Dark ... Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. Photograph: Rusty Kennedy/AP
How many bands are there with the word "black" in their name? I've discovered three new ones in the past couple of months: Black Kids (an American version of The Go! Team), Black Affair (missed-the-boat electroclash japery from Steve Mason of The Beta Band) and Black Lips (chaotic blues-punk from a band whose party trick is urinate into each others' mouths onstage, behaviour that at least goes some way towards justifying the darkness and depravity implied in their name).
It seems that if you want your bandname to shout "cool", "edgy" and "mysterious", "black" is the only way to go. Obviously you can't actually use the words "cool", "edgy" or "mysterious" because that would seem like you're trying too hard. Black is the only word which conjures up the requisite sense of transgressive majesty, subterranean swagger and nocturnal menace, while remaining ambiguous and enigmatic.
It's why - deep breath - we've got Black Sabbath, Black Flag, the Black Keys, the Black Crowes, the Black Angels, the Black Madonnas, the Black Velvets, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Black Box Recorder, Black Wire, Black Grape, Black Dice, Black Strobe, Black Lodge, Black Eyes, Black Mountain, Black Leotard Front, Black Devil Disco Club, Blackbud, the Black Dahlias and the Black Dog all fighting for prominence under the BL tag in HMV. Corpulent Pixies frontman Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV changed his name to Black Francis and later Frank Black. Steve Albini made brutal industrial noise as Big Black. Johnny Cash was the Man in Black. Then there was gloomy 80s AOR balladeer Colin Vearncombe who simply called himself Black.
Clearly not all these bands are using the word "black" solely to confer abstract cool upon themselves. A black box recorder is an object whose blackness is largely incidental, although in the case of Luke Haines and co, you suspect its colour certainly appealed. Meanwhile, the anomalous Black Lace intended to evoke nothing edgier than a pair of knickers abandoned outside a disco bar in Torremolinos.
This post is largely concerned with white rock bands using "black" as a symbol of noirish cool, so Black Uhuru, Black Sheep, Blak Twang, Blackstreet, Blackalicious, Sounds of Blackness, The Blackbyrds, Black Eyed Peas, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and one-hit Barry White-sampling dance act Black Legend don't count. It turns out that Ali and Reggie Youngblood of Black Kids are black too, so perhaps their name is simply meant literally.
For a while it looked like "black" had had its day, with new bands deciding that "wolf" (the coolest, edgiest and most mysterious of all the beasts) might be a credible alternative. In the past few years we've had Wolf Parade, Wolf and Cub, Fox and Wolf, We are Wolves, Peter and the Wolf, Patrick Wolf, Economy Wolf and Wolfman to add the existing ranks of Howlin' Wolf, Steppenwolf, Guitar Wolf, Little Wolf and Swedish metal band Wolf (tantalisingly billed on their website as "real metal for true bastards").
Black Kids, Black Affair and Black Lips, however, have shown us that - like Amy Winehouse - we're back to "black". The White Stripes, White Zombie, White Magic, Whitey, White Rainbow, White Town, Whitesnake, Whitehouse, Plain White Ts, White Whale, White Rose Movement and The Whitest Boy Alive might have cause to protest, but "white" just doesn't cut it.
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