Banana-Fanna-Fo-Fargot

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 14, 2006 4:47PM

Ever since Chicagoist was little, we’ve been dreaming up names for the totally awesome band we would eventually form. Back in college, we even went so far as to figure out the titles of our fictional band’s first three albums. So we always assumed all bands put that kind of thought into its name, thereby communicating its heart and soul in just a few words.

But a bill like this Saturday’s show at Double Door gives lie to that theory. South, Something For Rockets and Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s will play tomorrow starting at 9 p.m. What's with those names? It’s almost like they didn’t even try! The headliner obviously picked something at random off the atlas on the way to its first show. And what is a "nuclear So and So?" And shouldn’t there be dashes in-between the So’s?

As for SFR, doesn’t this seem like the band had 2/3 of the name and decided to fill in the rest later, only to let it slip its collective mind? “Hmm…Bedtime For Rockets? No…Rocking For Rockets? Too repetitive. Well, just put down SOMETHING For Rockets and we’ll figure it out after practice.”

If we didn’t like all these bands so much, it might actually irritate us.

Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s is an Indianapolis band that captured our hearts with its song “On A Freezing Chicago Street” that talks of getting “drunk on cheap red wine in a paper cup.” Its music shares an atmospheric longing with Something For Rockets. When we last saw SFR, we wrote the following in our omnipresent notebook: “This music makes pretty girls dance and you should not need a better reason to like them.” Plus, we enjoy any band whose lead singer resembles Steven Wright (and is the son of Itzhak Perlman!). We’ve been cozying up to South all morning and find the band to be an acoustic British lover that’s tender like Nick Drake, but isn’t afraid to rough us up a bit like the boys in Oasis.

And really, what’s in a name?