One way to make sure that your band gets the most space on the marquee at SXSW is to have a really long band name. Some bands have done just that. Here’s a histogram of the name length of the 1200 or so artists that are appearing at SXSW:
This histogram shows that the most frequent band name length is 11 characters, (the average is 12.9 characters) with some as short as 3 characters, but there are quite a few with lengths of 30 characters or more, with one topping out at 43 characters.
Here are the bands that are getting the most space on the marquee:
- Jon Langford And The Pine Valley Cosmonauts
- Johnny Goudie and The Little Champions
- Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers
- Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
- Solange and the Hadley Street Dreams
- Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
- Hermano L backed by Ranking Soldiers
- Danny And The Champions Of The World
- I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness
- Bryan Scary and The Shredding Tears
- Steve Goldberg and the Arch Enemies
And here the bands that are getting the least space:
- WAZ
- XYX
- TAT
- Mom
- Fun
- fiN
- CLP
- Cla
- CKY
- Blu
- Aun
Note to bands – when you are picking the name for your band, try googling for it first – it is going to be a lot easier for people to find you with a name like “Jon Langford And The Pine Valley Cosmonauts” than for a band with the name “fun”
Music Machinery 
#1 by sumar on March 4, 2009 - 3:29 am
I remember seeing a… “band” called Mom in Oakland earlier this year. This girl came out wearing only Minnie mouse ears a muzzle and a child’s size dress. While singing along to show tunes through a squeaky voice changer she poured milk all over her crotch and walked around trying to get people to drink out of the jug.