What's in a gnome?

(The scene: Late at night. Two men are seated at a long dimly lit mahogany table in expensive business suits. They are listening to the song "Priest, Poet, & The Pig")

Suit 1: "Wow, these guys are great. Long Hair. Thick Riffs. huge beards. kids like the beards these days."

suit 2: "Yeah, beards equal legitimacy and authenticity, always have, always will. Just look at ZZ Top. Who even owns any of their albums post-Eliminator? Nobody! but they're still fucking sweet! anyway, we've got to do something about that name!"

suit 1: "What? Band of My Morning Foghat? I like that name, its...its so distinct"

suit 2: "Nonsense. Distinct band names are going to be the death of this industry. We need band names now that are un-googleable. Back in the Sixties we used to glue adverbs and pronouns to maps of the U.S. and throw darts to figure out a band's name."

suit 1: "but google didn't exist back then"

suit 2: "You ever been on Acid? I wouldn'tve even known my own momma's titties if they were jiggling right in front of my nose back then, son.

suit 1: "Oh... thats...uh..."

suit 2: "we needed band names that were short and easy to remember. Naming a band "Yes" was a stroke of genius, I mean how many times do people say "Yes" in a day? It was free advertisement. We knew we had lost that spirit in the late Nineties when Godspeed You Black Emperor! came out. The only people who say their name in its entirety are dicks or kids that just found out about them and are on the verge of becoming dicks because of it."

suit 1: "so what do we rename these guys?"

suit 2: "We need something ubiquitous yet with neutered meaning to kids today. I know, Vietnam!

suit 1: "and we can capitalize the N so that it seems distinct without actually being different at all! Fuck you Soulseek!"

suit 2: "Welcome to the team, son. We'll need someone sharp like you to market the accessible, radio-friendly music we have here at Kemado Records."

(end scene)


Actually VietNam is one of my favorite new bands I've heard this year.

check out some more Dad-rock, foghat glory in their song Welcome To My Room. Before you listen to it you have to either get on a "hog" of some sort or be swinging around one of those oversized wrenches like Joanne here:



You can do it, Joanne.