I was sixteen once. No, it's true. I'm not kidding. And I was even in a band for a short time. I couldn't sing. I couldn't play an instrument. But, my friends took pity on me and let me be in the band. I was always hanging around so finally they just handed me a tambourine, and since I always loved to dance and was pretty good at it, they let me get out in front and jump around. It was fun if you were sixteen. We even got out in public 3 or 4 times because, thank God, the other kids in the group were pretty good, one even going on to a career in music.
But what do I mean by Air-brained? It means that while I unfortunately was not musically inclined I loved thinking up names for the band. Air guitarists had not yet risen to height of infamy they've now achieved. I've nothing against them personally. I'm just sorry those folks haven't realized that patience, practice , and persistence will give them what they really want...to be able to play the guitar and release the excitement in their souls. So, I did my fooling around with names for the band.
What I came up with was Hamlin's Children. Huh?, you say. That was the fabled town where the pied piper chased away all the rats from the town of Hamlin as he agreed to in his contract but when the townsfolk welshed and refused to pay him, he kidnapped all the children in town instead. So me, thinking I was clever, thought of the band as the lost children of Hamlin. But being too clever, no one else knew what I was talking about. A pity. But I learned a little bit about being too clever for cleverness's sake alone. I learned that you still have to communicate what you're trying to say for everyone to have fun with it.
Anyway that's the truth about all names for bands. It's never the name that makes the band. Sure, a great name for a great band adds to the energy but a crappy name for a great band just makes a bad name great because it's the excitement of the music that people are wanting to hear, not the band's name unless it's introducing them on stage or the radio. Is The Beatles a great name? How about if they called themselves The Caterpillars or The Fruit Flies. After the first time I heard I Want to Hold Your Hand I didn't care what they called themselves. I just wanted to hear their songs as much as I could.
So I had a thought the other day when I heard a band called Rage Against The Machine. I'm not sure that I could ever match their music on the radio with their name but I thought the name was clever and now you know how I feel about being too clever. So I thought another name for a similar band might be Antipathy for Cutlery. It has the same kind of feel and it's certainly clever. But I've learned a little bit over the years so I think I've got a new name which I now send out over the ethers for anyone interested to pick it up if they choose, if it hasn't been thought up by someone else first. It's The Explosive Bolts, The Bolts for short. It's from those bolts that blast a pilot out of there damaged jet plane when they have to bail out at high speed. It's got simplicity and power and a great way to introduce them as being explosive. You could even think of them as lightning bolts.
So that's about it. I wrote this blog to be sure that my cleverness about this isn't lost to history, and have some fun while I'm at it. So for the rest of you air brained types...just keep rocking any way you can.
