The Weird Workings of a Writer’s Brain
Feb. 23rd, 2007 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseI only listen to heavy metal after dark. Usually, what this means is that I tune in 93X, the Minneapolis/St. Paul hard rock station, once a week when I’m driving across town by myself to somewhere like my Loft classes or my writers’ group, Wyrdsmiths.
Heavy metal is a kind of nostalgia for me because the radio stations in the small Wisconsin town I grew up in tended to be: country western, National Public Radio, or heavy metal. Like any self-respecting tween, I wrote country western off as too buttoned-up and NPR – when they played music -- as my parents’ hippy-folk crap (although I was secretly quite a folkie and still am). In public, to my peers, I was a head bangin’ grrl. The first album I ever purchased with my own money was KISS’s “Rock and Roll Over.” KISS also has the distinction of being the first live concert I ever attended (if I don’t count all those years of hearing amazing performers like Pete Seeger and Ronnie Gilbert and other live folk bands that came through LaCrosse as part of the Great River Music Festival).
Thing is, I never quite outgrew that hard rockin’ phase. Screaming guitars and big hair work for me on some primal level, I guess. But I don’t listen enough that the current big names are familiar to me, and I swear heavy rock bands’ names are just getting stranger and stranger, ala “That was: Two Guys I Killed in the Shower with their new song ‘Burning’” [Note: this is a completely fictitious band, but it’s not unlike some I might hear.]
The point of this confessional is that last night, while taking a long soak in the tub to try to come down off the natural high I get from hanging out with the other writers at Wyrdsmiths (not to mention the _actual_ high from the caffeine I ingest), I decided on the perfect name for my heavy metal band:
Ornitholestes
First of all, my son would LOVE a band named Ornitholestes, because, of course, Ornitholestes is a dinosaur. You could have a whole lot of dinosaur related products with this band – the T-shirts could feature Ornitholestes (or really ANY dinosaur, because outside of three and a half year olds and paleontologists who the hell knows what Ornitholestes really looks like). You could have a giant mascot on stage, ala “Eddie” from Iron Maiden. Plus, Ornitholestes has just the right amount of head-banging onomatopoeia. And, I had this great auditory sensation [what *is* the ear version of a “visual image,” anyway?] of the announcer shouting, “And now Ornitholestes! Roar!” With the “roar” actually being that typical heavy metal growly, shouting thing that ruins your vocal cords, you know the one.
Yep. That’s what I spend MY time thinking about. Well, that is when I’m not obsessing on the fish.
Heavy metal is a kind of nostalgia for me because the radio stations in the small Wisconsin town I grew up in tended to be: country western, National Public Radio, or heavy metal. Like any self-respecting tween, I wrote country western off as too buttoned-up and NPR – when they played music -- as my parents’ hippy-folk crap (although I was secretly quite a folkie and still am). In public, to my peers, I was a head bangin’ grrl. The first album I ever purchased with my own money was KISS’s “Rock and Roll Over.” KISS also has the distinction of being the first live concert I ever attended (if I don’t count all those years of hearing amazing performers like Pete Seeger and Ronnie Gilbert and other live folk bands that came through LaCrosse as part of the Great River Music Festival).
Thing is, I never quite outgrew that hard rockin’ phase. Screaming guitars and big hair work for me on some primal level, I guess. But I don’t listen enough that the current big names are familiar to me, and I swear heavy rock bands’ names are just getting stranger and stranger, ala “That was: Two Guys I Killed in the Shower with their new song ‘Burning’” [Note: this is a completely fictitious band, but it’s not unlike some I might hear.]
The point of this confessional is that last night, while taking a long soak in the tub to try to come down off the natural high I get from hanging out with the other writers at Wyrdsmiths (not to mention the _actual_ high from the caffeine I ingest), I decided on the perfect name for my heavy metal band:
Ornitholestes
First of all, my son would LOVE a band named Ornitholestes, because, of course, Ornitholestes is a dinosaur. You could have a whole lot of dinosaur related products with this band – the T-shirts could feature Ornitholestes (or really ANY dinosaur, because outside of three and a half year olds and paleontologists who the hell knows what Ornitholestes really looks like). You could have a giant mascot on stage, ala “Eddie” from Iron Maiden. Plus, Ornitholestes has just the right amount of head-banging onomatopoeia. And, I had this great auditory sensation [what *is* the ear version of a “visual image,” anyway?] of the announcer shouting, “And now Ornitholestes! Roar!” With the “roar” actually being that typical heavy metal growly, shouting thing that ruins your vocal cords, you know the one.
Yep. That’s what I spend MY time thinking about. Well, that is when I’m not obsessing on the fish.
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Band Names
Date: 2007-02-23 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-23 09:38 pm (UTC)jpj
no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 02:11 am (UTC)And the fish.