What's in a Name?

  Recently, I came across a band with a fabulously cool moniker. Alas, they didn't really do anything to top off my tea cup, but I'd be remiss to not give the group points for being obvious fans of one of my favorite books.  Any artist that likes Dune is at least worth a listen.

  From time to time, the members of Spaceship Days will talk about band names we wish we'd thought of  (30 Seconds to Mars, Our Lady Peace and Birds of Tokyo come to mind)  Quite often, we will hit the pause button on the goings on of our everyday lives to listen to a the songs of a troupe with a title that stands up and waves its arms for our attention. It seems many of our friends do this as well, which begs the question: How important is the name of a band?

  Our musical adventure has been going on for quite some time now, and confidentially, our Naming was something that took quite a bit of trial and error. One name had a number; one had a not especially pleasant emotion. Our first even had the word "neo" in it, but most were just too silly to bear repeating.

  Throughout the course of popular music, artists have been fairly clever about labeling themselves. Band names have been majestic  - Queen;  descriptive - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, or Steely Dan ; inspirational - Man Up Nancy! ; nonsensical - Toad the Wet Sprocket, Spacehog ; First names - Bjork; last names - Bon Jovi, Van Halen or (gasp!) Winger; verbs - Rush; or even Italian phrases about interesting food - Cibo Matto.  Every title has a story ; sometimes finding it out is a neat part of the experience, but its a safe bet to assume when christening one's group, anything goes.

  Personally, I prefer an appellation  that doesn't give a way too much. I don't want to look at the artist title on a CD and know that they're  in going to be screaming at me, or that they like the Beatles, or even if the prefer keyboards over guitars.  I like to be surprised when I hear new music--or at least allowed to stay unbiased. As a fanboy, its always better to hear the songs without expectation.  

  We made our way to the Designation:   Spaceship Days  by listening to the music of our favorite band (click on the link to hear the song that inspired us!) Considering the lyrical content of the tune, we thought it was a good fit -- the fact that it was the first name we ever had that we thought would look cool on a t-shirt helped too.

  It took us awhile, but the three of us are quite glad to finally be able to tell someone what we call ourselves without wincing. As far as the tunes go, we think the name gives a chance to listen with open ears too.

C