Band Names, where do they come from

10cc is the average amount of sperm produced on ejaculation.

Steely Dan was a brand of dildo.

Grateful Dead was a phrase in Webster's dictionary that appealed to Garcia.

"All systems are perfectly designed to get the results they get."

My favourite is Matching Mole, which is kind-of French for Soft Machine. Worth thinking about.

malcolm

I think they usually come from very stupid pub conversations, or from last minute just-about-to-go-on-stage-shit-what-are-we-called moments.

The Cure was supposed to mean the cure for death, or the cure for pop music. Robert could never remember which.

Check these out:

worst band names

I must say "The Fat Chick from Wilson Phillips Band" wouldn't be bad if s/he had included an apostrophe in the right place.

I won't speculate on were these names came from. Tim's hypothesis seems plausible. I suspect that a simple syntax engine with a random word generator might also be behind some of these.

Probably the worst band name in my personal collection is "Trapdoor Fucking Exit", which is a Swedish punk band.

The worst I can remember was Anal C**t, a Japanese hardcore band (or were they from Boston?). Anyone recall them? They might still be going for all I know.

There was also a New York band in the late 70s called the Sic Fucs. Quite aggressive if my memory serves me right.

Isn't it interesting how some of the worst bands have the worst names too?

Gaye Bykers on Acid was a dreadful name for a dreadful band in the late 80s.

Wheatus - crap, meaningless name for a crap band who write crap, meaningless annoying songs.

Genesis is a nicely ponderous, portentuous and pretentious name for a band whose music shared those very same dubious qualities.

Still, it's not all bad. My fave band name has to be Those Naughty Lumps, who put out a John Peel fave in 1979 (on Zoo Records) called "Iggy Pop's Jacket" (chorus: "I touched Iggy Pop's jacket/It was made out of leather/Iggy Pop's jacket/Coulda worn it forever!").

"Resigning themselves to a career of obscurity simply by virtue of their name, Fuck formed in Oakland, California in 1993 after band members Timmy Prudhomme (vocals), Kyle Statham (guitar, violin), Ted Ellison (bass, piano) and Geoff Soule (drums) became fast friends while detained in a police holding cell. Establishing their home base on the other side of the bay in San Francisco..." etc.

VERY original.

Cheese

The most unusual thing about Fuck is that with such a "we're never going to sell out" name you expect them to be some kind of experimental noise merchants who sing about santanic worship and child sacrifice or something. In reality they play perfectly pleasant 60s tinged indie-pop.

Matthew

Tony Levin ended up making notes of "interesting" names for potential bands to put in a list in case he needed one in a hurry. Some are good, some less so... If you ever see a gig from a scratch band called "Godzuki the mini series" then it could be the bassist is bald and has a moustache, or probably more likely someone in the band read Tony's list and couldn't think of anything either!

When he toured with his own outfit this year I must say I thought "The Tony Levin Band" was a bit of a cop-out...

A couple of "we just said anything and it stuck" famous ones are the Rolling Stones and Jethro Tull. Pink Floyd was from first names of a couple of Syd's favourite obscure bluemen (Anderson Council wouldn't have worked so well, I think).

CSNY is quite handy as you can tell at a glance if they're CSN without the Y and thus even less worthy of your time...

Pete.

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I must say "The Fat Chick from Wilson Phillips Band" wouldn't be bad if s/he had included an apostrophe in the right place.

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where would that apostrophe go ... as the band was called 'Wilson Phillips' ?

There's a band that I see on gig posters around Brighton called 'Anal Beard'.

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where would that apostrophe go ... as the band was called 'Wilson Phillips' ?

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I was reading the whole thing as a definite description. So she needs either an apostrophe or an article ("... from THE Wilson Phillips Band", as with ".... from the Elliot Smith Band").

You could also read it as a single noun phrase thus: "The Fat Chick from 'Wilson Phillips' Band". In that case she's missing quotation marks or, alternatively, italics.

"Fuck" is apparently losing its, err, cachet, which might yet leave the band of that name with a future, in spite of their best efforts. From today's news:

Expletive Deleted

Never went to the gigs but a couple of times I've seen fliers in London for a band called 'Little Willie Complex and the Inferiors'

V. clever eh?

Jonathan

Just curious -- how does someone in, IIRC, Austin come to be reading The Guardian?

Matthew

Matthew,

I'm formerly of Austin, now of Mobile Alabama, which is very, very different.

Apropos of band names, "fuck", and Austin, there is a club in Austin called "Emos". It's a favorite of speed metal, thrash, and punk acts. There used to be an Austin band called "Fuck Emos". Improbably, they played regularly at Emos. (I'm now wondering, should they have been called "Fuck 'Emos'"?) Other regulars at Emos included "Thigh Master" and "Blort".

There was another Austin act composed of three cute girls called "Apple Jacks". At one show they were heckeled endlessly about their name. "Apple Jacks" is the name of a cereal, and between every song, the audience would begin singing the commercial jingle, "'A' is for 'apple', 'J' is for 'jack'" (this is perhaps familiar only to North Americans of a certain age). A week later the band changed their name to "Pork". A move from bad to worse, IMO.

Re: The Guardian. The pickings are slim nowadays. One takes what one can get.

Eri

Austin definitely sounds like my sort of place.

"Re: The Guardian. The pickings are slim nowadays. One takes what one can get"

You mean there isn't a Mobile Dispatch to peruse whilst eating your grits?

Matthew

So check it out, the Fuckemos (I stand corrected) were at one time called "Warthog 2001 UK". Sometimes the world just seems so small and cosy, doesn't it?

Matthew, you yourself can read the Mobile Register here.

Ah, the 1980's .....

/dl

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Can anyone remember Wang Chung?

What happened to them? And what does the name mean?

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I seem to remember that the original spelling 'Huang Chung' was the phonesis of the Chinese phrase for 'perfect pitch'. The moniker was encumbered by an unintuitive spelling that would prove difficult to find in alphabetized record bins.

Ron
Dum spiro audio
Dum audio vivo

I bought the new LP by 'Jackie O Motherfucker' yesterday.

The band (American) called themselves that to ensure they could never sell our as corporate rock whores.

Middle aged mid western american women have been known to faint at the very mention of thier name!

There were a whole series of 45's on Absurd records, where all the groups had daft names like '48 Chairs', 'Gerry and the Holograms', 'Blah Blah Blah' and others

What about pre-Simple Minds "Johnny and the Self-Abusers"? I think a retrun to Jim's roots is called for.

Panasonic had the change thier name to Pansonic because of the electrical giant being worried the consumer would confuse a record by avant garde Finnish duo with a food mixer.

Another good one was the pre-Underworld band "Freur' (remember Doot-Doot?) whose name was was a long squiggle on the sleeves and labels, but they had to make it into english letters on the charts and listings.

Or my involvement in the music scene, in groups such as "The Far Coughs" (say it out loud) or "Sanity Sanity", or "The Interesting Tents" ?

DS

ITD Kylie - KylieFever2002

IIRC wasn't the name chosen to represent the bands rather unusual and affected guitar sound?

Favourite daft band names though?

How about

This Bike is a Pipebomb

Feeling Unusually Calm in Kevlar

Zulu Leprachauns

Girl Scout Heroin

P

(Don't tell me. You've everything they ever recorded no doubt ]-)

OTD - Mighty Sparrow - Sparrow in Hi-FI (1959 Calypso&Songs)

[This message was edited by P on THURSDAY 21 November 2002 at 21:56.]

A killer name wasted on a crappy band.

As for album names, Canadian pub rockers the Headstones new album The Oracle of Hi-Fi

reminded me of something...

Pronounced "Wazo Fish", go figure.
Remember them Rico?

Simon

Just found this (bored at work)

www.screachen.com/rockstuf/bandname/bandname.html

Simon

Some friends of mine had a band called The Band of Hope and Glory

cheers

Nigel