King Dork - Band Names

Band Names

Throughout the novel Tom and Sam devise various names for their band along with album titles and alternate identities for themselves. This is mostly done to ward away boredom, but to also find an identity for their music. At the climax of the novel, as Balls Deep, Sam and Tom, with their drummer Todd Panchowski, make their big debut at a school talent contest, but at the last moment when Tom is introducing the band, he changes their name to the Chi-Mos, his nickname in school. Tom feels they have a mostly successful show because most of their songs are designed to ridicule their vice principal which have a mostly positive reaction from the crowd, and his secret girlfriend Deanna, skips out of her Catholic school to see the show. In frustration with the failure of Todd to actually be an effective member of the band and walking out in the middle of the set, Tom and Sam destroy Todd’s drum kit and the cabinet housing Sam’s amplifier. Balls Deep/The Chi-Mos! wind up losing the contest.

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