(Blogmeister note: No, this doesn’t have anything to do with choral singing, but it seemed we were due for a bit of silliness and this definitely qualifies. It never hurts to laugh a little, especially with a concert looming.)

Like so many of us did back in the 70’s, I played in a garage band. And as was also typical, our hair was longer than our parents liked, we played louder than was necessary and, even though our rhythm section was solid and we managed to sing pretty well, our guitarist was gawdawful and we were never very good. We did, however, have a great name: “Excalibur”. Powerful, a little magical, not too complicated and not too weird. We liked it and it rolled off the tongue quite nicely.

The same can’t be said of a LOT of bands throughout the years. A list some of the greatest (really worst) rock band names in history appears below. I swear on whatever you think is important that these are ALL real.

Seriously, they are.

Nobody could make this up.

– “Aggressive Snail Attack”

– “The House That Gloria Vanderbilt” (that’s actually pretty clever; silly, but clever)

– “Aardvark Spleen” (no, I did NOT make that up, I promise)

– “!!!” (proof that their keyboard 1: had only one key and 2: the caps lock was stuck)

– “Let’s Get Out of This Terrible Sandwich Shop”

– “Spock’s Beard” (honorable mention to the band “T’Pan”, named for Spock’s former girlfriend)

– “Admiral Poopy Pants and His Dancing Teeth” (say that to a 3-year old, they’ll giggle for ten minutes)

– “Dananananaykroyd”

– “The Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza” (and no, Tony’s not in it)

– “Scary Kids Scaring Kids” (in the words of Larry the Cable Guy, “I don’t care who ya’ are, that’s funny.”)

And the absolute, no kidding, top of the line and nobody else is even close band name:

– “Paracoccidioidomicosisproctitissarcomucosis” (the only band member’s name that can be repeated in a family-oriented blog is Ginecologic Cryptococcidioidomicosis)

And some that may be familiar but still really bad:

– “The Banana Splits” (yeah, it was a kids’ show, but it was also a band…in fuzzy animal costumes)

– “The Band” (our lazy-name-for-a-band favorite)

– “Counting Crows”

– “Nickelback” (only because it was based on the fact that, at the time, a cup of coffee was $1.95 and your change was…well…you get it)

– “Smashing Pumpkins”

– “Five For Fighting” (uniting hockey fans everywhere I suppose…and it’s a “band” of one guy, he calls HIMSELF Five for Fighting)

– “Mott the Hoople” (not only because it’s weird but because when they reformed the band, they called it “Silence to Mott the Hoople”; if you’ve heard their stuff, that may actually be a good idea)

– “The The” (second place in the lazy-name-for-a-band list)

– “Mr. Mister” (see above, third place)

– WHAM!

– “Asia”, “Europe”,” Chicago”, “Boston”,” Berlin”, “Kansas”,  “Alabama” (dude…where you from?)

– “The Beatles” (c’mon…it really is a terrible pun after all)

Needless to say, I didn’t include the zillions of them that blow right by the PG-13 rating into the land of your-name-is-so-offensive-that-you-must-sound-bad-and-just-crave-attention. If you want to have a little fun and come up with your own silly band name, play with this: http://www.bandnamemaker.com/. Hilarious.

(One of the names generated whey I typed in “windward choral” was “Windward Choral Of The Shimmering Milk”. Wow.)

Back to choral singing next time but that was fun, wasn’t it? It’s okay, you can admit it. Nobody was looking.