Record sales rise and fall, entire genres of music come and go, even interminable Las Vegas concert runs occasionally come to an end. But one constant remains in the strange world that is the music industry — bands with rubbish names.
And there are two entirely separate, fun things you can do this month to remind yourself of this consistent source of both amusement and bemusement: download the excellent and totally free Wizzard of Ahhhs EP by knowingly cool indie-pop outfit Black Kids, and go to The Independent on January 17, 2008 to see the similarly titled Cool Kids perform their much-lauded retro-infused hip-hop.
One only needs to remember the middle-aged members of Sonic Youth to know why both Black Kids and Cool Kids have names that suck, and that’s before we cast our eyes over the other, troublesome parts of their titles. What makes the situation even more bewildering is that, while their music may be quite different, they share at least one other important trait less obvious than their names: they both seem to be savvy media operators.
For example, Black Kids are offering their debut as a free download, which is so painfully right now that it might even be in the future. And in a similarly up-to-the-minute move, The Cool Kids’ most recent step toward wider recognition was made by appearing in someone else’s TV advert. (You know the one: it features some dweeby guy dressed in a towel dancing around his living room, oblivious to the fact that a bizarrely contradictory bunch of musicians appear to have crept into his house while he wasn’t looking.) Such canny marketing moves make it hard to believe they arrived at the most important elements of their brand identities by accident.
What is hardest to fathom is why they have both appeared at the same time. Add the recently surfaced Cold War Kids and you virtually have a movement. Not so long ago, the same thing happened when proto-metallers Wolfmother, indie rockers Wolf Parade and the largely uncategorizable Patrick Wolf all began bothering the music scene at around the same time, which is not to mention the similarly named psychedelic Krautrockers Lupine Howl. Coincidence? Weirdly, there doesn’t seem to be any more logical explanation on offer.
