What s In A Name?

Then I had a call from a David Dorgan in Dublin telling me that he has had a band called Bungalow for three years. The upshot of all this is that the band I wrote about have decided to change their name. If you have any suggestions, please let me know so I can pass them on.
The above episode highlights an increasing problem for bands: finding a truly original name. Apart from the irritation, finding yourself with a name that somebody else has already used can have serious career consequences. Just as you are about to launch your album, say, in the USA, you can be stymied by suddenly being informed by some hotshot lawyer that your name is already in use. You can go ahead as planned and face serious legal difficulties for all involved, including your record company, or you can halt everything and dream up a new name, thereby losing all the benefits of having built up your name in the first place.
There appears to be no solution to this problem except to avoid the obvious. Names of books, song titles and films are quite likely to be snapped up by at least one other band, as are simple words like beach , toy or apple or common phrases. Vigilance and intensive research would seem to be the only solution.
Presumably Aoife O Connell has had no such trouble, her name probably having been delivered free of charge through her parents. Better still, she s learned the first rule of dealing with the music media bribery as her demo CD arrived with a neat note, a sachet of coffee and a bar of chocolate! Ever ready to take advantage of a freebie in a brown envelope I slapped it on the CD player pronto and put on the kettle.
In Twice The Woman O Connell confidently shows off her deliciously expressive pop voice, despite a ridiculous slurring of words beginning with t reminiscent of Ronan Keating s nonsense in a similar department. It has a catchy melody and proves she has an instinctive understanding of how to assemble a song. It reminded these ears of the melody of Space s Beautiful Neighbourhood and I couldn t help suspecting there was an element of writing-by-numbers in the whole affair. Questionable lyrics about being twice the woman, three times the person and ten times the lady some bloke thinks she is also featured. Do real women think like that? Fortunately, none that I know.
The second track, Don t Say Goodbye , (not written by her), is a fine pop tune with some impressive harmonies and again benefits from her effortlessly excellent voice. O Connell obviously has oodles of talent and she deserves a long and fruitful career.
The Wicklow-based Melvin may be one of those bands destined for name trouble. Do John McCann and Simon Crosbie not know that Kurt Cobain produced an album by a Seattle band called The Melvins?
Musically Melvin bring an element of John Lennon s vocal style on I d Like To to the slightly shambolic indie ethic of Badly Drawn Boy et al. It makes worthwhile listening. As a band they offer attractively relaxed vocals, an acoustically driven sound and some fine crunchy guitar work here and there. They seem to be more intent on getting their songs recorded by other acts, but it strikes me that the kind of artists likely to record this type of material generally write their own stuff anyway, so they may be taking the hard road to nowhere.
Fusty describe themselves as an acid-jazz band from Cork. In reality they sound like a more or less conventional contemporary jazz combo and they make an attractive noise that deserves to be developed and worked on.
Barry Foy has a warm and decently expressive voice, Karl Edwards makes all the right connections on guitar, and there s some attractive flute-work and some funky bass playing too.
Sadly, it s often spoiled by some dreadfully wooden and clumsy drumming. Much as I looked, I could find little trace of acid anywhere on the three tracks. Based on this CD, Fusty are a competent fusion jazz-rock band who need to listen a little more critically to what they re doing, drop what isn t working and get on with the job of conquering the world.
And leave the acid bit to people who understand these things better.