The first thing that caught my eye is the name of the label. Screaming Ferret Wreckords. Clever. But I read a little deeper in the press release, and it turns out the band's name is Gaggle of C--ks.
OK, I can see why that wasn't included in the subject line. I imagine our company spam filter would've given it the boot with extreme prejudice.
But Gaggle of C--ks is hardly the only band out there right now with a name that makes you do a double-take. As I've written before, we may not be living in a musical golden age to rival 1966-69, but there does seem to be a great deal of creative energy when it comes to coining band monikers. From Gringo Star to Endless Mike and the Beagle Club, there are so many unusually named bands out there now that, in a good many cases, the band's name is probably the most interesting thing about them.
The Smiling Moose club on Pittsburgh's South Side, for instance, just hosted a triple-bill of Knot Feeder, Drugdealer and Poison Arrows. And Mr. Small's Theatre in Millvale booked The Airborne Toxic Event.
Apparently gas masks weren't necessary - I checked the band's MySpace page, and The Airborne Toxic Event is actually a dour-looking quintet from California that plays folk-tinged rock that would sound perfectly at home on adult-alternative station WYEP-FM. I have to confess, I was surprised - with a name like that, I assumed The Airborne Toxic Event was the kind of band that would make your ears bleed.
It's probably a pretty good bet, though, that Dying Fetus, Necrophagist and Wino Riot can incite lasting auditory damage. Same goes for Impending Doom, Through the Eyes of the Dead, Radioactive Chickenheads, Rosemary's Billygoat, I Hate Kate, Obituary, 36 Crazyfists, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Annotation of an Autopsy and Hate Eternal. They've either played Pittsburgh recently or will in the months ahead, so you can pack the heavy-duty earplugs and check 'em out if you want.
Of course, a band's name is strange strictly in the eye of the beholder. Surely there was more than one music fan 40 years ago who would light his pipe, crank up the Mitch Miller and puzzle over the names of the bands that were climbing the charts. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. The Who. The Kinks. The Monkees. The Byrds. Why do the kids listen to that noise? And why are they messing up my lawn and getting in the bushes?
Of course, the wave of bands that came along later in the 1960s and into the 1970s made the Beatles and the Rolling Stones seem pretty tame and conventional. Blue Oyster Cult. Blue Cheer. Foghat. Blood, Sweat and Tears. Led Zeppelin. But who thinks twice about their names now? Led Zeppelin is so ingrained in the musical and cultural landscape now that we can no longer appreciate how unusual the name Led Zeppelin must have seemed back in 1968 or 1969.
With that thought in mind, who's to say that in another 40 years, today's teenagers won't be rushing out to buy - or, more likely, download or receive telepathically - "The Radioactive Chickenheads Anthology." Or the greatest hits of the Pigeon Detectives? Perhaps the life and times of Impending Doom will be told in a finely crafted leather-bound volume. The latest reunion of Scary Kids Scaring Kids will be playing county fairs.
And then today's teenagers will be perplexed by a new crop of bands with crazy names.