Years ago – so long ago that The Young Hat was probably still sitting on a chair stacked up with three cushions to play his piano – there was a guy called Wayne Fontana singing on the wireless. He had a group called The Mindbenders and he tells a nice story of how he was upstairs on a bus and spotted a movie called The Mind Benders showing at a local cinema. Dirk Bogarde and Mary Ure were the culprits and clearly they have a lot to answer for but I guess that's the way Music History gets made.
There has always been a wonderful exotic tapestry woven around the naming of bands – and we all know that much of it is in hindsight and fictitious. However, although the pop music industry leads the way in Daftness Pretending To Be Irony – (Are One Direction and Little Mix a meaningful subliminal observation on Bus Journeys and Builders Yards or are they just crap names?) - there is no hiding from how seriously this is taken and the disproportionate amount of time and thought that often goes into it. Blues bands tend not to be quite so crackers or so obsessed with their titles but if you are looking to start an argument in an empty room, try questioning the name of your local blues band. The Hat will leave you to test that one out on your own but do check your personal injury insurance first....
The Hat recognises that in the pop world good names become a Franchise. There is a small publishing industry built around the Pink Floyd Name Ownership Dispute and the planet is full of old people strumming in the remaining one fifth of a band that had a hit in 1957. The number of Gold Tours grows by the year; there are at least forty Abbas (a Swedish fish canning company as I recall) and at the last count there were about 400 'tribute' bands spreading Serious Headaches across the UK alone. Without the name or some tricky, usually unfunny, spin on it, most of them would be playing to empty rooms. I once stood in a Battersea pub on a 'covers' night and comatosed into a purple haze listening to twenty versions of Purple Haze. As Robert Plant famously said when pressed for a re-union – even Led Zeppelin were a tribute cover band now, covering all their own stuff. I'm with you there, Bob. Please stop it and stop it now.
In many bands, it is the ego and the conspicuous front of stage talent that rules the roost and therefore the name of the founder or frontman takes the billing. When you were very young and your dad's bank funded the band equipment and owned The Only Transport then, apart from sullen resentment, there was generally no argument. Sometimes the band would get a mention as the 'And Band' or the 'And his/her Band' and more frequently the frontman would take ownership of the whole band as in 'The Incredible Hat Band' - regardless of the talent lined up behind. When you hear the words "we all have a say", go and have a chat with Ronnie Wood and reach for the big salt. A safer option used to be to pick something off the wall, weird or amorphous but totally inclusive and then invent a back story - like a stone, a beatle or just an animal - any animal will do - and even then front men were not averse to hogging the limelight and the royalties.
Blues bands are interesting in that more often than not the name centres on a particular talent and there is no question that over decades this works. The Hat thinks that this may well have something to do with the fact that a lot of blues artists set out on their own ploughing their own solo furrow, Indeed, many bluesmen and women, like actors, changed their name when they started out and they stuck with it. Looking at the cracking line up for the 2012 Hebden Bridge Blues Festival, the Names have it by a country mile and I like to presume that is because their talent put them there. Also, just try and conjure a picture of those bands without The Name. If the fabulous voiced Jenna Hooson decided to change her name or the shirt stripping talent Ben Poole was to take a sudden dislike to his surname, fans and marketing men would be weeping in the streets – and what on earth would we do if Todd Sharpville suddenly went on stage as The Hon Roland Augusto Jestyn Estanislao Philipps Band? It wouldn't even fit on the flyer for a start....
But while we are name-calling (our Wayne was actually Glyn Ellis by the way), let us not forget Babajack, Bare Bones Boogie Band, Binsness Blues Boys, The Revelator Band, Crosscut Saw, The Idle Hands, Rabbit Foot, Rhythm Zoo and all those other hugely talented bands who will be lined up ready to rock us in Hebden in June. These are all brilliant acts and at the end of the day I'm not sure we really care what they call themselves. Well, I mean, whoever thought up those name masterpieces The Band and Engelbert Humperdinck might have been on to something...
Pip Pip!
The Man in The Hat
There has always been a wonderful exotic tapestry woven around the naming of bands – and we all know that much of it is in hindsight and fictitious. However, although the pop music industry leads the way in Daftness Pretending To Be Irony – (Are One Direction and Little Mix a meaningful subliminal observation on Bus Journeys and Builders Yards or are they just crap names?) - there is no hiding from how seriously this is taken and the disproportionate amount of time and thought that often goes into it. Blues bands tend not to be quite so crackers or so obsessed with their titles but if you are looking to start an argument in an empty room, try questioning the name of your local blues band. The Hat will leave you to test that one out on your own but do check your personal injury insurance first....
The Hat recognises that in the pop world good names become a Franchise. There is a small publishing industry built around the Pink Floyd Name Ownership Dispute and the planet is full of old people strumming in the remaining one fifth of a band that had a hit in 1957. The number of Gold Tours grows by the year; there are at least forty Abbas (a Swedish fish canning company as I recall) and at the last count there were about 400 'tribute' bands spreading Serious Headaches across the UK alone. Without the name or some tricky, usually unfunny, spin on it, most of them would be playing to empty rooms. I once stood in a Battersea pub on a 'covers' night and comatosed into a purple haze listening to twenty versions of Purple Haze. As Robert Plant famously said when pressed for a re-union – even Led Zeppelin were a tribute cover band now, covering all their own stuff. I'm with you there, Bob. Please stop it and stop it now.
In many bands, it is the ego and the conspicuous front of stage talent that rules the roost and therefore the name of the founder or frontman takes the billing. When you were very young and your dad's bank funded the band equipment and owned The Only Transport then, apart from sullen resentment, there was generally no argument. Sometimes the band would get a mention as the 'And Band' or the 'And his/her Band' and more frequently the frontman would take ownership of the whole band as in 'The Incredible Hat Band' - regardless of the talent lined up behind. When you hear the words "we all have a say", go and have a chat with Ronnie Wood and reach for the big salt. A safer option used to be to pick something off the wall, weird or amorphous but totally inclusive and then invent a back story - like a stone, a beatle or just an animal - any animal will do - and even then front men were not averse to hogging the limelight and the royalties.
Blues bands are interesting in that more often than not the name centres on a particular talent and there is no question that over decades this works. The Hat thinks that this may well have something to do with the fact that a lot of blues artists set out on their own ploughing their own solo furrow, Indeed, many bluesmen and women, like actors, changed their name when they started out and they stuck with it. Looking at the cracking line up for the 2012 Hebden Bridge Blues Festival, the Names have it by a country mile and I like to presume that is because their talent put them there. Also, just try and conjure a picture of those bands without The Name. If the fabulous voiced Jenna Hooson decided to change her name or the shirt stripping talent Ben Poole was to take a sudden dislike to his surname, fans and marketing men would be weeping in the streets – and what on earth would we do if Todd Sharpville suddenly went on stage as The Hon Roland Augusto Jestyn Estanislao Philipps Band? It wouldn't even fit on the flyer for a start....
But while we are name-calling (our Wayne was actually Glyn Ellis by the way), let us not forget Babajack, Bare Bones Boogie Band, Binsness Blues Boys, The Revelator Band, Crosscut Saw, The Idle Hands, Rabbit Foot, Rhythm Zoo and all those other hugely talented bands who will be lined up ready to rock us in Hebden in June. These are all brilliant acts and at the end of the day I'm not sure we really care what they call themselves. Well, I mean, whoever thought up those name masterpieces The Band and Engelbert Humperdinck might have been on to something...
Pip Pip!
The Man in The Hat