Requiem for Requiem - The Negotiators emerge!

Those who have been following this blog for a while will remember that we have already tried to change our band name. The marking point for the start of this blog was when we agreed to call ourselves The Odd Sox.

That change of name was doomed from the start. The first publican we mentioned it to refused to book us under the name and insisted we retain ‘Requiem’ for her gig. I’m not sure why she did this, but it was an omen. Our followers were sceptical, and kept calling us Requiem. We produced no posters with the name, and kept playing as Requiem. The name change had even stopped being a vaguely funny in joke within a couple of weeks. Perhaps this blog IS the only permanent trace of this period of our band.

Anyway, since then we’ve had someone float proposed band names past us at every practice (which is pretty often when you add them up). The most persistent suggester was Nancy, but sadly no – one’s ideas seemed to grab everyone’s imagination at the same time, and Requiem remained our name by default. Without Nancy’s persistence in keeping the issue alive, Requiem we would remain until today. Now that that’s not the case, others have told me what Requiem evoked (wedding, funeral, serious music). I am glad Nancy kept plugging away.

Then, I was talking to my sister in Melbourne about my nephew, who’s nickname is ‘The Negotiator”, when the idea of “The Negotiators” as a possible band name struck. I tried it out on Nancy and a few friends, everyone had a positive reaction. It seemed an evocative, indefinably humerous name that drew a response from all. It seemed to ‘mean’ something without putting us in a box, and it sounds cool. The band all liked it when suggested at the next practice. No-one else was using it as a band name that we could work out from our internet searches.

So we became The Negotiators!