Box Vox

packaging as content

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September 27, 2012

Self-Rhyming Band Names

It’s Thursday of “self-rhyming brand name week” on box vox. Debated with myself on where to go next. There are still plenty of food brands and other products with self-rhyming names… Lean Cuisine, Shake ’n Bake, Pall Mall, OshKosh B’gosh, Handy Andy, Humpty Dumpty. Any one of these brands might be interesting to examine. (“Pall Mall” was 19th century London Cockney rhyming slang for a girl.)

But band names are also brand names, and since rhyming is so much a part of songwriting, it should come as no surprise that there are bands that have branded themselves with this particular mnemonic device.

Milli Vanilli, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Oingo Boingo, Chumbawamba, Quiot Riot and Scritti Polliti are just a few examples. (What have I missed?)

One thing I like noting is the package-related bottle cap graphic on the cover of Scritti Politti’s album with the self-rhyming title of “Anomie & Bonhomie.”

Also package-related: the cover of Chumbawamba’s hit song, “Tubthumping” references the Arm & Hammer logo for some reason…

Full disclosure: I too was once in a band with a self-rhyming name.

(One more self-rhyming band name, after the fold…)

The Green Scene logo was set by me on typositor (in the early 80s?) and then clumsily kerned by hand to make the rhyming words justify. (Apparently I did this by making the “S” narrower.)

Like many bands, The Green Scene went through several iterations and personnel changes, but at one point we looked like this and sounded like this, and the band name was eventually jettisoned in favor of the alliterative “Cargo Cult.”

See also: Packaging and eBay Airplay

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