“DEATHCAB.”

MARCH ’O6.

A few years ago, back when the band Death Cab for Cutie was just a local band getting air time only on Seattle’s thoroughly indy KEXP, I read an advertisement for that particular station in The Stranger. The advertisement consisted of a dozen or so visual representations of the names of some of the bands they would play. You may remember back in aught-three there was an influx of very odd band names, especially in Seattle.

Most of the illustrations were fairly easy to grasp, a picture of a girl digging a hole in front of a tombstone to stand for Pretty Girls Make Graves, three pictures of a hand giving a thumbs-up to represent The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a picture of a mouse sitting on a book entitled Modesty to stand for Modest Mouse, (also just a local band back then,) and a picture of a boy with superimposed images of snakes over his arms to stand for the band These Arms are Snakes.

What bothered me about this advertisement, however, as their choice of visual representation for Deathcab for Cutie. They chose to use just a simple picture of a taxi cab with a skull and crossbones painted on the side. It got the point across, but whenever I heard the name what I always thought of was an old Lincoln hearse painted like a New York taxi cab. And here it is.