Touching What? Made of What?

Our band has a strange name. It's true. So how did it come to be? Listen up, and we will tell you.

We never intended to pick a weird name or anything else. In fact, we never really had any intentions with respect to a name at all. After Andy returned from the cult and we started recording in my attic we realized that we needed a name. For the uninitiated choosing a band name can be EXCRUCIATING under the wrong circumstances. It goes like this:

SINGER: What about (adjective) (noun)?
BASSIST: Yeah, maybe. It's a little too (abstract OR concrete).
DRUMMER: Maybe (noun)?
No one says anything.

Fill in the dialogue with the following...

NOUNS
Academy, Minister, Shotguns, Pretzel, Cavemen

ADJECTIVES
Poisoned, Sacred, Wild, Electric, Drowning

You get the idea! In some cases the process of deciding on a name can take weeks or even months, as a band temporarily goes with "Electric Academy" until something better comes along. I haven't yet googled it, but I bet there really is a band called that...

Well! In true TEMOS fashion we didn't have time for that noise. Oh no. You see folks, when it comes to decision making we don't screw around. We often don't even talk about the question at hand, we just pick a direction and go there. This makes working together very easy, and makes our tunes a bit odd. Perhaps you've noticed. Anyways, we devised an excellent scheme to get us a name pronto: a tournament! Yup, a 32 name, single-elimination tournament. We sat down and wrote up 32 possible band names on the spot, and then paired them off. Then we voted on them. The system worked like this: we three sat on chairs in my kitchen, facing a wall, with our hands behind our backs. My ladyfriend read out a pair of names, and each band member flashed one or two fingers, indicating his choice, but invisible to the other guys. Katie tallied the votes, and the loser was eliminated. Voila! Perfectly simple. Unfortunately we can't remember any of the rejected names, except "Duck Soup" which would have been... great? No.

However, this little tournament ended with no small measure of controversy. For you see, the very final matchup, for all the marbles, was TEMOS vs. Ptarmigan. And? Ptarmigan won! Yes, that was our name. For two days. I confess: I voted for Ptarmigan. I don't know who else did. But shortly thereafter the other guys grew uneasy. We'd made a mistake. TEMOS was just so much better, so much more us. And so Brian lobbied for a reversal of the tournament verdict. We all agreed, and there you have it.

Now where does TEMOS come from? It was Brian's idea, and it is a lyric from a song, by a legendary Ottawa band. Name the band and the song and you win a HUGE prize.