A Good Name for a Rock Band: Difference between revisions

* Psycho & The Birds, a Guided By Voices side-project. Of course they're actually just named after ''[[Psycho (Film)|Psycho]]'' and ''[[The Birds (Film)|The Birds]]''.

* Fitz And The Tantrums. While their name is pun-based, they do have a frontman named Michael Fitzpatrick.

* Hunx and his Punx

* The Mamas & The Papas, whose name overlaps with the "The" bands.

* Kinki Kids (Unintentionally in this case, as Kinki refers to the area of Japan both members come from; good luck explaining that after you've said the name out loud though)

* Cattle Decapitation

* [[Judas Priest (Music)|Judas Priest]] are probably the [[Trope Maker]] here. (Although the initial inspiration for the name was a Bob Dylan song, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest)

** Judas Priest were preceded by the even more blasphemous [[Black Sabbath (Music)|Black Sabbath]].

* Zero 7

* S Club 7, so named because there were originally 7 members. Once Paul Cattermole left, the "7" was dropped. (Oddly enough, in their various TV shows, they tended to add a "The" in front of their name, but it didn't otherwise appear.)

* [[Nine Inch Nails]], though the nine is always spelled out.

* 10cc -- the name is thought to refer to the amount of sperm in a human ejaculate, but it actually came to one of the members in a dream.

These sorts of band names are often real words within ''some'' context, e.g. science fiction characters, anagrams, or obscure foreign terms. But to most, they just look like weird, made-up words.

== Wacky Word/Referential Bands Examples ==

* We're Certainly Dwarfs from ''[[Discworld|Soul Music]]'', a parody of [[They Might Be Giants]]. The band formerly known as The Whom etc. eventually performs under the name And Supporting Bands.

* Most of the nonsense phrases Dave Barry said "would make a good name for a rock band" (which tended not to be so nonsensical when viewed in context).

** I thought it was pronounced "exterminate, exterminate".

* As I Lay Dying, a reference to the book of the same name by William Faulkner, though this may be a common misconception.

* Hadouken! is actually named as a reference to the [[Kamehame Hadoken|fireball attack]] from the ''[[Street Fighter]]'' games, and include an exclamation mark in their name, so they fall into two categories.

* Kaiser Chiefs (after South African football/soccer team Kaizer Chiefs)

** The Who bass player John Entwistle has also been credited with coming up with this one. There was a split between him and Keith Moon on one side and Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey on the other. They joked about the two of them starting a band with Jimmy, and one of them said "Yeah, that will go over like a lead balloon". John takes credit for this one in one of his last interviews.

*** This is also commonly attributed to Keith Moon.

* The [[Velvet Underground]] is named after a porn novel, specifically one about BDSM.

* [[Rammstein (Music)|Rammstein]] (from the Ramstein airshow disaster)

* Bishop Allen are named after Bishop Allen Drive, a street in Cambridge, Massachusetts that two of the band members used to live on together.

* In what could be considered a variation on Song/Album/Lyric band names, Whirlwind Heat are named after another band's album ''artwork'': The cover to [[Sonic Youth]]'s ''Goo'' includes the text "I stole my sister's boyfriend. It was all whirlwind heat, and flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road.".

* The Airborne Toxic Event take their name from a disaster that occurs in Don DeLillo's novel ''[[White Noise]]'', which also serves as the name of one of the sections of the book.

* Chiodos, named for the directors of ''[[Killer Klowns From Outer Space]]''.

* Alcatrazz

* [[Phish]]: Though they've given other origin stories, the most commonly accepted one is that it's just a misspelled variation on a nickname for their drummer, Jon Fishman.

----

[[Category:Music Tropes]]

[[Category:A Good Name For A Rock Band]]