Rebelution
The week's most notable band name
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Every conceivable kind of ridiculous play on words have been used by music groups over the decades—let’s never forget the wince-inducing mashup that is the title of Kansas’ 1976 prog-rock album, Leftoverture, nor Spinal Tap’s satirical mastery of the form. The worst thing about Santa Barbara pop-reggae act Rebelution—which plays tonight and tomorrow at the Fox Theatre with State Radio—isn't its name alone (even though that is pretty bad). It's the fact that the foursome doesn’t have jack shit to back up such a blatantly overreaching handle. Rebellious? Revolutionary? The band makes Musical Youth sound like Lee Perry. On its MySpace site, the group namedrops some kind of nebulous, vaguely hemp-scented philosophy called “conscious action”—but the first conscious action these guys should take when they wake up tomorrow morning is changing their name to one a bit more fitting than Rebelution. Like Sub-Sublime or something.
