B.A.N.G.

Once upon a time, and a long time ago it was, I spent a lot of time downloading freeware and shareware audio and music utilities and fiddling with them, making obnoxious noises, and occasionally even recording the results. As with all things found on the Internet, these programs were of highly, um, variable quality. Many did one or two things well, some were completely useless, and a select few were absolute gems.

Since recent years have put a severe crimp in my (admittedly half-assed) plans to be the next Vangelis, I haven't really been doing much of this any more, but I did recently trip across an old favourite, wearing a shiny, spiffy new web interface:

Yes, the Band Automatic Name Generator has resurfaced (probably ages ago and I just got around to noticing it). When I first knew it, it was an unassuming little DOS application that provided some really, really funny names for imaginary rock bands.

If you still have a steam-and-treadmill powered machine that will run the good old DOS version, you could do worse than downloading it from the good folks at Harmony Central, which isn't a bad place to go if you're interested in making music in general. Clicky and scroll down until you find it. It's a whopping 47 kbyte download, and most emphatically does not run under Windows XP, at least not on the couple of machines I've tried it on.

Ah, the endless minutes whiled away giggling over this... Here are some examples from the vaults (i.e. one of the barely-organized heaps of paper to be found stuffed away in various nooks and crannies scattered throughout Chateau Ricardipus).

Convoluted Promiscuous Cod

Cannibal Apology

Japanese Door Melon

Stingy, Omnipotent Fudpucker

Hot Buttered Spam

Flap Wafer

The Flippant Armpits

The Elvis Critics

Ant a la Carte

Johnny & the Unjust Lubrication

and, of course, my all-time favourite, not to lower the tone or anything, oh no:

Flatulent Rampage.

So, if you will... Click. Comment-ify the results if they're funny. Or just come up with your own better suggestion and stuff it in the comments box along with your demo tape (oops, showing my age again...). We at the Ricardipus Records A&R Division will give each and every submission a thorough listen. Allegedly.