If your band is truly a joint venture among the members, if it is going to be heavily promoted through all of the usual outlets, and if you have a really good idea for a name, you have all the reason you need to apply that ingenious name to your group and continue going about your business. However, I have a problem with the idea that every group that has a gig must also have a name, particularly when the group in question does not demonstrate the characteristics of a "regular" band (i.e. being a priority for everyone involved and playing out consistently).
I say this because I occasionally find out that I missed a show I would have really like to have heard simply because I did not know who was in the group, let alone what they actually do when they get together. Knowing the venue is helpful but is usually not enough by itself; if you also know who the performers are (all of them), that completes the circle. How ridiculous it is that this information is seldom available because everyone feels obligated to use their latest play on words in lieu of the name(s) by which they are known to the rest of the world.
If you go to shows based entirely on the name of the band, you have probably been to a lot of shows you hated. If you play with a rotating cast of characters and you rename each subsequent group, you are hurting attendance at your gigs. Your name, your instrument or voice, and the venue are both more pertinent and more helpful pieces of information. People who can't read minds (like me) will thank you.
14 May 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Good for people to know.
N.N. Taleb
Skin in the Game (2018)
"Arrogant Will Do
Products or companies which bear the owner's name convey very valuable messages. They are shouting that they have something to lose. Eponymy indicates both a commitment to the company and a confidence in the product. A friend of mine, Paul Wilmott, is often called an egomaniac for having his name on a mathematical finance technical journal (Wil-Mott), which at the time of writing is undoubtedly the best. "Egomaniac" is good for the product. But if you can't get "egomaniac," "arrogant" will do."
(p. 36)
Paul Goodman
Growing Up Absurd
(1960)
APPENDIX D
"The Freedom to be Academic" (pp. 256-279)
(online here)
[264] "Our historians write of the liberation from “doctrinal moralism” (Dev. 353ff), the idea that if, e.g., a man is an atheist he is no doubt a drunkard and unfit to teach: “in scientific criticism the dissociation of the man from his work has become a cardinal principle.” This was indeed a great advance, for it heightened the respect for evidence and its accurate presentation and criticism. But I submit that the older theological view had the following merit: that a proposition was fraught with life consequences and had therefore the utmost seriousness; you knew a man by what he professed. I dislike appealing to the romantic and grisly past, but we must bear in mind that the adventure of inquiry has one quality when you are risking disgrace, imprisonment, and even death; and another when you are risking tenure; and quite another when you are risking nothing. Our secular society has great advantages, and even especially for inquiry, but its strong point is not the achievement of vocation or manliness."
Post a Comment