I'm with the band...

As I was driving to work this morning, I was trying to think of a band name. I want something that will represent dreamy, electronic music, but I couldn't come up with anything good.

I tried to find inspiration from road signs, reasoning that is the way that Sleater Kinney came up with the name for their band. Sleater Kinney is the name of the road down in Olympia that their practice space was either on or near, I can't remember which.

Then I got to thinking of other band names that were common names before they were chosen as band names. There's the band Traffic, which tied in with my driving theme of the morning. I saw a sign for a Park and Ride and thought of the band Kiss and Ride, which is a pretty good name. A few more bands that used be everyday words or phrases for their names are the Postal Service, Snow Patrol and Dogs Die in Hot Cars - I wonder if they ever tossed around the idea of being Babies Die in Hot Cars?

There are band names that are associated with cars or driving - these are usually hard rockin' type bands like Clutch, At the Drive-in, the Fastbacks, and Drivin' and Cryin', but there's also Dogs Die in Hot Cars (once again), which is less hard rock and more indie rock.

Another group of band names have to do with royalty, like Queen, Queens of the Stone Age, King Missile and Kings of Leon. I always wonder how they decided on "Queens of the Stone Age" rather than "Kings of the Stone Age". It seems like it makes a difference, but it could just be what you get used to hearing.

Death and dying seem to be popular themes for band names. Just take the following for example: Death Cab for Cutie, Suicidal Tendencies, The Dead Milkmen, The Dead Kennedys, The Kills, The Killers, Dogs Die in Hot Cars (they just keep cropping up everywhere!),The Grateful Dead, And You Will Know us by the Trail of Dead, and Death in Vegas. Perhaps I could call our band The Dying or maybe we could go in a more positive direction and call ourselves Life Support System - it's kind of peppy like LCD Soundsystem...or maybe not.

There are bands names that have to do with food or eating like Spoon and Sugar and Salt N' Pepa. Somehow, Baking Soda or Fork just don't have the same ring, though.

There are temperature related band names like Hot Hot Heat, Heat Miser, Coldplay, The Chills (The Chills fall into the sub-category of the "ill" rhyming band names, like the Thrills, the Chills and the Kills), and the last heat related band name is Dogs Die in Hot Cars - they really get around!

Bands that are associated with animals, like Modest Mouse, The Eels, The Ponys, The Ass Ponies, and Portishead and (you guessed it!) Dogs Die in Hot Cars - man, those guys are in ALL my categories!

So as you can see, there are lots of themes when it comes to naming your band. You can look to the animal kingdom, the temperature, a word ending in "ill", something dead, your car or your street. The band name is still a work in progress, but I'll keep thinking about it. Maybe I'll just come up with a word from each category and string them together. Birds Die in Exposed Fan Blades? The Grills? The Hot Dogs? Perhaps I should just stick to playing bass...