It occurred to me a long time ago when I first tried to use KaZaA to find some songs by A that there are some band names which would be brilliant to have, if you want to avoid having your music pirated. This is because it's impossible to get sane results when you search for them. It depends where you search, of course: Google, KaZaA, Direct Connect and whatever torrent sites you visit will all handle such searches differently, but generally all of these are difficult to find information about.
Not as many bands as I thought have taken advantage of this as yet, but here are a few. Unless otherwise stated the suggested names are not, as far as I know, taken.
- !!! - an eight piece dance/funk/post-punk indie rock group from Sacramento, California. Google steadfastly refuses to countenance any search for this band's name.
- .22 - who have one album, The Worker
- A - British five-piece rock band A's albums include How Ace Are Buildings, Hi-Fi Serious and Monkey Kong. They found fame in the UK with hits "Starbucks", "Nothing" and "Good Time". The latter two are possibly their only decent tracks, the remainder of their music being (in my opinion) weak and uninspiring. Their sensationally difficult-to-find band website is at a-communication.com.
- The And - This link is the only place I've been able to find any information about this band. They have a 1997 album called Day. Searching for "The And" in quotes on Google yields zero results, which actually staggering when you think about it.
- The The - I can honestly say I know absolutely nothing about this band. Their site is www.thethe.com.
- An
- To
- Of
- I - and so on... that is, short words which search engines tend to strip out and ignore, and even if they don't, they're so amazingly prevalent that they fail to filter the results in any meaningful way.
- The Music - A Led Zeppelin-like band from the north of England. I'm actually quite a fan of these guys. Their self-titled debut album is exemplary, though their second album, Welcome To The North was noticeably less so.
- Sex - and so on. This is one of an entire subdivision of instances where searching for the name would probably bring up plenty of meaningful results, just not the results you wanted. Punk band names generally feature pretty heavily here. However, note that if you become really popular, your popularity alone may be enough bring the right results to the top of the pile.
- Audio
- The Band - would appear to have been real.
- Hip-hop, Pop, Rock, etc.
- 403 Forbidden and other common HTML error codes such as 404 and 500
- MP3 - Just think about what's prevalent on peer-to-peer networks, and this name becomes one to seize if you get the chance. Listening to MP3? Listening to MP3s? You can invade the public consciousness with this name. UPDATE: it appears this name has already been used by a band consisting of three Members of Parliament. They changed it to MP4 when another one joined, MP4 being no less easy to search for.
- Torrent - also a good choice, for the same reasons. More so, since it actually, you know, carries a little meaning with it too.
- LOL <(^^,)> - an album by Basshunter which returns far too many unrelated links
Disadvantages of choosing such a name
Well, the obvious disadvantage is that people also can't search for your albums on shopping websites, or search for your lyrics, or search for your band website or for information about your band. Of the bands listed above. You're actually shooting yourself in the foot as far as publicity is concerned, because the internet is a form of publicity and failing to exploit that is suicidal. The lesson here is to pick a memorable and distinctive band name. Pink Floyd. Aerosmith. See?
Update 2009-01-22
Times change. What with the arrival of Wikipedia, most bands are extremely easy to find information about: just put the information into a Wikipedia search and hit the inevitable "disambiguate" link.
Isaac Asimov may have been the only guy who accurately predicted that librarians would rule the future.
