"Three Nouns is a reference to a pretty common pathology for band names to which I've devoted a lot of thought...

Back in the day, you could get away with just one noun, like 'Cream' or 'The Doors'. Hell, you could even call yourselves 'The Band' and get away with it.

As we approached the 80's, though, all the nouns were soon taken, so you either needed two (e.g. 'Guns and Roses'), or you had to add an adjective (e.g. 'Dire Straits').

In the 90's, we made the jump to three nouns, with bands like 'Stone Temple Pilots'. You could always mix in some adjectives, though, like 'Third Eye Blind'. Very rarely are adverbs ever used.

(As an alternative, you could always just cheat and add some numbers to make your band name different, like people do when their preferred IM username is taken... hence 'Matchbox 20' and 'blink-182'. It's a shame that 'Matchbox 1' through 'Matchbox 19' were already taken.)

Of course, now band names have gotten *way* too long, like 'Queens of the Stone Age', or 'The Soundtrack of Our Lives'... although 'The Strokes', 'The Hives', and 'The Vines' (and somehow, miraculously, 'The Music') seemed to find nouns that weren't taken yet.

I guess the 'Red Hot Chili Peppers' have always been way ahead of the curve."

           -Nicholas Arcolano, 2/2/2005