What the %$#@ is a Zuiiza?
When Peter and Tony and I committed to starting a band, the search for a name was the order of the day. It had to be unique, not too long and we need to be able to buy the dot com … and (more of a challenge) we all needed to agree.
Well it took a fair bit of too-and-fro and an email thread of name suggestions as long as King Kong’s schlong but we got there eventually. I went scouring one night through a list of obscure Japanese Zen terms and eventually came to:
Zuii-za (“sitting as one pleases”; release from daily routine)
I liked it. I sent it to the boys. Pete seemed to like it, Tony was nonplussed. It was in.
No idea what happened to the hyphen; I’d already forgotten about it.
The meaning to me seemed very … err … meaningful: for all of us, starting a band was very much about reclaiming time back from the daily routine to sit – or more accurately – do what one pleases, which in our collective case is to rock and/or roll. Playing in a band is for us the (slightly more cultural) equivalent of going to the footy club for a beer or spending a Sunday arvo in the shed working on a car. It’s bloke time basically.
But how the hell do you pronounce it? Me and Pete decided it was pronounced Zoo-zah. Tony asked his daughter who is learning Japanese and she reported back that it is apparently pronounced “Zoo-ee-zah”, a bit like Louisa.
So, rightfully, Tony pronounces it like that. Me and Pete are sticking with “Zoo-zah”.
Logically, it’s now become the name of a planet; we refer to ourselves (and anyone foolish enough to pay us any attention) as Zuiizans. Go figure.
Seamus
Zuiiza logo concepts
Tonight, like the responsible adult I am, I spent the evening trying to come up with the perfect rock logo for our kick arse new band, Zuiiza.
As I used up all the ink in my little girl’s best black marker, I got to thinking about rock logos … and penned an email to the boys in the band … here’s the transcript:
The thing that was so effective about the reckoning logo (and a lot of the actual great rock logos of all time like ac/dc, the who, Metallica, the jam, etc) was not that it was stylish or sophisticated but that it was simple, unique and easy to replicate with a texta bored at school. (Do kids still have textas?)
By the way, if you didn’t know, Peter and I used to be in a band together before called reckoning. Downloads ahoy!
Anyway that was what I was trying to do here – come up with some hooks (like the lightening bolt or slash through the o which I was always amazed how much people used to use it, every time I got an email or whatever, even today, the odd person still goes to the trouble to write the symbol of the o with the slash thru it).
On this one I liked the big rock Zs and I liked the idea of the two i dots doing something special, in this case I was trying to make some kind of infinity sign, except every time i did an infinity sign it looked like angry eyes which I wasn’t into so instead tried to make it look like some kind of esoteric Led Zeppelin symbol … emphasis on tried!
After spending a night mucking about I now think that we should get a graphic designer to finish off whatever idea we all decide we like and want to go with, I know a few as I work with them all the time.
Seamus