mostly hates what I come up with. Regardless, a quick internet search proves that, not only are all names taken, they're taken three-to-four times over! Different countries, cities, eras. Would be nice to reconcile that with whether or not the other band is known, local, etc. and just use a good derivative. What burns me, though, is that most of the defunct, generally unknown bands somehow still hold onto the domain name.
 
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#42
When my band was trying to come up with a band name, we wanted an alcohol themed name since we were all homebrewers and/or craft beer aficionados.

We thought "Amendment 21" would be a great name. Not only was it already taken, but it was a local band.

Same thing for "Specific Gravity" (a brewing term).

We settled on "Final Gravity" which, in 2007, was free and clear. Do a Google search now and there a podcast, a beer bar near Sacramento and a brewery out East that all have the same name. Glad we got in early and can prove prior use!

Also, in 1983, I was in a high school band called "No Doubt", named after something our guitarist used to say all the time.
 
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#43
Ostie said:
Back in the day you could have a local or regional band, and maybe there was another band by the same name on the west coast, and nobody knew or cared. Now, with the great blessing and curse of the inter web, you come up with a great band name, search the web, and somebody in Peoria already has it.
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Yeah, but the lack of information age had its ups and downs, too. There was a band that formed at my high school (one of many) called The Rage. They were pretty successful in Richmond, VA so they left for the west coast to make it big in LA... but found out when they got there that there were already two other established LA bands using the same name. Sort of made it hard to break into the scene...
 
#45
Bard2dbone said:
Hey Guys -

Basically exactly what the title says. My given name is just way too lame to use as a stage name. So back in the day I'd always be the singer/bassist/lyricist for a band and we'd go by the band name collectively.

That works as long as it's a good collective name for the band. Rush? Good. Journey? Good. Gov't Mule? Still good. anything that includes one person's name, but not everyone's? Bad. So for example: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? Fail.

You can also fail with extra credit if you come up with a perfectly good band name and then STILL include stage names for some members, like 1/3 of The Police, or 1/2 of U2. Extra credit points to the Ramones for doing that one right.

The main reason my given name sucks for this kind of situation is that my last name is a common first name. And my first name is a common last name. So for my entire fifty five years of life, well meaning idiots have corrected me when I introduced myself, like they know my name better having just met me than I do having lived with it forever.

I suppose I could use a fake band name for just me, like Uncle Banzai, or Iron and Wine. But that doesn't feel very "me".

Then it hit me, a perfectly awesome stage name that actually re-used part of my own name AND made a nice ironic statement on a black and white cover picture, because it's a mnemonic for all the colors of the spectrum. Roy G Biv.

Yeah. It's taken.

SO frustrated.
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I'm into death metal and all the good names have been taken up. Once in a great while I hear a cool name that I should have thought of first, and think, "damn!"
 
#49
Yep ----wanted to use "THERAPIST"... but first time on a bill board, someone moved the letters to add a space between the "E" and the "R" --- Whoa.... did that not go over well. And got a real strange crowd. LOL....

Then went to "Booger and the Nose Pickers" ...... and that got no respect, at all; and attracted a strange crowd too.

So I quit suggesting band names....... LOL
 
#51
I was looking at some astronomy pages online and found a body of liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn's moon Titan called "Kraken Mare". I thought that would make a great band name.

Taken.
 
#52
rtslinger said:
hmmm what about this one taken
Bard2dbone?
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That's actually a leftover nickname from the 90s. In one of my bands I was nicknamed "Bardman". So when I had to pick a username, and Bardman was taken, I combined it with 'Bad To The Bone' and got Secret Donkey. I mean Bard2dbone.

TNCreature said:
Was Dr. Andrew Weil already taken?
:thumbsup:
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It's the darnedest thing. Dr Weil is so picky about other people claiming to be him.

markjazzbassist said:
What’s wrong with Bard 2 D Bone?
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I've used it as a screen name for years. But I don't like it enough to have it as a stage name.
 
#53
What about bands where the "person's name" before the plural word is a fake or joke name?

My old punk band's stupid placeholder name (until we decided on our one-word official name) was "Billy Rubin and the Specula." Billy Rubin being a play on the word bilirubin, which is the chemical compound in our bodies that makes our piss yellow and our poop brown.
 
#54
Hmmm band names. I named our junior high school days band The Golden Age. It really meant that we played music from the best years of music at the time. No one ever heard of the term "Classic Rock". Once we started getting gigs we changed our name to Organized Confusion because that is what my mom said we were. I swas in a blues band named Bigg Business on flyers we were Bigg Business the Blue Collar Blues band. Our founding guitar player was Joe Biggie. From there a few other blah blah blah bands

Way later in life I started my own band and called it Full Life because I have four kids and was in management working for a large corporation. Oh and I was going to college full time. On our second gig the the announcer kept fumbling our name calling us Fools Life. The next two times we player there he called us Fools Life so we kept Fools Life or in some circles The Fools. We are still the Fools 15 years later.

Oh and I was in a band for a short time run by an attorney call Potential Clients. Because he said that when your are an attorney your think of everyone that way.

So I have been thinking of starting another band. My name before I was adopted, so I'm told, was John Robert Darden. My dad actually wanted to name me Agajanian. So I though of a play on this mix of names like Aggy Darden. Or Darden John.

BTW my stage name is Tequila John which is also a good band name
 
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#59
Given the number of racehorses Compare to the number of visual artists, I'd say there almost certainly has been.

Maybe take solace from the naming practices of dancehall artists. Not only have some leading exponents been named after racehorses, there is also a tradition of taking names from popular culture. So much so that a toaster going by Clint Eastwood was taken to court by th man with no name. And won his case on a no conflict of interest defence.

Edit: Might have gotten interesting if Clint the elder had bruk out wi' "sit pon de riddim like a lizard pon a limb"
 
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