Shitting arses, this thread's had some fairly decent responses. Bless you all. Bear in mind I am having to re-type almost every other letter here, I am far too pissed to respond to this thread, so if my replies look a bit short it's because I can't call you up and tell you what a spaz you are personally...
If it wasn't for Minor Threat I'd have this one.
I like all of these in different ways, but the band wouldn't. Well done though - Jibber is still my #1 musical homie.
You've already got my vote for funniest forum personality 2009, but this is worth a mention anyway.
The Thatchers... I'd like to do that if the band wasn't so good. Thatcher is still a proper serious crook here. Maybe it's still worth pursuing. I'll actually suggest that to the band.
Best suggestion so far: The Thatchers. (I've just texted this one to our singer / fearless leader. I bet he'll appreciate that at 3am).
All our current recordings are from rehearsals and we use one or two mics to record our ideas and song progress, so the mix isn't really representative - sometimes you only get hi-hats and trombone. We actually do two very different sets - one as a three-piece with three-part harmony vocals doing '60s Jamaican vocal group tunes (think Toots & The Maytals, Alton Ellis, Desmond Dekker, The Gaylads [go on...]), and a bait n' switch electric set of our own material which is more 2Tone / Hip Hop / Garage / Punk - influenced.
To give a general idea though: We're pretty down-to-earth rootsy rockers. We do songs about things that happen to us, or things we care about, and we do it in an honest way. No rockstar bullshit, no stadium epic nonsense, no pretense. We fo real yo west side (of York).
Our instrumentation switches between '60s rock and roll (the bass is strung with flats, the organ is seriously Vox, it's a thick, flat studio sound) with echo on the snare and horns and three-piece harmony vox, and current UK garage / early hip-hop / late reggae with square-wave bass, 808/909 drum samples, and occasional garage MC vocals.
Heh. That would never fly but for another band I like it.
As much as I think Blueflame is a tit, I think 'Albany Down' is a terrible band name. It makes me think they're 'down' with a NY city that is famous for nothing. And if it's a city they've never visited then what's the point?
My first band was called Mystery Machine! We had classic songs such as 'Smoke Some Draw And Mellow Out', which was a song that took the piss out of our own singer's personal ethos, and another song called 'Falling' which was musically quite clever, but the lyrics were about the joy of watching our lead singer being pushed off the top of the ABC Cinema building in Wakefield. Both were written by me and our most popular songs!
He sang all of them quite contentedly, being thoroughly unaware of their meaning. I made sure our audience knew what he was singing about.
And I am a massive Ian Dury fan. Do you play bass? Rhythm Stick has a ****ing amazing bass line. The bloke responsible was Norman Watt-Roy, he's bass guitarist royalty in the UK.
my best suggestions, not sure all of them are right for your music, but whatevs:
Vicious Fish
Schwa
Box of Sprockets
The Turkingtons (or any driver name, if everyone else in the band is race fans)
OK To Ship
Hudson
Psycho Like The Bettys (Every person named Betty I know is psychotic)
Slippery When Wet
Glorious Cacophony
How about something like Not For Girls, to celebrate your York(ie) heritage (and not at all any latent homosexuality in the band)
Speaking of which, who is Suzy sleeping with? That's usually the only reason a girl on an accompaniment instrument ends up in bands
I was trying to think of a word using bits of all of your names, but you all have crap names for messing around with!
And those were the least ridiculous suggestions I had!