The Alexandria Quartet

There was a good blog on the Guardian website a few days ago about shite bands with brilliant names, and vice-versa, and it got me thinking. Are band names copyright? I don't think so. Lift a bit of music, and even if it only sounds vaguely like the Bee Gees, Barry Fucking Gibb will be on your case with an arseful of lawyers (I believe that is the proper collective noun). Lift a band's name on the other hand, and there's no come-back. There's even cases where there's two bands with the same name on the go at the same time, in different countries.

I reckon there ought to be a law against it, because if there is then people who assert the rights to a certain band name stand to make a lot of money out of it when some other fucker uses that name. Let's face it - there's only so many really cool band names available, so you should strike it lucky one day.

And how do you register the rights to a band name? Well you could actually form a band under that name and put out a song, even if its only one song. But the sensible way, I reckon, would be to simply set up a musician profile on MySpace. You don't even need to have any members, or any music, just the profile, maybe with a few misleading details to give it the stench of authenticity. You could even publicise a concert and then cancel it. Who's to know?

I reckon half the bands on MySpace are spoofs anyway. They certainly sound like fucking spoofs.

So I've been trying to think of brilliant names, but its not so easy. Easy to be cute. "God Fingered My Lunchbox" looks good on the screen here, but would just be naff on the cover of Rolling Stone. And its tempting to try to be clever with a pun, like "Dogspawn", or a double pun like "Led Feppard". Obscure sexual references, like "10cc" and "Thin white Rope" are OK for little boys but embarrassing if you get famous, while obscure literary, lyrical or art-film references like "Liege-killer" maybe have some credibility (but Lord of the Rings references like "Lothlorien" do not). And "Andre and the Mercenaries" would be far too 50s. I'll just have to keep trying.

Don't tell me your brilliant ideas for band-names though. Just set them up yourself. In two weeks time I want to see MySpace inundated with spoof but plausible-sounding band profiles.

Meanwhile I'll be setting up the Universal Global Registry of Band Names where you will only need to pay as little as $50 each to get your name registered and if any other cunt tries to use that name in future I'll be using the money you all give me to sue the bollocks off them and we'll split the winnings between us. Honest.

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I was feeling rock as Chuck at the time.