Burning Airplanes

Imagine, if you will: Your four-year-old band has released its second record and is touring the country to support it. As you drive to your show in New York City, police stop your van before you enter Manhattan because of heightened security. The officers ask about your business on the island. “We’re in a band that has a show here tonight,” you say. The officers, eyeing the van carefully, ask your band’s name. And you have to tell them, “Burning Airlines.”
Do you honestly think they would care it comes from a Brian Eno song?
“ The whole time I didn’t even think about our name,” says J. Robbins, guitarist and vocalist for Burning Airlines, of the September 11th attacks. The band, which hails from terror-stained Washington D.C., had a show in Tempe, Ariz., that night. “I was just like, ‘Shit, what is happening?’ And then Ben, our guitarist, actually brought it up. We were talking about whether to play, and he kind of gave me this real deadpan look and said, ‘Our name is Burning Airlines.’ We all just kind of went, ‘Oh no.’”
Many bands found their touring routines complicated by the attacks on September 11, but with the images of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center painfully burned into the minds of all Americans, J. Robbins and company found themselves in an uncomfortable place.