BEST BAND NAME

If there's one thing you want coursing through a rock band, besides electricity, it's moxie. Singer Catty Tasso hit upon the name in Maine. She saw a bottle of Moxie, the weird old gentian-root soft drink that still has a cult-like following. "That's us!" she exclaimed, according to husband-guitarist Josh...

May 16, 2002

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If there's one thing you want coursing through a rock band, besides electricity, it's moxie. Singer Catty Tasso hit upon the name in Maine. She saw a bottle of Moxie, the weird old gentian-root soft drink that still has a cult-like following. "That's us!" she exclaimed, according to husband-guitarist Josh Sonntag. In the 1880s the beverage was touted as a medicine guaranteed to cure almost any ill including loss of manhood, "paralysis, and softening of the brain." Today some of Moxi's devoted fans will testify that the group's raucous music is capable of producing the same miraculous healings. After first trying "Moxy," the couple discovered that spelling pertained to a group of Seventies-era Toronto rockers remembered not for moxie but rather artless volume. That left the diminutive suffix "i," a nice stroke and subtle signifier of the Miami band's Latin identity. (Tasso was born in Chile, Sonntag grew up in Cancún, bassist Raul Ramirez hails from Puerto Rico, and drummer Frankie Martinez is a Miamian.) In a techno town like this Moxi's members will need a special supply of moxie, and perhaps Moxie, to avoid losing their soxies.

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