The Music Terrors of Mikey Mumbawumba (a fiction saga, in short doses)

Stage names.  Required.   As was the case for most of the band members,  his real name was ninety four syllables, and if it could be pronounced, it would sound incompatible with a larger motif.  It would have been nearly impossible for the emcee to introduce them.   Steve Plank took his last name from a fad in which people lay flat and still on top of people's desk, where the targets  and they work, and force them to deal with the absurdity of what the histrionic stiffs  are doing.  The stunt was called 'planking,' and at the time everyone understood why the nick name.  No longer so rapidly appreciated, Steve is a regular feature at a local club or two.  So grows legend.  It gets juicier over time when ever younger people hear the tale of how Steve Plank got his name.  He could drum quite well, no matter how blitzed, and Steve is reasonably known and well liked in the Boggs Avenue/Rt. 5//Arlington  Corridor community.  There are still a few clubs open, most wrapped like presents in layers of barbed wire and cyclone fence.   Once you get past the security detail it gets convivial.

Mikey Mumbawumba thought up his nick name all by himself.  He is six foot six with an evil black pompadour.  It might be a wig.  He's old, at this point.  His brainstorm for self promotion came about when people were being exhorted to 'deny their fathers' and take new names that suggest savagery.
He wore savage printed sport shirts with extra tall collars.  Nehru jackets.  Thick boas. Stack heel cha cha boots.  He was performing with a storied rock and roll band.  They were so close to marketability you could smell it.  Stay tuned for my next installment.