It’s been a while… since you’ve gone, and fucked things up, just like you always doooooooo. I recently rediscovered that song (“It’s Been Awhile” by Staind) along with a plethora of others from my awkward pubescent years. Sometimes I think of things I’ve done in the past, or the person I used to be, and they physically pain me. This is particularly true for the entirety of my life between ages 12-14.
Thankfully, I had Staind. And Shinedown, Three Days Grace. Breaking Benjamin… Crossfade. I remember in fifth grade I wore a “TOOL” T-shirt to school and walked by a couple of sixth graders sitting down on the walkway with their hoods on in the middle of September because that’s what the cool kids do, and as I walked by one of them said “You don’t listen to TOOL.” Which, I’ll be honest, was a fucking weird thing to say. I mean… how did he know!?
I’m kidding, I actually did listen to TOOL at the time, which is why I was so befuddled by this weak little hooded white boy. They asked me if I could name a single TOOL song, and after I named five or six, they had the same look on their face that I originally had: that look you might show when someone tries to shove peanut M&Ms in your eyes… you know the one. I haven’t really listened to TOOL since middle school, and looking at some of their songs on Spotify, I won’t be getting back into them. I just don’t have the time. One of their songs is 15 minutes. FIFTEEN MINUTES. Jesus Christ TOOL. Jesus Christ.
TOOL is also a really dumb name for a band. I mean out of all the words you could choose in the English language, you’re going to go with fucking tool? I think it would be fun to come up with a list of worst band names of all time. I feel like a lot of bands try to get too creative with their names. They’ll mess with capitals and throw a bunch of asterisks and parentheses and roman numerals in there along with whatever other nonsense they can conjure up.
There are a lot of great band names out there, too. Rainbow Kitten Surprise, The Butthole Surfers, Hippo Campus… these I can get behind. Let me find some terrible ones, hold on.
Okay here we go. Look no further than EDM to find the most ridiculous band and group names able to be conjured up. There’s a song called “Not Going Home.” Catchy song, reasonable title. The first group listed as an artist on this song is called “DVBBS.”
“Everyone please welcome to the stage… *squints* DVBBS!” Sounds like a fucking influenza. The second group, I guess it’s just a guy, who knows… whatever. His stage name is CMC$… Imagine having to introduce these two absurdities back to back. You might as well just bring out a giant bingo board with letters and symbols on it and have a monkey throw his shit at it until you can say “hey, let’s make that the name of our band!” Good lord.
I guess it’s just a lesson in humanity. Even the most talented among us make really terrible decisions. Talented people actually seem to make terrible decisions quite often. Maybe more than most. I don’t know, that would be hard to quantify. “Hi I’m here from the US Census, we’re doing a study on the frequency of your absolutely abhorrent decision making, can we have a few minutes of your time?”
“Umm. I don’t know, I can’t decide… Why don’t we just do some coke instead?”
