what's in a name

a couple of days ago i wrote about the student poets of oceana high school located in pacifica, ca.  i said that i really dig their individual names; so representative of the cultural & ethnic diversity that makes my beloved state such a great place to live.  i also said that i also like my own name because it also represents the diversity of my own heritage & culture[s].  but the name richard lopez is so common as to be something invisible.  as a writer i love the sound of words & so there are some names that are much more attractive to my eye & ear.  still, i've never tried to change it even tho i experimented with the spelling a ala paul celan did with his own surname, & i never took a pen name even tho i played with the idea to add the adjective 'little' in homage to the great rocker little richard when i started sending my poems out in the world.

beauty, by all measures, is subjective.  what i find attractive another person might think silly.  & vice versa.  still, i keep my eye open to the name 'lopez' in art & culture, pop & not.  i'm obsessive that way.  some things stick in the mind.  like the punk band LOPEZ that i found in the bins of the late great sacramento based record store The Beat.

The Beat shuttered about 7 or so years ago, a victim of our digital age.  i loved the store & would often stop in on my way home from work.  The Beat was the record store for independent music, other than the deep catalogue of Tower Records [another great record store founded in my hometown & another victim of out digital age].  The Beat was the place to get punk records, & to purchase tix to punk shows.  the shop had grown from a little corner on h st to a large emporium on j st.

i miss it.  digital live is great.  finding stuff in a half second is pretty freaking cool.  yet i miss the adventures & discoveries of going in to The Beat to find perhaps something you were not looking for & didn't know you needed until you pulled it out of the bin.

that happened one of the few last times i visited the store before it closed for good.  i was going thru the bins and found an eponymous cd by a pacific northwest band that i never heard of LOPEZ.  the disc was about three bucks & i turned it over in my hands several times.  i recall the cover art was just the band members in a car.  & nothing else.  i liked their name, for obvious reasons, & i wondered why the chose the name LOPEZ.  as i said, i would often visit The Beat after work & for some reason i put the cd back where i found it & went home.

why didn't i buy it if the cd was only a few bucks?  i dunno.  perhaps i thought i would find it later if i really wanted it.  i have a bad habit.  often i won't get the thing i most want even when i can afford it & it won't cause any harm to me or my family members.  like this eponymous cd LOPEZ. i do what i can to not behave this way.  i am not much of a material guy.  i love books, music & movies & increasingly those things are converting to digital.  yet, i love the physical thing so even if i can download pdfs of books by the late great poet bill knott i cherish my published hard copies of his books.

but i didn't buy LOPEZ.  i couldn't find anything about the band either online.  no bandcamp, no youtube, no twitter.  there are a great many artists & musicians with the name lopez that i have found but nothing about a punk band from the pacific northwest.

until tonight.  i haven't looked for a very long while but anna & i were sitting on the couch looking shit up using our phones.  i told her about my finding LOPEZ cd at The Beat but have not been successful on finding anything about the punk band on the interwebs.  we continued watching a series on netflix & looking up random shit via our phones.

then a little while ago i do a quick google search 'punk band named 'lopez' & i find this blog post about the band.  holy shit.  this is the band i remember from so many years ago.  the thing about the internet is that it is a repository for all of culture.  eventually it will be remembered & /or archived on the 'net.  & so it is for this band.  i still haven't heard their music.  all i know is that they are a punk band from portland that have adopted LOPEZ as their band name.

names are important.  i would ask why use a surname as the band name if i were interviewing the band members as this blogger interviewed the band members.  i should've got that cd when i was able to.  perhaps i thought i'd have another chance on another visit to The Beat.  or i defeated myself as i described above when i held that cd in my hands debating to myself to buy it.  but i am happy to have found something about the band.  at least i didn't hallucinate them into existence.

& that's the thing about digital life.  every era in our history of media, like recordings, photographs, & film, can almost always be found on some server somewhere in this world.  & that we are all connected via these servers & our devices.  from pdfs of our favorite writers to movies on streaming platforms.  we connect via social media, even if some of that connectivity is toxic [human beings will shit in their bed too.  don't ask me why, some just do].  it is a great delight to finally find some information about this punk band that i remember some years ago as i combed thru the bins of one of the great record stores of a bygone age.  what is their name?  LOPEZ