Week of November 29, 2006, Issue #580
MUSIC
Enter Sandor
Steven SANDOR / steven@vueweekly.com
What the fuck? If there is one trend with up-and-coming bands that’s more noticeable than the rest, it’s got to be the amount of young bands from around the world that try to get some shock value by using the F-bomb in their band names. Thing is, it’s so bloody common now that it’s not shocking at all.Some readers here may remember a show at the old Rebar headlined by then-Matador Records hipster-band Fuck. The show was kind of boring, but the band’s name caught the eye.
In Texas, fans of industrial metal dig a band by the name of Fuck the Mainstream, who boast on its Soundclick.com bio that the band name is “very broad and open to interpretation, plus ‘fuck’ is the only word that’s still not acceptable in the media’s mainstream.”
Not acceptable? Really? We are now besieged by a series of young bands with Fuck-ing names. Holy Fuck, one of Canada’s hottest new bands—and one of the best live acts you’ll see—play electronic music with old technology like camera film and vintage tape recorders. Hardcore up-and-comers Fucked Up just graced the cover of Toronto’s Eye Weekly. Edmonton fans of grindcore may have just caught Relapse Records’s artist Fuck the Facts, the pride of the Ottawa metal scene, when the band played Avenue Skatepark a couple of weeks back.
“I know some bands use it for shock value,” says Fuck the Facts’s Topon Das. “But for me, it wasn’t like that. It’s just a word. You see and hear it all the time, even on mainstream TV.”
Das talked to Vue from a tour stop in Nelson, BC, and the city fathers there didn’t quite see “fuck” as just another word.
“Really, the most difficulty we’d ever had was tonight,” says Das. “Basically, people here just freaked out when they saw the name, and we were basically forced to sign a contract where we promised we wouldn’t swear onstage or corrupt the youth of Nelson.”
A quick search of the word “Fuck” on MySpace found bands like the UK’s Fuck-Off Machete, New Jersey Christian rockers the Fuck Souls (that’s right, even the Christ-rockers are getting into F-bombs) and my personal favourite, Chicago’s the Fuck Around Kids, who invite you to download the music for the surefire hit, “Want a Vagina, You Have a Vagina.”
The fuck-name thing is booming, but it isn’t new. Spain’s the Pleasure Fuckers have been playing punk for years and hardcore fans will recall that two legendary ‘80s acts, Toronto’s Bunchofuckingoofs and the American Crucifucks, were pioneers in breaking the F-bomb name taboo.
So, if you’re thinking of placing the F-word in your up-and-coming band’s name, thinking the shock value will get a few extra people to your shows, the statute of limitations is up on that one—except in Nelson. As the late, great band Mclusky once sang: “Fuck this band, because they swear too much.” V
Steven Sandor is a former editor-in-chief of Vue Weekly, now an editor and author living in Toronto.