Last night we saw two tribute bands: Big Foot County (The Grateful Dead) and Run, Rabbit Run (Pink Floyd) at the Kefi Ballroom, the venue that was once the nightclub Perle and has now been refashioned into an excellent live music venue-- something New Brunswick desperately needed once the Court Tavern shut down-- and the sound was superb, the beer was cold, and there were free samples of Timeless marijuana products (you could suck a cloud of vape out of a weird electronic genie bottle with your very own plastic straw . . . because of the strobe lighting, this seemed like something out of Bladerunner) but more interesting than all that is the art of naming your tribute band. . . I like the direction these bands went -- a random lyric-- as opposed to "punny" names like Proxy Music, The Rolling Clones, The Faux Fighters, and Deft Leppard-- those are groaners (although there is a one-man Def Leppard cover band that goes by "Jeff Leppard"-- that's pretty boss) but, for no good reason, I'm slightly more open to all-female tribute band puns, e.g. "Hell's Belles" and "Lez Zeppelin" and "ZZ Topless" but I still think something that takes a moment of thought, like The Crystal Ship (The Doors) or The Rocket Queens (Guns N' Roses) is more hip than a pun (but, of course, tribute bands are not very hip at all-- which begs the questions: when do you give up on your dream of being a famous, unique, and creative musician and dedicate yourself to playing one band's songs? is it when every time your band plays a particular artist, everyone goes nuts and you realize that you sound like them more than you sound like yourself? that's quite an artistic identity conundrum) and I can see the more obscure method of naming your tribute band as a fun bar game-- you say a hypothetical tribute band name and everyone tries to unravel the origin . . . if I were to say "The Lobster Telephones" you'd need to figure out that this is a hypothetical Cult cover band, the name pulled from a lyric in the song "Aphrodisiac Jacket" or if I were to say "The Sandy Crustaceans" then you'd have to surmise that this is a hypothetical Pixies cover band, the name culled from "Wave of Mutilation"-- it's not a game for the faint of heart-- and I should end this rambling discussion with the silliest tribute band name of all-time: Scrantonicity . . . Kevin's Police tribute band in The Office.
