What’s in a band name? Everything.

Shakespeare be damned. The name matters. From the stylish power of the Kinky Wizards to the… Shakespeare be damned. The name matters. From the stylish power of the Kinky Wizards to the compound allusion of the Doors and even the stunning originality of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers æ the name matters. For Omega Love there was only one way to respond to the pressure of selecting those few words that everyone will, or won’t, know you by: They used an “Instant Band Name Chooser.”

No approach could be more fitting for the five-member group that manages to fight for success while completely ignoring the trappings of bandhood. It has its name. It’s a cool enough name – it’s not too hip, it’s not too square. Most importantly, it doesn’t pin Jocelyn Geisler, Luke Williams, Jim Barr, Joe Rusnak and Jon Rent down to one style. The band members are not forced to explain that “Yes, we cover Joni Mitchell, and yes, we are called Acid Death Overdrive.”

The downside to the band’s name is that I’m walking up the stairs of the artists’ house in the dark to meet with a few of the members, and I have no idea what to expect. These guys could be aloof, insane or just comfortably stoned. The name Omega Love doesn’t give me a clue.

Rusnak’s outside smoking a cigarette. He tells me to head on in. Rent’s cooking some turkey bacon and Geisler’s talking to a neighbor who bails at my arrival. Rusnak comes in as the neighbor goes out, and we head from the kitchen into a red-carpeted room. Someone slides a CD of the band’s music into the little boom box system next to me, and my conversation with three-fifths of Omega Love begins.

I aim to keep these things not at all professional, but vaguely objective. Problem is that I keep noticing myself nodding in rhythm with their song playing in the background. I stop. Ask a question. Find myself nodding along again. This keeps happening. Finally, I give up trying to remain stationary, and I focus on the discussion.

We get through all the standard questions, though not in the standard order. Influences include the Jackson 5 and the Brazilian Girls. Their next big event is competing in the finals Saturday night at the Rex Rock Rumble. The band started and stopped, added friends of friends, lost a member and replaced him with the perfect guy right before a big show. All the standard questions get fairly standard answers and all the while, my head’s still moving to their music.

We move on to the writing process. Rusnak initiates and develops most of the music, while Geisler does the lyric-writing gig. I start poking and prodding, looking for a connection or friction between the two processes. Surprisingly, it’s Geisler, the singer, who says, “Words are just a distraction.”

I beg her to explain how she, the word writer and lyric singer, can possibly say such a thing, so she does. “There can be one line and I can sing it three different ways, and it can be about pain or joy or sadness.” For her it’s more about the expression and the feeling – more about the music.

Speaking about music, theirs is still playing in the background. The album’s repeated by this point, but I still can’t quite ignore it. I press on, throwing questions at the musicians. Rusnak grabs one, and goes off throwing metaphors about ceilings and stairwells then twists Machiavelli to his own ends. He strips his point down to:

“In general, in anything that you develop as a musician or a person, you can get to a point where you might have learned something or be wiser looking in retrospect.” Rusnak warns against resting too long at that point. “So long as you don’t get rigid in your ways you can grow, and I think we’re all very understanding of how infinite growing can be.”

Check out Omega Love at http://www.myspace.com/omegalovemusic, and e-Mail Zak Sharif at rzs8@pitt.edu for your chance on his local stage.