South By Southwest is next week, which means I'm in my usual crazy-busy stretch of trying to write my way out of town. But hey, I've always got time for one of my favorite annual time-wasters, perusing the band list for funny names. Here's what jumped off of it this year:

3 Dudes & a Mullet (Mexico City)
All Pigs Must Die (Boston)
Backwoods Payback (West Chester, Pa.)
Ben Caplan & the Casual Smokers (Halifax)
Bipolar Gentlemen (Austin)
Bleeding Knees Club (Australia)
Cairo Knife Fight (Christchurch, New Zealand)
Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! (Pasis)
Com Truise (Princeton, N.J.)
Forever the Sickest Kids (Dallas)
Green Corn Revival (Weaterford, Okla.)
Hess Is More (New York)
Imagine Dragons (Las Vegas)
Junebug Spade (Oklahoma City)
Kids These Days (Chicago)
The Lighthouse and the Whaler (Cleveland)
Mass Solo Revolt (East Tawas, Mich.)
Miracles of Modern Science (Brooklyn)
Moonmen on the Moon, Man (Brooklyn)
My Sweet Canary Ensemble (Tel Aviv)
Nightmare Air (Los Angeles)
Not in the Face!! (Austin)
OCD: Moosh & Twist (Philadelphia)
Pets With Pets (Carlton North, Australia)
Right Away, Great Captain! (Atlanta)
Schmillion (Austin)
Sleeping With Sirens (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
The Soft White Sixties (San Francisco)
Something Fierce (Houston)
The Suicide of Western Culture (Barcelona, Spain)
You Can't Win, Charlie Brown (Lisbon, Portugal)
You Say Francis & I Whistle (Stocklholm, Sweden)
The Young Evils (Seattle)

South By Southwest draws nigh, one of my favorite times of the year, which can only mean that it's time once again for a favorite annual ritual of mine: going through the band list looking for amusing, entertaining and/or tasteless band names. Here are some of this year's more notable entries, based on a quick skim. Maybe I'll catch some of these next week...

Alcoholic Faith Mission (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Amusement Parks on Fire (Los Angeles)
Awesome Tapes From Africa (Brooklyn)
Cambodian Space Project (Taroona, Australia)
Childish Gambino (Los Angeles)
Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr (Detroit)
Death on Two Wheels (Atlanta)
Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows (Detroit)
Differing Opinions of Good (D.O.O.G.) (Eau Claire, Wisc.)
Dinosaur Pile-Up (Leeds, England)
Diplomats of Solid Sound (Iowa City)
Dirty Karma (Mexico City)
Drop the Lime (New York)
Erk Tha Jerk (Oakland, Calif.)
Fake Problems (Naples, Fla.)
Family of the Year (Los Angeles)
Fared Shafinury & Tehranosaurus (Austin)
Funeral Suits (Dublin, Ireland)
Gay for Johnny Depp (Brooklyn)
Go Back to the Zoo (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
A Great Big Pile of Leaves (Brooklyn)
Head for the Hills (Fort Collins, Co.)
Hungry Kids of Hungary (Brisbane, Australia)
I Got You on Tape (Copenhagen, Denmark)
In-Flight Safety (Halifax, Canada)
The Inspector Cluzo (Mont de Marsan, France)
Letting Up Despite Great Faults (Los Angeles)
Marijuana Deathsquads (Minneapolis)
Mexicans With Guns (San Antonio)
Middle Class Rut (Sacramento, Calif.)
Mose Giganticus (Philadelphia)
Mustard Pimp (Melun, France)
My Awesome Mixtape (Bologna, Italy)
The Naked and Famous (Auckland, New Zealand)
Nerdkween (Atlanta)
Nid and Sancy (Gent, Belgium)
Peanut Butter Wolf (San Jose, Calif.)
Pinata Protest (San Antonio)
The Plastics Revolution (Mexico City)
Poetry 'n Lotion (Tampa, Fla.)
Pop Up Animal Kids (The Hague, The Netherlands)
Porcelain Raft (London, England)
Prison Garde (Vancouver)
Pulled Apart by Horses (Leeds, England)
Random Recipe (Montreal)
Ringo Deathstarr (Austin)
Said The Whale (Vancouver)
Say "No!" To Architecture (Brooklyn)
Sgt Dunbar and the Hobo Banned (Albany, NY)
Simon Says No! (Oslo, Norway)
Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles (Chicago)
Slang Chickens (Los Angeles)
Slim Cessna's Auto Club (Denver)
Talking To Turtles (Hamburg Sant Pauli, Germany)
These Wonderful Evils (Chicago)
Tokyo Sex Destruction (Madrid, Spain)
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (Oxford, England)
The Tumbledryer Babies (Southend-on-Sea, England)
Vulture Whale (Birmingham, Al.)
We Are Enfant Terrible (Lille, France)
We Were The States (Murfreesboro, Tenn.)
Wheelchair Sports Camp (Denver)
The Wonderful Sound Of Induce! (Miami)
Yearbook Committee (Terre Haute, Ind.)
Youth Pictures of Florence Henderson (Trondheim, Norway)