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Steve should get some credit for doing his own artistic music, working on experimental stuff and not trying to sell out for the masses. However at the same time he was being artistic and inventive he was doing studio musician type work for commercial metal junk like Whitesnake and David Lee Roth. Vai could play left or right handed, and would work the hands up and down the frets switching grips. He's incredible in the guitar showdown with the Karate Kid in a movie called Crossroads, clearly winning the contest (though he looses by the plot, since he serves the devil), but he used that talent by playing a huge heart-shaped guitar with necks protruding from it in both directions. That one guitar has become somewhat emblematic of the dopiest stylings of the entire hair metal era. There are so many bonus points in both directions here that it's impossible to calculate, so we'll just have them all cancel out. In terms of a band/artist name, Steve Vai isn't bad. He's no Jimi Hendrix (in more ways than one), and it's mostly the first name that drags him down. Rock stars aren't named "Steve". Local weathermen are. As with almost all eponymous artists, his name gives you virtually no hints as to the style or type of music. Only his last name being cool (a factor he has nothing whatsoever to do with) saves him from a painfully-low score.
Van
Halen
While the original version of Van Halen was as close to perfect as
we're likely to ever see from a rock band, they lasted about 15 years
too long; long enough for Sammy Hagar, Gary Cherone, Dave again, and god
knows what all else. If they'd all died in a plane crash after 1984,
they'd be as revered as Led Zeppelin or
The Beatles by now. They had their
chance, and lose a bonus point for squandering it. The name is cool. This is one of the very few eponymous
artists that have a good rock and roll name. Very few rock bands
of any type go the eponymous route, and the ones that do are usually
just glorified solo artists. Van Halen is the rare band named
after someone (well, the two brothers, in this case) but still, it's
just luck that they have a cool name. The only thing that
separates the the Van Halen bros from the Nelson bros is the luck of the
draw. That and about 50 kilos of raw talent. Nevertheless, it's
hard to give too high a score for a name they were born into, though
they at least get credit for sticking with a good thing. What to comment on first. The Faux-Elvis pompadour? The blatant
lies about his motorcycle championships and hard-scrabble youth, which
almost immediately were debunked by facts about his white suburbs
childhood? The fact that his whole act was a watered down MC Hammer,
himself a total joke? His eventual flip out on the Mtv "Kill This
Video" program, where he destroyed most of the set with a baseball
bat and menaced the semi-celebrity guest VJs? His attempted
comebacks as, in order, a Cypress Hill rip off, a gangster rap rip off,
and a rap/metal rip off? His arrest for pulling a gun on a guy who tried
to sell him jewelry in a parking lot late at night? The confirmed
fact that Suge Knight hung him out the window of a Vegas hotel and
demanded over $1m not to kill him, which he then used to start Death Row
Records? These would be scoring ridiculous bonus points, if they
weren't all such pathetic misadventures. The name is dopey, but effective. At the time every rapper had
to have "Ice" in their name somewhere, and Vanilla was white,
so it's a perfectly logical name, and got him a ton of attention.
He sold over 15m records in less than a year, so he did something right. Their name is sort of cool, though I always assumed it was gay slang
for something or other, but I have no confirmation of that.
"Velvet Underground" has a lush, secretive feel to it,
whatever that means. I picture some arty sort of band with lots of
sitars and a subdued woodwind section. So it's a good name, but
not exactly telegraphing what the band is about. Venom
The thing that's interesting about them is that years later along
came the glam rock band "Poison". The words are
synonyms, and yet for some reason "Venom" sounds like a
goddamned heavy metal band, while "Poison" just does
not. Whether this is all psychological based on everyone knowing
that Poison looked like this and sounded
like they look is hard to ascertain. Despite being better than "Poison", "Venom" is
not that great a band name. It gives no clue to the type of music,
and could easily be the name of a rapper, who would likely spell it
"Venym". There's also almost certainly at least one pro
wrestler and/or monster truck named "Venom" by now, which cuts
any cool factor off at the knees. Vertical
Horizon
Their name is an odd one. An obvious oxymoron (horizontal is
derived from "horizon") is it supposed to mean anything, or
it's just a clever little name they thought up over warm Miller one
night? It's interesting that "horizon" is a common word,
but "verizon" is nothing. Other than an annoying source
of cell phone commercials. What would it be anyway, the vertical
line of light and darkness across the rotating globe? Anyway, it's
an appropriate name for a sorta cute college band. Veruca
Salt
Few bands can achieve lasting notoriety with just one song though, and Veruca hasn't. Hasn't achieved lasting notoriety, I mean. They have apparently done a few other albums since their semi-hit debut, but you'd be hard-pressed to prove it by canvassing the people I asked about them, most of whom didn't even remember their first album and hit. Their band name is great. I have no idea what it means, nor do I care enough to try and look it up, but it's meaningless and catchy and sounds rock and roll, man. Plus there are bangable chicks in the band.
The
Village People
They live on today as archetypes of flamboyance, and also due to the
continued popularity of that YMCA song. They play it
constantly at sporting events, ironically enough, given the homophobia
of most pro athletes. Listen to the lyrics next time you hear it,
they are amazingly blatant about the casual sex/gay bath house life
style. Um, AIDS, anyone? Would a song from that time period about heroin addicts swapping
needles be a sing and dance along event at major sporting events?
Both were fun and seemingly harmless activities at the time, probably
both immortalized in song, but given the consequences decades later, it
seems in poor taste to continue the reverence. As for their name, it's a pretty good one. I mean the Village
is an area of New York heavily-populated by gays, and there were enough
of them in the band to qualify as "people". It doesn't
really sound like a rock band, but you can't have everything. The Vines
As for the name, "The Vines" is probably more appropriate
for some sort of hippy, save-the-earth type world music group. It's
short and vaguely-memorable though, and does sound something like rock
and roll, so we'll give them a passing score. Vitamin
C
She released top selling albums in 1999 and 2000, but her third
record in 2001 didn't even crack the top 100, which should serve as a
cautionary lesson about the perils of pursuing the fickle teen market
when you're pushing 30 yourself. That and her head is like, way
too big for her body. The name is pretty weak. However when you consider that she had
"Colleen Fitzpatrick" to start with, you have to give the
woman credit for improving immensely, if not quite hitting a home
run. She even took on a new look to go with the name, dying her
hair bright orange. Orange. Get it? Nothing rhymes
with that, sadly enough.
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