the national evil guide to naming your backing band

Heartbreakers! Dream Makers! Love Takers! Don’t you mess around with me!

A scroll through his iTunes list puts the Evil in a contemplative mood . . . and gets him to wondering (a) what is the all-time best name for a backing band? and (b) how does one effectively christen his own complementary players?

First, (a). One oft-commenting FOE (Friend of Evil, we’ve been over this) maintains that the Heartbreakers is the best backing-band name. The Evil is not inclined to disagree (though he will hear arguments to the contrary). Others are more catchy, more clever, but the Heartbreakers is a name every band would gladly take for itself, even if some pretentious musician-types wouldn’t admit it. It’s classic, works in any musical genre—even hardcore death metal, if you wrote it in bloody goth-font with a graphic of a skeletal hand crushing a heart in its bony fingers—and communicates a supreme confidence that doesn’t cross the line into arrogance. Good stuff.