Decisions, Decisions

[wyld_dandelyon]

So, right now I'm told Bandcamp is the way to go, for self-publishing music. And I now am developing the skills to record myself, so I went to look at setting up an account, which I was told is totally simple.

And the first page, almost the first line, asked for my band name.

And I stopped and stared at that. I'd always figured I'd go with my name if I managed to do a solo album, but lately I've been following the rising career of a musician named Deirdre Murphy in Ireland. And you know, that would probably be OK, she's going for a much more mainstream music career than I'd be planning, but for some things, disambiguation is a good thing.

And it also occurs to me that I've been using the name Wyld Dandelyon for a very long time now, and that it wouldn't make a bad band name, especially for a filker (since filkers use the dandelion as our symbol). Never mind that I didn't create it to be a band name.

Well, I don't have to decide today.

People's thoughts, opinions, relevant experience, and ideas about what I should keep in mind as I decide, are all welcome at this point.

Comments

[kelkyag]

Wyld Dandelyon would be a lovely band name or stage name if you want it to be. You might want to check for collisions before deciding.

[wyld_dandelyon]

I'm the only one google shows with the Ys in the name. :)

[siliconshaman]

Heh, I thought Wyld Dandelyon was a band name you'd 'borrowed' as your user name!

[wyld_dandelyon]

Nope. I made it up for LiveJournal, back when LJ was what it was supposed to be.

[earthspirits]

Actually, I think your usual user name is pretty cool.

[wyld_dandelyon]

Thank you.

[ellenmillion]

I said it elsewhere, but I really love Wyld Dandelyon and it's already well-attached to you!

[wyld_dandelyon]

Hmm...I guess if I do this, and I think I will, in a few months I should move the fiction to a Deirdre-M-Murphy website and create content for the band-me for the wyld-dandelyon website. But I'll focus on making recordings first. Gotta have at least one album to justify a website.

[mdlbear]

I agree with everyone else -- go for it!

That's where my mind went before I'd even finished the first paragraph.

[wyld_dandelyon]

Somehow I never imagined doing a solo-me band name, but my writing pal Catie Murphy's sister is doing music (and getting radio air play), so that got me thinking.

I guess the next thing to ponder is whether I want to put the Pagan stuff out under the same band name as the filk and folk. I think the answer is yes; it's not as if I don't have songs that are very much both. But it's worth considering for a while, I suppose.

[msstacy13]

Yeah, sounds like we're all Wyld about it...

[wyld_dandelyon]

That helps settle the anxiety brain weasels.

[rowyn]

Like everyone else, I think Wyld Dandelyon is a good name for a solo act! I went with my user name when I started publishing books, myself.

[wyld_dandelyon]

True, you did. :)

[tigertoy]

(1) My thought is an unusual name is more likely to attract attention. If a name happens to float by at the edge of my perception (whether I'm skimming a list of band names or I overhear a snippet of conversation), if I don't have an instant subconscious "Huh?" I never get to the second subconscious reaction of "This might be worth paying attention to" that enables the conscious flicker of "That's an interesting name" that has to be there to continue the thought to "I should check it out".
(2) Even if I pay very little attention now, if it's unusual it's memorable, and if I remember hearing it before but I still don't know what it is that generates more curiosity.
(3) For what it's worth, I think "Wyld Dandelyon" is a good band name.

Similarly, an album cover or logo has a similar challenge. It must stand out or I'll just pass by it. Then it must be a high quality and aesthetically pleasing image or I won't keep looking for more than a split second. Then it has to have some words on it that are easy to read (because if I have to struggle to decipher the script I will already be biased against it). That puts those words into my sensorium; return to the top of the post. If there are no words, it has to be even more visually interesting to send me directly to "I'll check it out". This isn't the time for deep artistic significance. It needs to reach out and grab for just a second or two. Unfortunately, this is even more individual than the name and I have no way to guess what's going to be eye-catching to other people. People get paid big bucks to do that and fail all the time. :-)

[wyld_dandelyon]

Oh, lots of good thinky thoughts! Thank you.

And another thought--if I want to distinguish between my writing "brand name" and my band name, Wyld Dandelyon isn't a good pseudonym; editors seem to like things that at least sound like real names for fiction.

[filkferengi]

For the fiction, just add an -a on the end. Wylda Dandelyon is a fine name for an author.

Also, you don't need an album to justify a website. Lots of folks mostly put out singles.

[wyld_dandelyon]

No, I've already got stuff (short stories, mostly) out under my own name, going to stick with that unless I have a reason to do otherwise.

I did pick a pen name for spicy stories, though I haven't used it yet--Wildie Donne. Wildie because it's much like Wyld, but is a more usual name (if a bit archaic), and Donne because when we were kids and said "I'm done!" my grandma used to joke that I wasn't a Donne, I was a Murphy, so it makes me smile to think of using it as a pen name.

Wylda is also pretty cool. I'll keep it in mind.

[tigertoy]

Just speaking for myself, hopefully not offensively -- "Wyld Dandelyon" as a band name feels unusual in an intriguing way, but "Wyld Dandelyon" as a writer feels too weird, a little off-putting. I'm trying to explain to myself why it feels that way and not getting very far. Maybe it's that I'm expecting band names to be made up, but except for furry writers, the name on the cover is supposed to be the writer's real name. If I met a total stranger in real life and their nametag said "Wyld Dandelyon" that would kick me out of my comfort zone.

[wyld_dandelyon]

Yes, exactly!

I've even read in submission guidelines that editors don't want a pseudomyn that doesn't look, to them, like a person's name. Not finding stuff like that on fiction, as a rule, is no accident. There are lots of reasons writers use pseudonyms, for branding reasons (like Seanan's Mira Grant) or if someone thinks their day job reputation would be damaged if their science fiction or romance books were published under their real name. There was also a time when if an author's sales on the most recent book were bad, the publishing industry insisted on them using a new pseudonym under the belief that a "new" author might sell more books than the the same book would sell under the "old" author name. (I am dubious that that belief was well founded; I think it was based in an algorithm about how many books each bookstore should receive, and you couldn't sell a lot of books if the bookstores didn't receive copies to sell.)

I'm pretty sure Wyld Dandelyon is a little wild for a Pagan author too, not that I'm currently writing books for that market.

But, as you note here, bands thrive on weird names.