Choosing a band name can be extremely stressful and sometimes it can even be so frustrating that one eventually gives up and chooses something bizarre just so that one can have a name that no-one else has used.
The sheer impossibility of thinking that one could come up with an original name on a planet that has millions and millions of minds stretched over time (however far back that goes, I’ll leave to the geologists, paleontologists, geophysicists, physicists and co. to decide) is in itself a task that requires either colossal concentration or a case of luck.
I recall spending an entire day years ago (aided by a reefer or two too many) coming up with hundreds of names and still not finding one that even remotely suited our fancy.
Obviously the internet (search engines) is helpful for many things, but when it comes to settling on a name for a band it is a living nightmare and on a planet as overpopulated as ours, where everyone seems to have either an account at facebook, twitter or a personal blog about what not and the next thing or other and Wikipedia’s archive of bands grows on a daily basis to record details about just about any unknown factiod, it’s a sheer miracle when one happens to stumble on a name that has not yet been used. Well kinda.
So it was that while I was reading through the history of R ‘n B that I happened upon a song that had been performed by Howlin’ Wolf.
Here it is:
At first I was like, ‘Kewl name!’ and so I told the rest of the band and eventually they warmed to it and having done a search of sorts on the net, I was sure it had not been used yet. Well, it turns out that someone had used it, BUT they’d used it in exactly the same way that I’d imagined it aught to be used. Two words joined and one not. I was really frustrated because it is such a kewl name for a blues-rock band. I mean like we love the blues and love to rock the blues, so as I began trying to establish a presence on the internet I found that I kept getting the shut door in the face senario. So, I resorted to alternatives and even used a related phrase, until I found this:
There it was. Not two words, like most have it, but three words and I was dizzy with joy and well the rest is history as I went about setting up a blog and the rest of the online bit here:
The truth is, if I find someone has used it in this way, I don’t give a hoot, or would that be a howl. It’s ours and that’s that, what I mean is if you’ve got it too then we’ll just have to share it and be done with all the band name guessing game. 
