Sometime in 2001, I think it was, Steve got a sloppily-typed e-mail from someone accusing HTN of being rip-offs and sucky, for which an argument could be made, I suppose. The funny thing was, apparently this gentleman was upset because we were using the name of a band he liked. Typing in hencethename.net turned up a SoCal punk band that used the same name. Of course, we'd been using the name for a few years at that point.

We checked their site occasionally, and looked at their message boards and whatnot. They seemed to be fairly successful doing what they were doing, and we didn't think too much of it, though we did get Hence the Name trademarked, just in case. Their band eventually broke up and life went on.

Now, thanks to the power of myspace where everyone except myself apparently has a page, I've found not one, but two other bands that are named Hence the Name. When Steve and I were trying to come up with a name for ourselves for our track on the TMBG tribute album in 1997, we were really careful to try not to give ourselves a band name that had already been used by a band. I guess today the kids can't be bothered to even check the .com domain of their band name, but that is neither here nor there. Eventually all the possible band names in the world are going to be taken and you've got to name your band something... or The Somethings, or following more recent trends, The Something. Otherwise, it'd be like AIM handles, people would just end up throwing numbers on the end of their band names, like Madonna94212, Matchbox20 or Blink182, and how sad would that be?

One of these new bands does seem to be specifically Hence the Name UK, and hell, the Charlatans UK were better than the Charlatans (whoever they were), and The London Suede were better than Suede (whoever they were).

Now Steve and I may very well outlast these new bands as well (We can procastinate on one album for the entire lifespan of some bands!), but I wish all these similarly-named bands the best of luck, and hope they get signed and become tremendously popular so I can sell them our domain and trademark for $1,000,000.

Hence the Name 2006
Hence the Name 2003
Hence the Name ~2001-2003
Hence The Name 1997 - ?