Why do Thai bands have English names anyways?

Potato. Blackhead. Big Ass. And I’m sure there’s more. These are all Thai bands. Potato I just don’t get. How could that possibly be a good name for a pop band singing about heartbreak and unrequited love? Is there Thai symbolism in the root vegetable that I’m not aware of? Maybe its actually a witty nickname? Probably not.

Then there’s Blackhead who, according to all of my students, think their name translates only to a head that is the color black. That’s still odd to me but there’s the unfortunate part about blackhead translating as a small black zit. When I tell this to my students they’re disgusted. Even more than American students, Thais hate their acne and constantly attend to their pimples, often covering them with some strange small white band-aides that look like tiny bits of toilet paper I stick on my shaving cuts to stop the bleeding. Except they wear their bits of white to school. I think the white spots look worse than the zits. I asked a student about them and she got extremely embarrassed about it, as if it weren’t obvious she had the white squares sticking to her face.

And my favorite: Big Ass. I just bought the Big Ass CD the other day, just to have it. The booklet that comes with it has Big Ass pictures, Big Ass lyrics, and to all those who made the album possible, there’s Big Ass Thanks. Though lyrically soft, the band rocks heavy metal ballads reminiscent of Megadeath and early Metallica. Instead of rocking about the end of the world, death and destruction though, Big Ass chooses to sing about the usual Thai worries, broken hearts and loneliness. But, they rock. And I consider myself one Big Ass Fan.