#31: Fair use commentary on bands with 'Olympics' in their names
#31: Fair use commentary on bands with 'Olympics' in their names
This is protected speech, IOC!
Who has OLYMPIC FEVER?!?!
From what I can tell, barely anyone. With the pandemic overshadowing the games, the long-gestating realization the Olympics are awful for their host cities, and the IOC is, at best, incredibly sketchy, it all amounts to a big shrug. The New York Times ran a story on July 17 with the headline “Are the Olympics Worth the Risk?”, the gist of which was, “Not really.” The subhead:
After bidding scandals, human rights outrages, overburdened host cities, rampant cheating, a pandemic — and, sure, thrilling competitions — has the world had enough of the Olympics?
Unrelated, but more obnoxious, is the IOC’s aggressive trademark enforcement, which ramped up during the 2016 games. Sure, it makes sense that the IOC shut down brands who try to use the Olympics to sell shit, but the rules are intense. According to an article called “Your Guide to Not Getting Sued by the International Olympic Committee,” brands can’t even say the word “Olympics,” use specific hashtags (which IOC copyrighted), say “Go for the Gold,” or even create a dumb portmanteau like “Shoplympics.”
The IOC’s ire isn’t limited to brands. This 2016 CNBC story notes the committee went after the knitting website Ravelry in 2012 for using the portmanteau “Ravelympics.” It also cease-and-desisted a carpet-cleaning company in Minnesota because the company sent supportive tweets for Olympic athletes from that state. Yup, the IOC is doing important work.
So this month, Band Name Bureau highlights some bands brazenly putting themselves in the crosshairs of trademark infringement. Go for the gold!
The Olympics!
Perhaps no one is more brazen than Connecticut punk band the Olympics!, not to be confused with the doo-wap group from the ’50s called the Olympics, sans exclamation point. Their bio:
The Olympics! Performs every two years, on Leap day and the 28th or 1st of the second year. 1 bass, 3 amps, drums and vocals. We have no songs, just events. We don’t practice, we train. Sludge, punk, metal, thrash, avant-garde, all while wearing short shorts. Go for gold.
All of their songs—sorry, events—are taken from sports in the Winter and Summer Olympics: “The Luge,” “Men’s Downhill,” “Shot Put,” “200 Meter Hurdles,” etc. Opening song “Opening Ceremonies” even swipes “Bugler’s Dream,” i.e., the Olympics theme score that the IOC probably wants to fine you for remembering. I can’t tell if the lyrics are actually about the song titles, as the vocals are all screamed and basically indecipherable. Yet as brazen as the Olympics! are, they take care not to replicate the official Olympic rings in their logo—though I think Audi may have a case here.
Moscow Olympics
Sochi Olympics
Adding the location of the Olympic games to your name won’t help your case. “But we play authentic Rio Baile funk!” say Sochi Olympics. Nope, CEASE AND DESIST!
The Year of the Sex Olympics
“0 monthly listeners” –Spotify
This ridiculous name actually comes from a televised play—starring a very young Brian Cox!—that aired in England in 1968 and presaged the rise of reality television. It’s set in a dystopian future where a ruling elite controls the masses with dumb TV shows and pornography. In the play, programmers get an idea for a new show: Dump some real people on a remote island and follow them 24 hours a day. Oh and also put a killer on the island who hunts them. It all sounds prescient two decades into reality television; when The Guardian revisited the play in 2003—“Big Brother with knives” said the headline—little did they know of the garbage TV that was still to come. As for the artist going by the Year of the Sex Olympics? No idea. They have one release on Spotify, Composite Beings 6, consisting of two tracks that last 30 minutes altogether. They’re not songs so much as random percussion and other sounds/noises. Maybe it will feel prescient in 50 years too? Probably not.
Alpine Skiing at the 1952 Winter Olympics
Beating the Year of the Sex Olympics with a whopping three monthly listeners on Spotify is Alpine Skiing at the 1952 Winter Olympics. Why that year and event? Maybe because that was the year giant slalom debuted? Otherwise, beats me, because I can’t find any information about this group. They haven’t been active for more than a decade, and the few songs they have on Spotify are like Tom Waits mixed with Alabama 3 (who did “Woke Up This Morning,” the theme song to The Sopranos). A couple of the songs feature a performer named Jinx Titanic on vocals. He’s a Chicagoan from the group Jinx Titanic & the Ladykillers, but more relevant to Band Name Bureau, he played in the group Super 8 Cum Shot. My (mostly) trusty spreadsheet tells me I never wrote about them, but I definitely remember this logo. They were done by the time I started writing about band names for The A.V. Club, but their logo remains as testament to their tastelessness.
POST-SCRIPTS
Moscow Olympics are good! The Filipino band draws on ’80s and ’90s indie sounds—“from Factory to Slumberland,” as the bio for the upcoming Cut of the World says. The album unites a 2007 EP the band did for a Swedish label with a few other songs that have come out since. The handful of songs available on Bandcamp are all swirling shoegaze, reminiscent of British bands at the start of the alternative era. I’m into it! I preordered the digital version of Cut of the World. Now I have a band to check out if I’m ever in the Philippines.