Band Names

Recently, I was given twenty four hours to write a pitch and synopsis for someone (I’ve done it before, and it’s always good fun to be set stupidly tight deadlines). As the pitch concerned a fictitious rock band, my only major problem was coming up with a suitable name. Small details like this matter to me for some reason – until I’d got the name of the band nailed, writing the pitch and synopsis was a little more difficult that it should have been.

As a starting point, I hit some random band name generators – nothing doing there really, unless you’re really into completely silly names such as Total Vamp Destroyers and Burnin’ Sitar Massacre. I kept a notebook once in which I used to record (amongst other things) ideas for fictitious band names, but I’ve lost the notebook and I can’t remember any of the names. Trawling the internet and watching too much TV (as you do), the odd phrase might pop up from time to time that could double up as a decent band name (My Inner Lesbian anyone?), but nothing that was really suitable for this particular project. And then it occurred to me – I can’t remember where it came from, but it seemed to do the trick: Clothing Optional. That’ll do. The synopsis was a breeze after that.

As part of my weekly blog confession, the names of the two bands I used to play in were Diverse Opera (good god, what a terrible name), and Up, named after the Russ Meyer film. I think I prefer My Inner Lesbian, but then again, who doesn’t ;-)