worst band name or record label name change of the social justice & social media era

Not one ILXor spoke up, retroactive bans for all involved

"I'm A Slave 4 U": Preliminary Classic Or Dud

look if people don't want to believe the frisson of songs in this vein isn't partly rooted in things we'd rather not think about then they don't have to, they would be wrong though

please don't cancel Grace Jones

it's not nothing and the whole pseudo-arabic signifying forbidden sensuality thing in 00s pop isn't nothing either for that matter

as for jones it does inevitably hit different and no one is cancelling anyone but to suggest that the word isn't always loaded is untenable

oh I was just dicking around, since this conversation started I have been pondering whether all fictional uses of e.g. Roman empire slavery are interlaced with frissons of the African trade

Feel like the answer is probably yes

It’s an album but Animal Collective’s Here Comes the Indian is now Ark (which was its working title).

?!

Neon Indian > Alan Palomo

I was thinking about including that, but he didn't apologize or anything

I know, I figured he was just trying to get ahead of things.

"Slaves" having to change their name is making me think of like some San Francisco leather sex nerds are having an S&M session, and one says "lick my fucking boot, slave" and the other is like "Wow. I think you should use this moment as a learning opportunity to reflect on the spectre of American slavery"

That's my YouTube sketch, please like and subscribe

― kirsten gilla band (Whiney G. Weingarten)

this is _absolutely_ something that comes up in kink, although not usually during a scene itself... usually you'd want to negotiate that kind of stuff beforehand. anyway i am _not_ going to get into the topic further but there is a _lot_ to get into.

having said that your description of kinksters as "sex nerds" is absolutely and completely accurate.

Sex Nerd Sandra otm.

i guess technically not _totally_ accurate considering i'm asexual. but close enough.

It was a podcast several years back. She spent endless hours discussing kink in the nerdiest terms possible.

FUN WITH BRAINWASHING! Meet Miss Holly, a kinky pioneer using clicker training for sexual happiness. Turns out methods used to train dogs, parrots and dolphins can help humans develop deeper, happier relationships. TOPICS: Consensual brainwashing, Chris Pratt in Jurassic World, people-pleasers, pleasure, brain chemicals, dog vs human training, Dom/sub relationship training, domestication fetish, "positive punishment" vs "positive reinforcement" vs "negative punishment" vs "negative reinforcement," sex magic, ASMR whisper tingles, triad polyamory, kinky marriage, oral sex communication, dangers, and achieving goals. PLUS training concepts like triggers, cold shaping, marks, rewards, the 3 fail rule and coming on command.

I draw the line at Chris Pratt.

yeah chris pratt is a hard limit for me too

like there are people doing kink who _aren't_ queer nerds working through their trauma issues, but i make it a point to not talk to any of them in kink spaces

back on topic, these dudes would never make it through the door at the local high fem dance and kink party

https://www.thesylvee.com/wp-content/uploads/tm_event/violent-femmes-performing-the-debut-album-from-cover-to-cover.gif

"Show me some men who look like old lesbians looking like men"

is that bobcat goldthwait in front

Kate, I def did not invent the term “sex nerds”

Spinal Tap did iirc

One Little Indian —> One Little Independent

here is how it started...and then it sucked even more shit!

― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Tuesday, 12 September 2023

Nah, quite a few examples in the poll predate OLI’s name change in 2020 - Preoccupations changed their name in 2015, Rich Brian changed his in 2018.

One band I was thinking might change their name is Black Kids, but they seem to be fairly inactive.

missing slaves -> rain city drive (there were two bands active last decade under the name 'slaves' and they both got a lot of shit for it and took a decade to change their names)

"Men have been enslaving men for as long as we've had gods to hide behind,"
"Every man is a slave to what we love – whether it be women, drugs, music or sports. Through art we are all equals".

vs.

"Our band name relates to people not being in control of their day to day lives. Slaves was our way of getting off the paths we didn't want to walk down anymore. The music we make is motivational and aimed at people personally as well as collectively."

voted POP ETC. that one is truly unfathomable

Kate, I def did not invent the term “sex nerds”

― kirsten gilla band (Whiney G. Weingarten)

no of course not... there's an idea a lot of people have that we're like cruel, scary people who are into transgression for its own sake and maybe there are some people like that out there! but mostly the people i know are nerds. my favorite are the bob vila types. there's this whole subclass of kinksters whose main thing is building the most _amazing_ dungeon furniture. there are few things i'm worse at in the world than that kind of thing, personally, so i'm grateful there are people who can do that and like it!

my favorite are the bob vila george clooney types.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oVd4X2ITfg

i'm sorry george clooney's character in that movie is a fuckin' amateur. i mean look at how janky that thing is. not only that, but he's reinventing the wheel. why bother when the sybian already exists? (to be fair the sybian may well have been the real-world inspiration for clooney's device.)

your real high-quality dungeon furniture isn't just supergluing a dildo to a chunk of wood. there's often serious engineering work involved, and, of course, _extensive_ consideration given to safety. literal unfinished two-by-fours attached to a pulley? give me a break. clooney's character is one of those arrogant clueless Big Dick Daddy Doms who keep showing up where they're not wanted and generally make people uncomfortable.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this better be Rich Brian

Definitely voting Lady Antebellum for the "let's deal with our problematic name by stealing the name of a Black artist and making her unfindable on streaming services" move.

I didn't know that "bender" was a gay slur. It sounds pretty inoffensive tbh

Futurama very not woke

Every time I look at the choices, I get to Rich Brian and burst into laughter

Had never heard Slaves/Soft Play before this thread. Terrible names but not bad, a less boring Idles.

omg they are wrapped up with the band Viet Cong! I remember this now! Apparently another dude in the band started a group called Cindy Lee? What the actual fuck is wrong with these men?!?!

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Tuesday, September 12, 2023 5:00 PM (four weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

that "dude" seems like they ID as nonbinary, not sure if that's a problem for you

Aotearoa New Zealand band Shihad tried to break into the US market around the time of 9/11 and were advised to rebrand because their name apparently sounded too similar to jihad.

They renamed themselves Pacifier. Ugh.

After failing to break into the US market they returned to Aotearoa and reverted back to Shihad.

This is possibly a bad example because their initial name wasn't even offensive but their new name definitely was. Well, offensively bad at least.

The Halo Etc.

I really like what I've heard of Cindy Lee, their music is a kind of perverse psychedelic take on beach rock from the 60s, dream- and bangle rock from the 80s/90s, and noise.

Act of Tenderness is an album for the ages

xp at ll tbf cindy lee is the drag project of a nonbinary person

― budo jeru, Tuesday, September 12, 2023 4:12 PM (four weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh ok, then that is ok! i'm sorry -- i haven't paid much attention to any their music bc their naming conventions were so wack

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Tuesday, September 12, 2023 4:15 PM (four weeks ago)

I already addressed this and it is not "a problem for me" geez!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

spooky black -> corbin

Missed this poll.

Preoccupations is my bête noire, just because it was SO AVOIDABLE. Viet Cong was an obviously provocative name — when their tape came out I was shocked: “Holy shit, you can do that?” And if they’d given it even a second’s thought they could have come up with some kind of half-assed real reason why they named themselves that (“something something American imperialism something something the struggle”). Instead they were your bog-standard clueless white guys about it: “duuuuh…. We just thought it sounded cool” and got rightly pilloried.

And then they chose the dumbest most boring name this side of Window Lamp.

And yeah, Women, I’m pretty sure it’s Matt Flegel (brother of Cindy Lee) who keeps coming up with these.

Fuck, VC were SO GOOD for a while. “Death” (written for Women guitarist Chris Reiner who just up and died .. for literally no reason, not drugs or anything, just .. whatever the adult version of SIDS is …) makes Tonight’s the Night sound like Gilbert O’Sullivan.

“something something American imperialism something something the struggle”). Instead they were your bog-standard clueless white guys about it: “duuuuh…. We just thought it sounded cool”

the latter is the better excuse

Well, the former is more a 'justification'

If I remember correctly, VC were starting to get protests from the Hmong communities in the Midwest and they decided to change the name because it meant nothing to them.

But I always thought it was cute that Gang of Four publicly defended their band name.