The Name Game
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Be forewarned, the next sentence will be a sweeping generalization.
Metal fans are nerds.
By that I mean heshers (most music fans, really, but this is Invisible Oranges after all) tend to hoard trivial information as readily as they acquire black t-shirts. What to do with those mounds of practically useless data is an open question.
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Authors Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens play a parlour game.
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Authors Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens (RIP) are nerds as well. Fairly metallic ones at that: Hitchens wrote God is Not Great, while Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses. What they’ve done in the video above is put their respective book-nerdiness to good use. Some of their choices are pretty brilliant (I especially like “Moby Prick”).
I tried their game out myself with a few records in my library, and then asked two other Invisible Oranges writers (Aaron Lariviere, Richard Street-Jammer) to try it themselves. Here were our winners:
God Hates Us EachImages and Blurbs
Seventh Son of a Prudish Nun
Master of Mannequins
Some so Vile
Average Killing Capacity
Like an Ever-Placid Pond
Telephoning with the Deceased
Employ the Opposition
Nerderoticism: Disgusting and Libidinous
Inhibited Thought Patterns
Bonded by Band-Aids
Si Monumentum Requires, Circumsized
Before I started, I knew the game would go better with a partner. Still, it was a surprisingly fun way to waste a bus-ride; Aaron and Richard seemed to have fun with it as well. The precise level of sexual vulgarity in our responses surprised me: I expected either nothing but dick jokes, or absolutely none, but what I got was a mix.
I imagine it could get riotous quickly on the car ride to or from a show with the right people. At the same time, I felt a little sharper for a few minutes afterward; this post flowed much smoother after I played the game with myself. This makes sense: Many artists doodle as well as sketch before trying a bigger project.
Things I learned: the best alterations come from already-great titles. Just as great metal albums tend to have great album art (there are of course exceptions), they tend to have ear-worms already in the title, whether it be a powerful image, or a great mix of assonance, consonance, and cadence. For example, many strong titles have three monosyllabic words with stress on the first consonant (“Back in Black”, “Reign in Blood”, “None so Vile”).
A few music writers have played this game before; it might as well be called the MetalSucks-sub-header-game. And of course, one of my favorite blogs uses one of the finest as its title: Welcome back to the internet, Reign in Blonde.
What funny, fractured record titles can you think of? What about songs? Toss some of your ideas in the comments below.
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