Richard Clegg (steer) wrote,
2011-10-27 17:04:00

Bands with long names

This afternoon I've been listening to music from bands with long names. Started with the only moderately long: "A Place to Bury Strangers" and then went to "I love you but I've chosen darkness", "...And you will know us by the trail of the dead", "An experiment on a bird in the air pump", "The strange death of liberal england" and finally settling on my favourites, "The eighties matchbox b-line disaster".

I was running out of long names and didn't fancy "My life with the thrill kill kult" or "The presidents of the united states of america" which, despite being fine bands, just didn't fit my mood. So I googled long band names and discovered the existence of "The Powers Of Darkness Shall Rain Blood Upon This City For 500 Years". Unfortunately, I pretty much only discovered their existence. I could not find a track to listen to on the web anywhere. However, I was pleased to find that if I type their name into Amazon.com then the closest match is:
Organ Works by Ned Rorem, the track listing for this leads me to believe it is Quaker inspired church music. I wonder what search algorithm amazon uses? Try it for yourself -- mystifying:

http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=The%20Powers%20of%20Darkness%20Shall%20Rain%20Blood%20Upon%20This%20City%20for%20500%20Years

Shamefully the band had no biography on lastfm so I took the liberty of adding one. Feel free to edit:
http://www.last.fm/music/The+Powers+Of+Darkness+Shall+Rain+Blood+Upon+This+City+For+500+Years/+wiki
  • 24 comments

zotz

October 27 2011, 16:15:37 UTC 1 year ago

Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine? When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water?

This page claims that there is or was a band called "Our Manager Told Us That Our Band Name Was Too Long and Difficult to Remember and That We Had to Change it So After a Long Brainstorming Session We Came Up With This One Because All the Other Ones Sucked", which would probably be the last several words on the matter.
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steer

October 27 2011, 16:35:51 UTC 1 year ago

I'd not heard of "When People Were Shorter..." before starting the bands with long names search actually. I will have to listen to some later.

Unfortunately the "Our manager told us..." name seems only to exist on pages about funny band names which is disappointing.
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zotz

October 27 2011, 16:45:02 UTC 1 year ago

This bunch claim it's them, and in fact that it's only part of their name.

Verifying this is left as an exercise for the reader.
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thecesspit

October 27 2011, 16:30:51 UTC 1 year ago

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead ?

You could always go for long album titles, of which the winner is probably Fiona Apple's "When the pawn...."

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steer

October 27 2011, 16:42:03 UTC 1 year ago

And you will know us... are already mentioned. I rather like them.

Album titles are allowed to be longer I guess because you're not stuck with them for so long.

If we go to track titles I think, not for length, but more for awkwardness 5F-X's album The Xenomorphians, Your Friendly invasion has it:
http://www.5f-x.de/index.php/artreleases/artalb4
The tracks on their third album are similarly weird. Their first two albums just have track titles which are hexadecimal combinations.

Note that some track titles are only given as "alien symbols" on that listing and at least one track title uses the fonts from futurama which isn't even a real lanaguage.
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thecesspit

October 27 2011, 16:46:07 UTC 1 year ago

You did, I missed it when reading. Oops.

There was an album by some whacky electronica band whose titles were either blank or random key board mashings. I played one the tracks on Rubbish on the radio. it was "orfed".

Much like "This films crap, lets trash the seats" which last 2 seconds, as I recall.
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zenithed

October 27 2011, 16:34:56 UTC 1 year ago

Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia's always a good one.

Johnny Foreigner released an EP a few months back called You thought you saw a shooting star but yr eyes were blurred with tears and that lighthouse can be pretty deceiving with the sky so clear and sea so calm. It was alright.
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steer

October 27 2011, 16:44:27 UTC 1 year ago

As I mentioned above, 5f-x's track titles win the strangeness (but not length) prize I think:

http://www.5f-x.de/index.php/artreleases/artalb4
http://www.5f-x.de/index.php/artreleases/artalb3

(Some of the titles cannot be rendered in Unicode).
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zenithed

October 27 2011, 16:56:05 UTC 1 year ago

Ironically Some of the titles cannot be rendered in Unicode is the name of my new band.
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steer

October 27 2011, 17:11:59 UTC 1 year ago

I believe I would go see that band.
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asw909

October 27 2011, 17:55:11 UTC 1 year ago

While the band name isn't too long, Everything Goes Cold have some spectacularly long song titles.

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steer

October 27 2011, 18:02:05 UTC 1 year ago

And seemingly lots of variants on "I will harness the powers of darkness to destroy you" which is pleasingly similar to "The Powers Of Darkness Shall Rain Blood Upon This City For 500 Years".
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shermarama

October 27 2011, 18:11:14 UTC 1 year ago

"The Powers Of Darkness Shall Rain Blood Upon This City For 500 Years" is the wording of the subliminal message you get when you play Ned Rorem's works backwards. The name is plainly an anagram of something sinister, after all, even if I can't work out what yet.

I can't come up with too many long band names, but this song's called 'The Insanity Of Drayton Sawyer And His Hallucination Of Love Brought On By The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part II'.
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steer

October 28 2011, 11:14:02 UTC 1 year ago

That is seriously good thinking. Why would satanists put subliminal satanic messages in heavy metal music which is chiefly sold to the already damned? They should certainly put the subliminal and backwards messages in church organ music.
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hirez

October 27 2011, 18:12:22 UTC 1 year ago

Death from above 1979
Trixie's big red motorbike
The Real Roxanne and Hitman Howie T
Christians in search of filth
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steer

October 28 2011, 11:15:29 UTC 1 year ago

I tried to google "Christians in search of filth" and google spat the phrase "Indie jazz combo" at me. I feel faint now and need to lie down. What a horrifying idea.
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hirez

October 28 2011, 11:23:59 UTC 1 year ago

That sort of thing was big in the early eighties, you big rockist.

See also Blue Rondo a la Turk (who were shite, IIRC).
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steer

October 28 2011, 11:46:46 UTC 1 year ago

That sort of thing was big in the early eighties

So were Bucks Fizz and trimphones but it doesn't mean we can't try to forget.
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puritypersimmon

October 27 2011, 18:58:02 UTC 1 year ago

I wish you'd post on LJ more often...

The best I can come up with off the top of my head is : "IfWhiteAmericaToldTheTruthForJustOneDayItsWorldWouldFallApart" by The Manic Street Preachers. I'm hoping it scores extra for its willful disregard of punctuation!
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steer

October 28 2011, 11:11:13 UTC 1 year ago

I still read LJ but I don't often write anything that feels long enough... actually the Manics do have some good long track titles "If you tolerate this then your children will be next."
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inbetween_girl

October 28 2011, 19:01:38 UTC 1 year ago

We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use It.
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steer

October 28 2011, 22:16:21 UTC 1 year ago

Oooh... I am ashamed I forgot about them.
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mister_vodka

October 29 2011, 18:33:10 UTC 1 year ago

I'm late to the party, but must recommend The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing.

Their next album, the follow-up to "Now That's What I Call Steampunk! Volume 1," is to be entitled "And That Is The Reason Why The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing Cannot Be Killed By Conventional Weapons".
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steer

October 31 2011, 10:26:14 UTC 1 year ago

They're a band I really should go see since I've heard loads of good things
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