#1: Candy-coated chaos
Winona Forever; Snotty Nose Rez Kids; Screaming Burritos; Good Fuck; Unicorn Holocaust
Well, shit. The world kind of imploded since I announced Band Name Bureau, but here’s my hot take: The relentlessly terrible news inundating us daily necessitates some goofy frivolity. That doesn’t mean this type of goofy frivolity is somehow Very Important, just that everyone needs to find something silly to maintain their sanity. Here’s hoping this brings a little light to your day.
One housekeeping note: I have a lot fewer embedding options in an email newsletter, so these won’t quite be the browser-crashing media maelstroms as the Year in Band Names. Maybe that’s a good thing?
Finally, you should prepare for an avalanche of band names inspired by COVID-19 in the coming year. COVID-20? The Quaran-Teens? Toilet Paper Stockpile? Drive-Thru Testing? Wuhan Solo? The possibilities are endless.
Winona Forever
This Canadian band takes its name from Johnny Depp’s lovesick tattoo from back when he was dating Winona Ryder—personally, I prefer The Winona Ryders if we’re discussing band names inspired by her—which he famously changed after to “Wino Forever” after they broke up. Ho ho, just the kind of shenanigans you’d expect from the guitarist of the Hollywood Vampires! (Incidentally, Hollywood Vampires is a bad name, but not bad enough for the Band Name Bureau. It’s bad in the mediocre sense—neither witty nor memorable, just there. At least the name comes from something beyond Johnny Depp trying to sound edgy. Hollywood Vampires is what HV member Alice Cooper called his informal drinking club back in the ’70s. That’s a fine name for a group of boozy celebrity bons vivants? But for a “supergroup” that specializes in cover songs? Nah.) Where were we? Right, Winona Forever. They describe themselves as “4 crewneck enthusiast-winos in your area!!” In this case, “your area” means “Vancouver” (though they tour quite a bit). Tracks include “Shrek~Chic” (lyrics: “I use an excessive amount of emoticons in every text I send”) and “#1 Summer Hit To Grind To.” Turns out that’s not the case: “Keep Kool,” from last year’s yacht-rockin’ Feelgood has racked up more than 2 million streams on Spotify.
Snotty Nose Rez Kids
The “rez” is short for “reservation,” as SNRK—license plate for the most annoying person in the world?—is “a Canadian Hip-Hop duo of Haisla (Indigenous) descent.” According to the Haisla Nation, they number about 1,700, almost all of them living in Kitamaat Village, British Columbia. (The average high there in the summer is less than 70, and it gets fewer than 10 hours of sunlight a day from November to January. Canada: Just Try to Live Here Without Blowing Your Brains Out!) SNRK is nothing if not prolific. Following last last year’s 18-track full-length, Trapline, the duo just dropped an EP called Born Deadly. It features a song called “Cops With Guns Are The Worst!!!,” just in case anyone thought racist policing in North America was limited to the U.S. Five of the 18 tracks on Trapline are called “skits,” though not in the traditional hip-hop, “Deez nutz!” kind of way. They’re more thoughtful/inspirational spoken-word tracks, not that “Oh shit there’s a horse in the hospital!” wasn’t inspiring in its own way.
Screaming Burritos
Hell yes to this: “Daughter & Dad Hardcore Punk band from Cleveland. I ask her what the song is about, hit Record. 1 and done.” That gives you gems like “Butthole Cat” (an “homage to the artwork on Eddie Elguerra's [sic] H-Street deck,” respect), “Creepy Creep,” and a take on the immortal childhood classic “Milk & Lemonade.” There’s also “Mean To Ladies,” which shows how even a 6-year-old could see what 62,979,636 people did not. Bless these two forever and ever.
Good Fuck
Those familiar with the discography of indie agitator Tim Kinsella—Cap’n Jazz, Joan Of Arc, Make Believe, Owls, etc.—shouldn’t be surprised by the name of his latest group. That it’s a two-piece with his wife, Jenny Pulse (Spa Moans), lends an extra layer of meaning to Good Fuck, because everyone knows you shouldn’t marry a bad lay. Now that Kinsella is an elder statesman, he makes allowances for the sensitivities of others: Good Fuck also goes by “Goof Duck,” and goofduck.com is where you can find the band’s website, presumably because goodfuck.com would take you to a very different place. (Turns out someone’s squatting on it, and not in that way.) Kinsella referred to the duo as Goof Duck in his engrossing account of living in Italy during the outbreak of COVID-19 for Chicago magazine. Both Kinsella and Pulse came down with COVID, recovered, and barely made it back to Chicago just alarm bells were ringing in the U.S. It’s a story as harrowing as Good Fuck’s music is esoteric, which is to be expected from this pair. This year’s Jenny’s Unbuttoned Meditations EP—the group’s third album in 14 months—wins points for song titles like “The Taking Of Punk Tusk 1-2-3” and “Private Party, Hoyne and Augusta,” the latter mostly because I used to live on Augusta between Hoyne and Leavitt. (Ukrainian Village, y’all.)
Unicorn Holocaust
Evidence of this band’s existence is scant beyond teaser video on YouTube—lyrics: “Why the fuck / Does everything suck?”—and a press release of sorts from Boston quasi-promoter Cupcake Kamikaze. The fact that it was sent on April 1 naturally makes me skeptical, but Unicorn Holocaust fits in with the other acts on the Cupcake Kamikaze page, which includes some winning names like Nope (a Yes parody band), No Lives Matter, Sovietnam, Dick Flaccid & The Viagranauts, Adult Baby Strollers, Marvin’s Gay, Liquid Leukemia, Reeces Feces Jr., Snacks…In Slacks!, Kissinger Escape Plan, Ass Transit, Humonguous Brunette, Black Hitler—recently removed by YouTube—and others. Naturally a band with “holocaust” in its name needs appropriately themed monikers for its members: Hiroshima Dynamite, Atomic Bombshell, Dr. Mushrooms Cloud—though things fall apart when it comes to their drummers, Emoji Fugazi or Torpedo Tawakakke, who rotate based on their schedules. Cupcake Kamikaze describes Unicorn Holocaust as “candy-coated chaos,” and their press release includes MP3s for “Every Dude Loves Dick (That's Why They Can't Keep Their Hands Off It)” and “Kevorkian 4 President!” Both songs are featured on their upcoming full-length debut, whose title isn’t mentioned, so who knows if any of this is real? But hey, we had some laughs about those names on the Cupcake Kamikaze page, right?
⬆️ Atomic Bombshell of Unicorn Holocaust. Note hot pink “Michael Jackson” flying V.
I received a “too long for email” alert from Substack when I tried to add that image the first time, so I guess that’ll do it for this month’s edition. (Also, this is already maxing out Substack? Uh-oh.) Paid subscribers will get a bonus newsletter April 20th, and everyone else will get the next edition the first week of May. If we’re still here.