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
