I was watching The Hour and Mike ‘Pinball’ Clemens, in answer to one of George’s questions, said (and I’m paraphrasing here) “if you’re thinking about yesterday you’re not doing enough today.” It sounds good, but it felt a little cliche and, really, sort of untrue. I think it’s good to look back from time to time and savour things you’ve already experienced. It’s the only way to see how far you’ve come. Perched on the beginning of 2008, I feel like I have a pretty good view.
In the past little while we’ve been blessed by being surrounded with very interesting people with even more interesting ideas and opinions. Even if we don’t go any further in the biz we have access to a library of insight about a subject we love: music. Hopefully this blog will let us share as much of it with you as possible.
This past year was also the stage for one of our biggest challenges yet. Strangely enough, it wasn’t finding management, sifting through contracts, finding a place in Toronto, budgeting for and meeting with lawyers, writing and recording our first real album, working out an acceptable live show, or figuring out how to sustain ourselves away from home. Our biggest struggle, the thing that led to the most stress and arguments and bitter meetings was choosing a new name. We originally thought it would be as easy as each of us coming up with a bunch of names and holding a March Madness style tournament. (We did this on the eve of our first recording session). That was May 16th. At about mid-July, and still no further along, Kent sent us a link to an archive broadcast of Alan Cross’ Ongoing History of New Music ( http://www.cfox.com/shows/ongoing_history_of_new_music.cfm?recID=21&ell=8943&pge=1#) and told us to listen to ‘Naming Your Band’ parts 1 and 2. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Cross’ show on Toronto’s 102.1 The Edge, it’s pretty much the best way a music fan can spend an hour. While this show didn’t spark any immediate revelations it was comforting to know that some of the worlds biggest bands had gone through the same struggle. Trent Reznor, for example, went through hundreds of names before he came up with Nine Inch Nails. And U2, originally called The Hype, actually enlisted help from a marketing agency before they came up with something that was acceptable for Bono (he actually didn’t really like the name U2 either).
We had many strong candidates: The Venn Union, The Morning Heist, The Afterset, Bliss Pilot, Secret Thief, Flight Machine, Watership Down, Astro Gallery, The War Kites. In September we were a day away from announcing our new name to be Bell the Thief. Our management wasn’t in love with it and although we had promised to unveil our decision the next week we decided to not rush it if everyone wasn’t on board. One thing was emerging though, a strong set of dos and don’ts. Here are some things that took us six months to figure out (with lots of advice from others).
If you’re struggling to find a name for your band:
-Don’t force it. You’ll end up with something that sounds like you sat around and tried to come up with the coolest thing ever, which, well… won’t be the coolest thing ever.
-Don’t name your band something that is already taken. Google search it, myspace search it, make sure the .com is available. I promise you this will be frustrating. There are a million crappy bands out there who are spoiling good names and are taking up their URLs.
-Don’t settle for something you’re not positive about. You’ll hate yourself in about a month. (A footnote in the Trent Reznor story is that he had a two week policy. The name had to survive constant analysis for a minimum of two weeks. Not a bad idea).
-Don’t let other people cut up your ideas, or at least take their criticisms with a grain of salt. Especially if they don’t know much about current music. You can ask for opinions but you can’t please everyone.
-Do pick something that means something to you or has history for the band.
-Do look to your geography for ideas. For example, Soundgarden got their name from a sculpture, The Sound Garden, in Seattle.
-Do make sure your name is going to fit what you sound and look like.
-Do allow your band to name itself. Sounds weird? I was sitting down with a very important colleague of our producer and I asked him how he named his different brands and collections. He said that instead of trying to tack a name on an object let the concepts around that object, what it represents, describe itself to you. Use these essences to form an appropriate title.
So now we’re Winhara. Which may not be the trendiest name, but it feels right and it means a lot to us. And it feels good looking back, seeing that we’re making progress even when it feels like we’re spinning our wheels.
-Dan