Band Names
Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 11:18PM I'm pretty sure that when you have to name your myspace page Larvaeband because someone else has already got a page with your band name, it's time to look for another thing to call your group. I mean, in the age of digital downloads, MP3 sales, Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, and Google, how do you really pick a band name that someone is clearly already using? I can see two bands stumbling upon the same idea or catchphrase or misquote at the same time and both trying to rush to put it to good use, but when someone's been using a name publicly and professionally for over a decade, I think it's fair to say that name is taken.
Now to be fair, Larvae isn't the most original name in the book. While I did choose it in 1997 (and played shows that year with flyers and the whole nine,) there are other bands that have used that name or a variation. There's a group called Larva, of course, and there's a punk band called Larvae that pops up in all the same places that I do, even though their first record appears to have come out after ours and they haven't done anything else that I can see since then. I think I've got a pretty fair claim on this verbal territory, but then I'm sure the Charlatans UK thought the same thing. I remember the Tampa band The Catherine Wheel opening for the much bigger and better-known UK band of the same name and the awkwardness that proceeded. The lead singer from the Catherine Wheel that got to keep the name said "yeah, there's a Catherine Wheel in every town where we play." Oops.
When I picked Larvae, it meant something to me and it sounded adequately weird, but I was never in love with it. To me, it was a good name for a new project that was just being birthed, out from under the other band I was in at the time. It was also inspired by Godflesh's use of "Mothra" as a song title--something that I always appreciated and something that pointed at what I initially wanted to do. Larvae in fact started as me trying to make purely electronic music that had the kind of grit and anger as Godflesh.
Now, years and several albums later, I look back and realize that I probably could have picked a better name. It's a little silly if it's just referencing a giant monster and it's a little grotesque if it's supposed to conjure a real bug. It's no surprise really that the other bands I've seen using it are a metal act and a punk group. It's not like some couple making folktronica somewhere in the midwest is going to come up with Larvae and think 'wow, that really fits our pastoral sound!' I'm not sure it really fits MY sound anymore, but at this point I think I'm stuck with it.
Reader Comments (1)
matt,
hmmm, since i see no email link, and don't really have time to ferret out a better way, i thought i'd drop a line here. sorry.
i've known you since you’re a+1 days and life. that you are really the only one who still drives so hard down this road you are on is no surprise to me.
i could see a great many things then that you could not. the interpersonal dynamics of "the band", the deep artistic and philosophical convictions held by young men and women, but mostly by you.
that i held and still hold a great many differing viewpoints was never a problem for me, i could always see through that and look at the art with no coloration or taint from my own rhetoric.
that is not to say that i wasn’t at times a “mixer”, that i didn’t mess with the bands politics for my own amusement, even as a teaching tool. sorry, but i have always been in many ways, an ass.
that things in those days weren’t entirely clear to you, is something you know now with certainty. that nothing is ever clear to you at the time it’s happening is probably also clear, now, to someone like you.
time, for beings who have to experience it as we do, is a lens. but it's a lens who's focal point is somewhere in the distance. whether past or future history is altered by those who live it is a function of their intelligence.
every now and again over the years i've looked over your web site, meanderings, music and links to others. today i saw your comments and link to the summer girls and followed it. that’s what instigated this communiqué.
along the way, for persons with any capacity for introspection, lie a great many crossroads. the question is whether they pique your interest enough, or even break through and make you aware of them at all and pull you away on a detour of the countryside.
the summer girls are one of those turns that seems (based on your commentary) to have affected you deeply. one wonders if a certain great and edgy beauty is a reason. in many ways i hope it is. i hope also that “e”, who i imagined then as one of your great learning curve experiences, is not too deep a wound. who knows, i am always open to the idea that i didn’t see things for what they were either.
there’s very little meaning to life beyond procreation. between birth and death, we all have one that one thing we’re supposed to do. all else should be an exercise in trying to find happiness.
that no ones life is ever that simple is an axiom.
so, i must tell you. i look forward with much interest to hearing whatever collaboration comes of that meeting between electronica and that folk vibe. i apologize if i mislabel the genres, in my day the labeling of such things was a little less complex.
throughout my life, the two greatest sources of joy and pain have been music and affairs of the heart. likewise they've had the greatest sway on my attention.
that sound i hear in the summer girls, that sound i hear when i’ve listened to your music over the years is a certain kind of magic. music like that, irrespective of genre or lineage is always akin, as it contains all the best and worst qualities of love.
art is always a repackaging, a communication of love.
no matter what the diatribe, it’s the heart screaming to be understood.
that you, or others like you may never come to terms with the commercial possibilities, or learn to enjoy and respect the reasoning behind popular culture, may be a source of joy or sorrow to you in the future.
either way, it’s going to be good, it always is. i do not believe in predestination, god or any other such nonsense. nevertheless, my experience has been that no matter the horrifying quality of it all, things always work out the way they had to.
in understanding that, somehow beauty creeps into your world.
that much i can tell you from my outpost here, always somewhat farther down the path.
that’s really all i was moved to say to you, though i am interested in two things, just as a sort of intellectual curiosity. how have you been paying the bills all these years and do you know who i am?
write back if you like, i always admired what you do kiddo.