when you speak in italian and you add some english words is like showing off:
"guarda, sono appena stato a un briefing"
sometimes it is simply, plain stupid:
"arrivo or ora da una sessione di inside trading"
If I had to show off in italian, I'd say: "L'altra sera ho visto i tool", and I'd get some appreciation for the ultra-metal band. But saying "yesterday i went to see the tool" is making sense only for a subset of people here, the others maybe thinking about some naughty erotic show.
Only when you're in an english-speaking country, you get to realise how silly some band-names are:
- city names: Berlin, Boston, Turin Brakes, Chicago, ... If i called my group "poirino" nobody would come and see me
- animal related: Animals, Bug, Cows, Cranes, Eels (what about "The Passero Solitario"?)
- my favourite category, objects: Cake, Can, Tool, Helmet, Alarm, Coil, Cream, Doors, Elbow, Shoes, Sky, Smile, Smog (wjat about "saracinesca" or the already existing "cerchi in lega"?)
- the out-of-context category: A House, All, The Band, Cleaners From Venus, Dinner Is Ruined, Handsome
any others?
5 comments:
"Ramones" sounds funny in spanish. I thought it was a local band from a small Spanish town, till I saw them on tv. Yes, I am soooo innocent.
I've always been puzzled by "Gorilla Biscuits". It's a straight-edge hardcore group, and this doesn't help at all!
Wiseacre
ixra:
i understand that, growing up in algeciras must have been really horrible ;-)
wiseacre:
but that counts as two! you have an animal and an object, and you could even end up with pretty smart outcomes ("pearl jam", "veruca salt", "teen angels" or "revolting cocks"...)
Still, I would have loved to live in the 70's and telling "i really like can"
And what about weird phrases used as pop group names? "suburban kids with bibical names" for example is *really* kitsch!
Have you noticed how the morphology of band names changes as well? In the good old 50s it had to be a coordination - of a person and his/her band (Bill Haley and the Comets, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps....) In the 60s, the "Me Generation", a single entity was enough, admitting of no modification (The Beatles, the Animals....). Then in the 70s, the definate article was dispensed with all together - drugs and the Vietnam War had emoliated all such assuredness (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin...) With Punk and New Wave, the definate article can back as irony (The Sex Pistols, The Virgin Prunes....) The 80s were crap, lets ignore them. In the fin de cicle 90s, a single word sufficed as people were too decadent to be more precise (Oasis, Blur, Pulp....) Now it's time for bands to utilise morphemes, or to admit that pop music is dead. I'm a pretentious twat who should be working!
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