#55: They came from 2002

Arctic Monkeys; I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness; Say Hi to Your Mom; Volcano, I'm Still Excited!!; and much more

The year is 2002.

People are freaking out. Just a few months after a profoundly traumatic terrorist attack—then a subsequent bio-terror attack—Americans are watching the world through the fingers covering their eyes. What awful thing will happen next?

Yet people still manage to live their lives, and plenty of them even said, “Godammit, I’m starting a band.” In this month’s bonus edition, we pay tribute to those who took the leap while choosing questionable names.

So let’s take a journey back to a time before smartphones and before social media, when we thought George W. Bush was the worst president ever. Who knew they were the good ol’ days?

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness

…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead are the OGs of Indie Bands with Long Names, so maybe they inspired their fellow Austinites in I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness. Like a lot of bands with ponderous names, ILYBICD were cagey about their moniker’s origins, other than to say it’s “related to something specific” without elaborating. Spin suggested the name “tricks casual observers into thinking they’re emo.” Maybe “I Love You” is emo, “But I’ve Chosen Darkness” is goth, and ILYBICD had pronounced gothic tendencies. I mean, just look at the cover of their debut:

Say Hi to Your Mom

Seattle-based songwriter Eric Elbogen released numerous albums under this name before shortening it to Say Hi. I find that less charming, probably because the original always made me picture Biff Tannen dismissively telling Marty McFly, “Say hi to your mom for me.” The name wasn’t inspired by Back to the Future, per Say Hi’s website:

A friend suggests he call his new band Say Hi To Your Mom and the name reminds him of his first visit to the Midwest, where a polite grocery store checker announced the phrase (in earnest) to a young woman on her way out of the store.

Having grown up in LA and lived in NYC before settling in Seattle, Elbogen was unaccustomed to sincerity.

Volcano, I'm Still Excited!!

In an alternate reality, Mark Duplass isn’t known as acclaimed actor-writer-director, but the frontman of Volcano, I’m Still Excited!! Duplass started out as a musician, touring as a singer-songwriter in the late ’90s until severe tendinitis forced him to put down his guitar. Instead, he picked up a cheap Casio keyboard and enlisted a couple friends for some “earnest goofiness,” as he told Stereogum in 2020.

Their name was certainly goofy. Duplass et al. were coy about its origins, as is the band’s bio on the Polyvinyl Records website:

Some say it’s a tribute to Tom Hanks’ Joe Versus the Volcano, others say it’s some sort of bizarre mantra/rallying cry, others say it’s a merely a random stream of consciousness phrase.

No one pays tribute to Joe Versus the Volcano, Polyvinyl. Let’s be serious. But the name certainly reflected the era, which was captured in a live performance accompanying the rerelease of the group’s 2002 EP, Carbon Copy.

As Ian Cohen writes in Stereogum, the video is “a time capsule of early 2000s indie rock: three young men wearing homemade T-shirts in a band with two exclamation points in their name, rudimentary keyboards, elements of chintzy new wave and agitated post-punk played with unbridled enthusiasm.”

In 2002, I was working at the beloved Chicago venue the Empty Bottle. I don’t know if Volcano, I’m Still Excited!! ever came through while I was working, but countless bands with a similar vibe sure as hell did.

VISE!! released one full-length in 2004 before Duplass broke up the group to find his mumblecore fortunes in Hollywood. He has no illusions about his band’s legacy.

But there was never, “we didn’t get our due.” In fact, the only feelings I have that are complicated are a sense of guilt for leaving the band behind, not only for my band members but also Polyvinyl, who believed in us and invested in us. I know enough about the business of indie rock to know it’s not one record that makes it work. You put out six records, it’s the concept of compounding in investing, you build this thing slowly and after 10 years, you’re of Montreal and it’s working.

He chose wisely.

Arctic Monkeys

NME had breaking news in October 2011: Alex Turner: ‘Arctic Monkeys is a bad name for a band.’ At that point, the band had been together for nine years, so the frontman had had plenty of time to meditate on their moniker’s mediocrity. Turner could only chalk it up to inexperience. This was his and his bandmates’ first band, and Arctic Monkeys was the first name suggested (courtesy of guitarist Jamie Cook). He continued:

“There might have been other ideas for offshoots at the time, but the Monkeys was the first one. It sounds like a first band name, doesn’t it?

It absolutely does. Arctic Monkeys is a name on a poster for a high school battle of the bands, not the top of a festival lineup.

Don’t go looking for a deeper meaning, either. “I’ve no idea where it came from,” Turner continued. “It was Jamie’s fault, he came up with it, and he’s never even told us why. If he even knows, he’s keeping it a secret from me.”

Other bands that formed in 2002:

• Colonel Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains. Les Claypool thought, “Hey, how about an even less tolerable version of Primus, but with Buckethead?”

• Harry and the Potters. Holy shit, they’re still at it.

• The Number Twelve Looks Like You. The name came from an episode of The Twilight Zone set in a dystopian future where everyone undergoes surgery at 19 to resemble an attractive model. Guess what? It doesn’t go well!

• A Place to Bury Strangers. Inspired by the collection of poetry by Aleister Crowley, Acaldama, which guitarist Oliver Ackermann says means “a place to bury strangers.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “the potter’s field bought with the money Judas had been paid for betraying Christ.” Metal!

• Black Moth Super Rainbow. Before BMSR, frontman Tobacco was in a group called Satanstompingcaterpillers.

• Small Towns Burn a Little Slower. Little info remains about this Twin Cities band, but I found a review with this hilarious critique of emo circa 2005: “Today’s emo scene is laughable slap in the face of the emo scene of ’90s. Sweaty basement shows have been replaced by Warped Tour slots. Its sincerity is long gone; replaced by hitting on Myspace sluts from city to city instead of just having a chance to be heard.”

• Sons of All Pussys. They were Japanese, but still.

• These Arms Are Snakes. Whoa, I found 2009 interview with them from Decider, which is how the local editions of The A.V. Club were (briefly) branded back in the day. Ah, memories.

  • Decider: A few months ago in his spoken-word performances, Jello Biafra started using These Arms Are Snakes in his list of stupid emo band names. How do you feel about that?
    Ryan Frederiksen: I wouldn’t say it’s an emo name, but it’s definitely a stupid band name. [Laughs.] That’s kind of why we chose it, because it’s ridiculous and doesn’t really sound like any other band name that’s out there. I think one of the hardest parts about being in a band is coming up with a band name. That said, there are a ton of bands that pick the absolute worst names, like Cute Is What We Aim For. That’s absurd! We purposefully came up with a bad band name so we wouldn’t take ourselves so seriously, but we take what we do seriously. That’s our line of thought. Let’s just go by something absurd. Anyway, the guy’s name is Jello Biafra, for Christ’s sake. What the hell is he talking about?

• This Moment in Black History. Cited by River Butcher in BNB #12.1 as a bad name.

• What Made Milwaukee Famous. Inspired by the Glenn Sutton song “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Our Of Me),” popularized by Jerry Lee Lewis. What made Milwaukee famous? Beer, and lots of it.

• Cars Can Be Blue. A deep pull from The State. (No, not the deep state.)

• Adolf Satan. Possibly the most adolescent name on here.

• Fear Before the March of Flames. They go by “Fear Before” these days, but took their name from a Denver Post headline about a wildfire in 2002.

• God is an Astronaut. Inspired by the 1990 film Nightbreed. Don’t put the word “God” in your name unless you want people to constantly talk to you about it.

• One of the Loudest Tragedies Ever Heard. I couldn’t find much about this band, but Google suggested I “Discover skinnest [sic] woman ever’s popular videos” on TikTok. Not sure where to begin with that one.

• Scary Kids Scaring Kids. It sounds like a newspaper headline from The Simpsons, but no, it came from a Cap’n Jazz song.

• Modern Life is War. What are the odds that a dude in a band called Modern Life is War is a fun hang? 50-1? 80-1?

• Thunderbirds are Now! Inspired by the creepy British marionette series that also partly inspired Team America: World Police.

POST-SCRIPTS

• I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness is also the title of the acclaimed “darkly funny, soul-rending novel” by Claire Vaye Watkins. She didn’t know the band, but apparently an ex-boyfriend was a fan: He had it tattooed across his collarbones.

• I saw A Place to Bury Strangers (with the Zombies!) at SXSW one year, and it remains in the top five loudest shows I’ve ever seen. (No. 1: Jucifer at the aforementioned Empty Bottle. Look ’em up.)

• Many years ago, Nathan Rabin wrote about how every film critic eventually realizes Oliver Stone is full of shit. The same goes for every punk rocker, but with Jello Biafra.