#118: Dispatch from 2026 music festival season
Él Mató a un Policía Motorizado; The Floor is Not Lava; Meryl Streek; Ritt Momney; Taylor More Swiftly; 999999999; Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead; Healer of Bastards; more
With Coachella in the rear view, the vast expanse of music festival season stretches out before us. Thus it’s time for Band Name Bureau’s annual look at some of the bands sweating for your attention over the next few months. This edition sets a new standard, as I reviewed lineups of 60 festivals both famous (Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo) and less so (Rage of Armageddon, Lawnyavawnya). Guess which ones had better names?
Él Mató a un Policía Motorizado
Where: Kilby Block Party
First, the name for this Argentine band translates to “He killed a motorcycle policeman.”1 Second, it comes from Spanish subtitles to the 1987 B-movie R.O.T.O.R., which is both terrible and worth your time. (I suggest the Rifftrax version, available on Tubi.) Third, numbers one and two made me like this band before I heard a note of music.
I’m very late to the game, as El Mató formed more than 20 years ago. When the band went to a party where R.O.T.O.R. was playing, they were understandably transfixed. These days they’re much better known than their inspiration—El Mató is mentioned at the top of the movie’s Wikipedia.
The Floor is Not Lava
Where: Capitol Hill Block Party
Baby bands have a tendency to do a couple things. First, they overdo their bios by going too long and too flowery. The Floor is Not Lava simply inverted the name of a children’s game, but their bio aims for grandiosity. There’s a long preamble about finding solid ground,2 then it tosses some metaphors into the mixer.
Like magma, they take sonic elements from a wide breadth of genres, from Grunge to RnB, through Funk and Indie Sleaze, and cast them in a crucible of Pop sensibilities.
Second, baby bands have a peculiar habit of asserting they’re doing something unprecedented.
The Floor Is Not Lava creates music that can toss aside the expectations of the past, using only the raw substance of what remains to build something new.
That’s a tall order for any band, particularly a relative newcomer. Maybe they can settle for having catchy songs?
Meryl Streek
Where: Manchester Punk Festival, Bearded Theory
Ritt Momney
Where: Kilby Block Party
Taylor More Swiftly
Where: Bearded Theory
Moe.Organ Fairchild
Where: Borderland
Celebrities and public figures are a perennial inspiration, and you’ll find plenty of them at festivals this year. Let’s start with Ireland’s Meryl Streek. The name has a typical origin story: “I just smoked a lot of weed, and I came up with that name, and I just stuck with it,” Streek told Far Out Magazine.
Less expected is Streek’s antagonistic electro-punk, or that security concerns inspired his nom de guerre. “Basically, because I’m hitting some serious topics in Ireland and I live [with] my mam, I want to keep the house safe,” he told Far Out. “That was always the idea, even though everyone in Ireland knows who the fuck I am. It was a safety precaution.”
Not to diminish said “serious topics,” but the crooked politicians, self-destructive vices, and greedy landlords on 2024’s Songs for the Deceased are pretty typical punk fodder. I don’t think he has to worry about getting the Pussy Riot treatment.
Meanwhile in Utah, where a spoonerism of Mitt Romney counts as sticking it to the man, we have Ritt Momney. High school friends started the group in the time between Romney’s failed presidential bid and his successful election to the senate. Deseret News interviewed founder Jack Rutter about it in 2021:
The story behind the name is more dull than you might think. “There’s no reason, man,” he told me as we sat at a coffee shop in Sugarhouse. “We were high school kids. It was sort of a subversion — a ‘stick-it-to-the-man’ sort of thing,” he said. “At this point, it’s whatever.”
Oh Deseret News, that’s exactly as dull as I expected. Rutter’s bandmates eventually left for their church missions, while he stuck around and went viral on TikTok for his cover of Corinne Bailey Rae’s “Put Your Records On.” And isn’t TikTok, like, a new religion? ::clears bong chamber::
Band Name Bureau: At this point, it’s whatever.
If you’re going to play “much, much faster” pop-punk covers of Taylor Swift songs, Taylor More Swiftly is an excellent and grammatically pleasing name.
Readers may remember Organ Fairchild from last year’s festival preview. The band, named after ’70s/’80s sexpot Morgan Fairchild, originally met while playing in a Grateful Dead tribute group decades ago. Those threads unite at this year’s Borderland, where they’re joining long-running jam band moe. to pay tribute to the Dead’s Bob Weir. It’s a portmantastic union that was written in the stars.
999999999
Where: Movement
I’m in the process of laboriously organizing the 4,000+ names I’ve written about over the years. It involves a massive spreadsheet, multiple tags, and a little voice in my head asking, “Is this pointless?”
999999999 has me considering an “Oh fuck off” tag to the spreadsheet, because that was my reaction to the name. Elephant-memoried BNB readers will recall I had the same reaction to ¥///0 $#£[[ \/\/&$ #£>3 in 2023’s festival preview.
¥///0 $#£[[ \/\/&$ #£>3 deserved it, 999999999 less so. These kinds of names are common in electronic music—or, in this case, “techno from outer space”—and I’m just salty because issue #118 is 10+ days late. The mysterious Italian duo pronounces it “nine times nine,” has a label called NineTimesNine, and a whole spiel about what it means.
“999999999 is an abstract concept coming from the minds of two people who don’t feel the need to define it; it is spontaneous, random, and without limits,” they said in one interview. In another, “999999999 comes from the need to not define our project as something clear and ‘bounded.’ We just want the people to be focused on our music, not on who we are behind the project.”
Their song titles are similarly opaque: “000000002,” “000000003,” “X0001000X,” “X0002000X,” “XXXX1XXXX,” “XXXX2XXXX,” etc. Any song titles with actual words tend to be collabs with other artists, like “Acid Blood” (with FLKN) or “Acid World” (with Rian Wood and Angel Cannon). Still waiting for that Lords of Acid collaboration, though.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
Where: Manchester Punk Festival
This is a supremely metal name for a metal band, with decidedly non-metal origins: a line in William Blake’s 18th century poem “Proverbs of Hell.” The actual line, “Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead,” is considered an allegory about freeing yourself from devotion to the past.
“Proverbs of Hell” also has a line that goes, “The busy bee has no time for sorrow,” but that’s not metal.
The specific wording “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” mimics a 2009 mystery novel by Olga Tokarczuk, originally published in Polish under the title Prowadź Swój Pług Przez Kości Umarłych. All those strong consonants and accents? Metal.
Healer of Bastards
Where: Manchester Punk Festival
While it’s not cool that your “Rock & Roll hardcore thrash skate punk” band takes its name from a Facebook Game of Thrones quiz, it’s fitting nevertheless. Says vocalist/drummer Paul Healer (real name): “You simply typed your full name in, and it would put your name in graphics and included a description for you that sounded Game of Thrones-esque. It described me as a ‘Healer of Bastards.’ It seemed fitting, because I am always writing about social injustice and wanting a better world. Healing this world of all the bastards that ruin it appealed to me, so that was that.”
And thus, “Holy Shitballs.”
Lightning Round
Fleetwood Snack (Capitol Hill Block Party) Two groups claim this obvious-in-retrospect name: one, seemingly dormant, specialized in “food-based covers of Fleetwood Mac songs” (i.e., “Gold Crust Woman”). The other is an electronic artist from Seattle who’s also gone by Monet Maker and, woof, Timothy McVape.
Complete Fucker (Skull Fest) 10/10, no notes.
Bossanova Frankenstein (Taverne Tour) Winner, Most Literal Album Cover.
Condition Oakland (Pouzza) Naming yourself after an excellent Jawbreaker song is basically Kyle Ryan Entrapment. More peculiar is the self-description of “the harbor freight of Orgcore.” Orgcore generally means gravelly vocals with melodic punk, but my brain read it as orccore, which led me to this video. I apologize.
POST-SCRIPTS
So much for my streak of publishing on the 10th of the month. It’s been a busy April. Apologies!
A line from R.O.T.O.R.: “Let me tell you something, mister. You fire me, and I’ll make more noise than two skeletons making love in a tin coffin, brother.” I guess “Dos Esqueletos Haciendo el Amor en un Ataúd de Hojalata” is too long for a name.
How many people have told Bossanova Frankenstein, “Actually, Frankenstein is the doctor’s name”?
Caveat emptor: Next month’s BNB may be a “best of” kinda thing, because I have a bunch of behind-the-scenes work, like the previously mentioned database, switching platforms, and other tedium. We’ll see how it goes.
Technically the line is “This ol’ boy just killed a motorcycle cop.” The nuances we lose in translation!
Because, remember, the floor is lava! Or wait, no, it’s not. Whatever, don’t think about it too hard.