Old Stinkpaw

Tobacco-flavored rockabilly meets bluegrass banjo.

Brown Bag Flue

When the lead singer, Billy Ray Virus, lost his fifth job as pizza delivery man for gross irresponsibility, the next step in his life seemed obvious: start a punk band. Named for the mysterious malady that forced Virus to rack up the all-time record for sick days in the Domino's franchise, Brown Bag Flue delivers the desperate, nauseating rhythm of the painfully unemployed. It is the music of those who know they have squandered every chance offered to them, and who cling to the fleeting illusion of success in a last-ditch effort to save any remaining scraps of humanity.

Chicken Chinese Cheese

The latest reader submission comes yet again from K's Mumbo Jumbo. Thanks and keep visiting back! We're adding band names as fast as you suggest them.
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Created as a rip-off of Raffi, Chicken Chinese Cheese found success where it least expected it, among college radio listeners. Clever tunes like "D is for Deciduous" or "The Upside Down Elephant Farm" found massive appeal among listeners of all ages wishing to relieve fond childhood memories. Instead of educating kids as to the virtues of the metric system, the change of seasons, or how best to learn multiplication tables, the group toured several towns where the median age of attendees was closer to eighteen than eight.

"I have to admit," says founder, Dave Mukowsky, "I always thought we'd be opening for a large mechanical puppet, not the latest indie rock group. This was most unexpected."

Bryllunq

A little rough around the edges, Brullunq is a band that has nowhere to go but up. Showcasing an astonishingly fresh perspective on power pop, the band writes clever, narrative lyrics hung strategically from chord-bare musical frames. These are a bunch of kids with a bright future, making music for the love of it.

Unjunktivitis

Like a tragic, inflammatory disease of the imagination, Unjunktivitis disrupts the brain, sampling world music and all but overpowering it with layered tracks of people screaming in pain. This band is popular with the sort of folks who ground up and snorted Ritalin as children and who grind up and snort Clozapine as adults.

Pimpchouli

What's that smell? It's Pimpchouli, the band that reeks of fragrant hos. When three dirty, rap-loving hippies came together with a guitar, a drum kit, and a synthesizer, Pimpchouli was born. Borrowing elements from rap and jam music, Pimpchouli plays concerts that are not only interminable and meandering, but also jarring and unpleasant. A real niche market there.

Nativity Brand Pickles

Low-key electronic riffs mingled with clever percussive lines. Wind chimes, xylophones, and that mainstay of elementary orchestra, the triangle, figure prominently in this paradoxical New Age-Punk fusion band. Although the band has only had one single on the charts in the twenty years they have been releasing albums (at a rate of one every nine months) that song endures, and even those who have never heard of the band can be heard singing the catchy chorus to their eponymous hit, which runs, in part, "A manger full of pickles in every bite."

Angel Licker

Beginning with their debut album entitled, The Finest Liquor on Earth or in Heaven, this irreverent band produces upbeat, peppy tunes whose amusing sophomoric lyrics skirt the edges of good taste while demonstrating a passable knowledge of philosophy and theology. Although their music has a steady audience and, in the case of songs with more unintelligible lyrics, occasionally hits the charts, most of the band's revenue derives from T-shirts and posters depicting images of girls with wings and halos receiving oral sex from band members, accompanied by the band's catch phrase, "mmm...sacrilicious."

Unocculous

It is not like an I. It is not like an eye. It is not like an aye. It is Unocculous, the least focused punk band you have ever heard. Ample distortion sands away the rough edges of their drunk-induced dischord enabling them to weave dream-melodies straight from the abyss. It's fortunate that Unocculous is a modern band; their sound is simply too powerful to be contained by a medium as insubstantial as vinyl.

Fawke Ink

Foul-mouth lyrics meet heavy metal noise. Although they look as though they spent the decade in the gutter, all five members of the band were born to powerful and wealthy family. It's a little known fact that both the drummer and the bass player are Kennedy cousins. Their music is all right, if you like that sort of thing.

Big Unusual Snot

The submissions have been pouring in! Today's band name comes from K's Mumbo Jumbo. Thanks for your idea! Keep 'em coming!
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Big Unusual Snot is a largely forgettable pop punk group comprised of four eighth graders. All are friends with founder, Taylor Hersh, aged 14, of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Taylor's girlfriend, Amanda "Cutter" Armstrong, tries her best to sing backing vocals but she is inevitably drowned out by the distortion produced by the large amplifier that guitarist Josh Hammersmith got for Christmas. The size of Hammersmith's amp in no way is indicative of his skill at the instrument. Each group member has his or her own unique sense of rhythm, which is to say that staying on beat is a major challenge.

Group members plan their future in study hall before second period language arts. They rehearse on Saturday afternoons in a storage shed rented by Taylor's uncle. Big Unusual Snot has dreams of fame, which will have to be put on hold until it learns more then two original songs. Rehearsals inevitably end in abrupt fashion when the group short-circuits the storage facility's electrical power.

Kill Uncle Corndog

This request comes from reader Freida Bee. Thank you for your suggestion! In future, those who would like to participate, please leave us a comment with your proposal. We'll be glad to post it AND give you credit for the suggestion.

Thanks,

Ed.
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The largely silly, slightly satirical offerings of Kill Uncle Corndog's stoner rock are beloved by recreational drug users around the world. Studio recordings prominently feature such off-the-wall instruments as slide whistle and finger cymbals, all of which are nicely complimented by lead singer Donnie Gruland's quavering falsetto. Live performances often include lengthy interludes whereby group members jump off stage to play hackey-sack with the audience. Dig Me Some Uncle Corndog is the title of the band's official website.

The group has been known to release expansive double albums, deliberately neglecting to inform the buying public that the second disc of the set is actually the same mix as the first, albeit sped up considerably and played backwards. The title of each album is usually an extremely awful pun.

Blitzkreig

This Dusseldorf-based trio's brand of Krautrock is punctuated by droning synthesizers, largely monotone basslines, guitars that sound like heavily distorted seagull mating calls, and an electric metronome. The members stand stock-still, impassive, and largely emotionless during live performance. Audience members are asked politely, but repeatedly not to dance.

The group's music appears to reflect a political statement of some sort, one based on some esoteric, extremely philosophical abstract concept, which no one yet has been able to correctly explain. In interviews, every member states a different, though no less equally cryptic justification for its existence.

Ball Ox

They look like frat boys, they smell like stew bums, and they sound like constipated sumo wrestlers! You don't want to know how they taste. It's Ball Ox, plowing your ears with the finest musical seed: punk forever!

The Game of Strife

They speak the truth about the ruthless machines of modern society, four young men in black with angry thoughts and angry words. They speak truth to power.

Farblonjet

You've never heard of the klezmir-ska connection? You will believe, after you hear Farblonjet's dulcet wail and frenetic Caribbean beats. All the diaspora you can swallow compressed into a single band. Oppression never sounded so sweet.

Scrubble

Have you ever had your ears cleaned with a rusted wire toilet brush while sitting in a massage chair with disembodied hands shaving the back of your head and your public hair at the same time as Yo-yo Ma practices electric cello in the attic and a trio of sopranos sing dirges in the basement? Scrubble's kind of like that, except with feedback.

The Constellation Prize

The Constellation Prize had their early roots as a high school garage band, made up of five prototypical geeks who figured they might actually get laid if their quit the computer club and turned their attention to popular music. Originally conceived as a Doors cover band, they eventually parlayed their not unsubstantial talent into haunting original music and clever, science-themed lyrics, most of which go right over their fans' heads.

3-D Stereophonic Laser Love

A glam rock band, members proudly sport glittery platform shoes and heavily rouged cheeks. A majority of the clothes the group wear on stage have a large likelihood of being nowhere to be found in the men's department. Their rabid fan base comprises an interesting mix of women who find androgyny in all forms intensely sexual attractive and men who openly admit to homosexual encounters.

Song titles include the top forty hit "Venus is Lovely (This Time of Year)", "Alien Protein", and "Star Lover". All of these and more can be found on their album entitled A Wizard with a Hot Guitar.