#74: Such and Such & the So and So's
Pontious Pilate & the Naildrivers; Quazar & the Bamboozled; Roy G. & the Biv; Mookie & the Bab; Toodles & the Hectic Pity
There’s no more classic band-name convention than what I call Such and Such & the So and So’s. It’s a tradition as old as popular music. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five. Bill Haley and His Comets. Gladys Knight and the Pips. KC and the Sunshine Band. Uh, Eddie and the Cruisers. Etc. But here at BNB, we celebrate the groups who take that convention and do something different. (And no, “different” doesn’t necessarily mean “good.”)
Pontious Pilate & the Naildrivers
Not to be confused with P. Pilate & the Nailers, mentioned in last year’s BNB Halloween Spectacular. And did anyone picture this name belonging to a nine-piece ska-punk band from the Ryan family ancestral homeland of Cork, Ireland?
Then again, it makes sense that this bit o’ quasi-blasphemy comes from the Irish, who’ve lived under the oppressive thumb of the Catholic Church since the days of St. Patrick.
This being ’90s-indebted ska-punk, it’s all good-natured quasi-blasphemy. This isn’t a bunch of glowering dudes in corpse paint growling about raping priests. Who’s gonna be mad about a song like the up-with-weirdness anthem “Own Your Spectrum”?
No reasonable person, obviously. Good thing Christians are always reasonable!
Quazar & the Bamboozled
Back in March, I brought up the concept of snark entrapment, and the cover for When are You Gonna Rock?!! by the goofily named Quazar & the Bamboozled has me smelling a narc:
Just look at this bio. Are you a cop? Because you have to tell me if you are!
The brainchild of songwriter Brandon Jay, Quazar and the Bamboozled is like The Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Phantom of the Paradise in a junkyard fight with Mungo Jerry and Harry Nilsson in the alley behind a Parliament/Funkadelic concert.
This checks out, though. Whoever would use that pic for an album cover would definitely write such a laborious bio. I would suggest taking it down a notch, but anyone who wears rainbow suspenders is incapable of doing so.
Quazar has been kicking around LA since the early ’00s, when they released a full-length called, ugh, The Lovely Lunatickle Musical Revue. The cover of the album looks like it was generated by AI trained on theater-nerd whimsy:
Eighteen long years separated, sigh, The Lovely Lunatickle Musical Revue and the When are You Gonna Rock?!! EP, though I can’t find anything about what happened in the time between. But Quazar’s joie de vivre hasn’t dampened a bit, despite plenty happening that would crush the spirit of lesser souls. Shine on, etc. etc.
Roy G. & the Biv
Searching for this band brings up a number of results, with kids’ songs by They Might Be Giants and Jack Hartmann at the top. The thumbnail for Hartmann’s video would make any parent pause to consider the things we endure for our children:
There are also results explaining, as Wikipedia does, that “ROYGBIV is an acronym for the sequence of hues commonly described as making up a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.”
And finally, there numerous are musical artists vying for variations on Roy G. Biv. At least two claim Roy G. & the Biv: one hailed from Denton, Texas, and exists now only as a zombie MySpace page, and an LA “post punk fuck shit” band.
Dammit, I was hoping the group consisted of soca artist Roy G. and Michael Bivins of New Edition/Bell Biv DeVoe.
Mookie & the Bab
I don’t know how I expected Mookie & the Bab to look, but this ain’t it:
Nor did I expect them to be “an Americana inspired Indie/Folk band from the UK, with an organic sound inspired by their travels around America, with lyrical themes of nature and the climate crisis,” per a press release. Something called Round Magazine says they “capture the sound of the American Southwest like few others we’ve heard in a long time.”
Here’s the question: Did the Round writer come up with that, or lift it from the band bio? The bio says M&B “captures the sound of the American Southwest, whilst remaining true to their British working class roots.” Or maybe the band liked what the writer said so much they put it in their bio? This thing goes all the way to the top. FOLLOW THE MONEY.
“Long drives across desert landscapes listening to legends such as Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young has influenced their sound,” continues the bio, “and their favourite band is Lumineers.” Wait, what?
Simon. Dylan. CSNY. Lumineers.
The addition of the “Ho Hey” band seems jarring in context, but makes sense listening to M&B’s music. The video for “Passing Through” definitely wasn’t shot during a long drive across a desert, but if we know anything, it’s this band loves to drive. Yet they write about the climate crisis? But looking at them, they probably bought carbon offsets to make up for it.
Toodles & the Hectic Pity
I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve seen innumerable preposterous names, but this one sounds completely fake. It’s like a name a sitcom writer came up with for a character’s terrible band. Tell me Dylan from Modern Family wouldn’t be in a band called Toodles & the Hectic Pity!
But nope, this is a real “folk-punk-emo, three-piece” from Bristol, England, who have song titles like “Religious Experience on the Bristol-Bath Railway Path,” “An Incurable Soul (Chicken Neck Boogie),” and “The Enemies of Happiness are Not Napping!”
These lyrics totally could’ve come from Dylan though:
I wanna be kissed so hard that I no longer feel your tongue in my mouth
So that my lips go numb and all I can taste is blood
Toodles & the Hectic Pity stand out among others in this edition because it’s easy to find guitarist-vocalist Callum McAllister explaining the origins of their name. Thank you, Noizze UK.
I had quite clear ideas about what it meant a few years ago, but the more I think about it the more I like the weird ambiguity. What really happened is that we were coming up with names, most of which were absolutely appallingly bad, and I was reading The Secret Agent at university and in either the introduction or the afterword, the phrase “Toodles, and the hectic pity” come up. The hectic pity in that context is referring to essentially a kind of chaotic empathy for others that is debilitating. Toodles is an unrelated side character to this.
Since then, McAllister has come around to the name just being a jumble of words people can give their own meaning. And in the great band-name debate—is it better to have a weird name that sticks out or an innocuous one that blends in?—we know where McAllister and co. land.
I’m certain having a really whacky name has closed some doors for us but it’s also definitely opened some. Our friends from the band Live, Do Nothing always say “novelty is the best policy.”
If I ever make Band Name Bureau T-shirts, they will say “Novelty is the Best Policy,” and I’ll split the tens of dollars I make from them with Live, Do Nothing.
POST-SCRIPTS
Quazar & the Bamboozled played a show in March with a band called Carnal Circus. That tracks.
Strong Starburns vibes on Brandon Jay. Are we sure he and Dino Stamatopoulos are different people?
Don’t google “round magazine,” because this is America. Not so inspiring now, eh, Mookie & the Bab?
I love that little italicized “Feedback” next to those image results. How about “fuck off”? Can’t wait to see what kind of ads I get served now.
Toodles is an unrelated side character to this.
Coming in a few days: a bonus BNB with the delightful Iona Cairns of Shit Present, who recently released what may be my favorite album of 2023.