A Good Name for a Rock Band: Difference between revisions
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== "The" Bands ==
The most timeless of band names, this style of band naming transcends genre and is enduringly popular. Probably because of The Beatles. You can't usually tell a lot about how a band will sound if its called The Whatever. Sometimes a joke will be made about someone being out of touch with modern music by having them add a "The" to a band name that does not usually take a "The," such as "The Led Zeppelins" or "The Alkaline Trio." (In a case of [[Truth in Television]], Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, Scorpions, Ben Folds Five and others often suffer this. Inverted by [[The Prodigy]], as many people think the band name is Prodigy.<ref>
It should be pointed out, however, that "The Plural Nouns" would be a really great name for a band. Some guys on ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' forum have decided to name their imaginary band that, for the record.
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*** There's also a similar case in the form of a band called :(.
*** For related reasons, the band name "Brazilian Girls" is pretty awesome whether you find a webpage devoted to the band or not.
***
*** The rapper A+ was widely reported to have named himself thus ''precisely'' to make it a hard search term (specifically on [[Digital Piracy Is Evil|Napster]]).
*** And then there's [http://bash.org/?514353 this], of course...
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* Clark Kent and his Supermen (from ''The Illuminatus! Trilogy'')
* In ''[[The Dresden Files]],'' the main character Harry jokingly regards the local werewolf gang's name (Billy and the Alphas/Werewolves) as a bad 70's band name.
** He later gives Nicodemus and the Denarians a similar name in ''[[Turncoat]]''
* Little Tommy and the Underhill Gang from [[Esther Friesner]]'s suburban fantasy novel ''[[Elf Defense]]''.
* Bennie and the Jets from the Elton John song of the same name.
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* ? and the Mysterians. Yes, you read that right.
* There's actually a ''country'' named like this: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
** Now ''that'' is
* [[Huey Lewis and the News]]
* Paul Revere & The Raiders
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* Buddy Wasisname and The Other Fellers
* Diana Ross and The Supremes started off as a The Band until one of them took center stage.
* Johnny and the Self Abusers, a somewhat obscure Scottish punk band from the late '70s. They split up and some of them became The Cuban Heels. The others? Well, they went on to form a much less obscure
* Gerry and the Pacemakers
* Alison Krauss & The Union Station
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** There's also the much more likely story of them wanting a cool name, but, not thinking that "Wasp" was cool enough, punctuating the shit out of it.
** In 1970s/early 80s heavy metal, punctuation was second only to the [[Heavy Metal Umlaut]] for badass typography.
* [[REM]] (Rapid Ear
* [[Slayer]]'s 1994 album ''[[Divine Intervention]]'' gives them a backronym: Satan Laughs As You Eternally Rot.
* [[KISS]]' name has been most famously backronymized as "Knights In Satan's Service", though Gene Simmons of KISS usually points out that he's Jewish and that it stands for "that thing you do with your mouth").
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* MxPx started out as Magnified Plaid, which was abbreviated to M.P. for the band's posters. However, drummer Yuri Ruley's handwriting rendered the periods as x's, so MxPx stuck.
* S-K-O, a short-lived country band. It was first Schuyler, Knobloch and Overstreet, but that proved unwieldy so they became S-K-O. After Overstreet left, it became S-K-B when Craig Bickhardt took over.
* [[MGMT]]
* VNV
* 'NSYNC, whose meaning is identical to the ENOZ example above.
* XTC, a 70's and 80's new wave band from England. It doesn't actually stand for anything and is not a reference to ecstasy (well, not the drug anyway, which wasn't even known as that when they formed).
* PIL -- [[Public Image Ltd]].
*
* U.D.O. -- Udo Dirkschneider's solo band after he left [[Accept]]. The acronym has no real meaning.
*
*
* OD TAPO
* S.O.D. -- Stormtroopers Of Death
** M.O.D. -- Method Of Destruction (Billy Milano fronts both, and clearly picked similar initials to his earlier band on purpose)
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* REO Speedwagon, named for [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/ReoSpeedWagon1917-cropped-thumb.jpg an early pickup truck-type vehicle], made by the REO Motor Car Company.
** REO Speedealer, whose name parodied the above band... until REO Speedwagon themselves forced them to drop the "REO" part.
*
* M.D.C. - standing variously for Millions Of Dead Cops, Millions of Damn Christians, Multi-Death Corporations, etc
* D.A.F. - Deutsch Amerikansiche Freundschaft (which is German for "German American Friendship").
*
* WULYF - It's pronounced "woo life", but also stands for "World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation".
* Run DMC - Darryl [[Mc Daniels]], or if you go by their lyrics, Devastating Mike Control.
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* Therapy? - The question mark initially got into their band name when member Andy Cairns misaligned their name while designing cover art, then used the punctuation to try and cover this up.
* !.T.O.O.H.!. (yep them again)
* !!!, pronounced chk-chk-chk) <ref>
* ¡Forward, Russia! -- Confusing Spain with Russia since 2004.
* Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Originally named "Godspeed You Black Emperor!", they changed the location of the exclamation point to reflect the original placement in the title of the Japanese biker gang movie from which they took their name.
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== Grossout/Blasphemy Names ==
What's the most offensive or controversial word you can think of? Well, it would make a great name for a metal band. It's usually quite extreme (often Scandanavian) metal bands that adopt [[Intentionally Awkward Title
=== Grossout/Blasphemy Names ===
* Parodied in the White Wolf Game Studio supplements ''ReignofEvil.com'' and ''Revelations of the Dark Mother''. The former (a satire of the Scandinavian [[Black Metal]] scene - with [[Darker and Edgier|Satanic supervillians]]!) featured mock album reviews of bands called Painsqualler, Buttcannon, Flesh Blanket (a German band) and Shaken Baby Syndrome. The SBS reference ties back to the earlier ''Revelations''; in that book, the Lilith-cultist poet Patricia de la Forge had gained fame as the founder of Shaken Baby Syndrome. ("Patricia de la Forge," incidentally, sounds and reads like a satiric reference to Punk poet Patti Smith.)
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=== Band Names With Numbers Examples ===
* Fictional example: The One-ders from ''That Thing You Do!''. The fact that spelling out the number caused confusion as to the pronunciation of the name was a [[Running Gag]]. "It's the O-NEEDERS!"
*
* The Matt Kurz One (instead of just "Matt Kurz")
* Plus One might be an interesting side note, at
* [[U2]] (named after a plane)
* 3 (Keith Emerson, Robert Berry and Carl Palmer)
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** Their [[Spin-Off]] successors, the even younger S Club Juniors, went the opposite route and renamed themselves S Club 8 when they'd grown up a bit and the original act split. Two members are now in "The-band" girl group The Saturdays.
* [[Nine Inch Nails]], though the nine is always spelled out.
*
* 10 Masked Men
* 10 Years
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* [[Music/Thirty Eight Special|.38 Special]]
* [[Crush 40]] (The makers of many of the Rock Songs in the 3D Sonic games including [[Sonic Adventure|Open Your Heart]] and [[Sonic Adventure 2|E.G.G.M.A.N]])
*
* Sum 41 lampshaded this in one of their videos, in they pretended that [[Executive Meddling]] led to their band changing their name because "numbers are out, and "The" bands are in".
* Level
* (+44)--which makes them a "Punctuation Band Name" as well.
* The B-52's - named after a hairdo that resembles the nose of an airplane. Renamed The B-52s for proper grammar.
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* [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/09192001/ Fermented Banana] from the [[Web Comic]] ''[[Wapsi Square]]'', named after [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/09172001/ an unfortunate mishap] by one of the characters.
** NOTE: These early strips look a bit rough. [[Art Evolution|The art gets a lot better.]]
* Oblivion Folder, from ''[[Dominic Deegan]]''
* Mocked in the [[Reduced Shakespeare Company]]'s "The Bible: The Complete Word of God. Abridged." Where, while talking about the Exodus, this line was quoted. "And the Lord God cursed the wicked serpent to henceforth crawl about on its belly. Presumable, the wicked serpent had legs prior to that; indicating that it was more of a wicked lizard. And the Lord God thought to himself that Wicked Lizard would be a good name for a Heavy Metal Band."
** Possible reference to [[Noise Rock]] band The Jesus Lizard, which is actually named after a type of lizard.
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* The World/Inferno Friendship Society (again)
* Blind Melon (though this is also a play on the name of blues musician Blind Lemon). They could also be named after the Cheech and Chong sketch, "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAw-3ERSIIY Blind Melon Chitlin]".
* Wacky word titles are very common in alt/indie rock; of the top of my head, there's The Architecture in Helsinki, British Sea Power, We Are Scientists, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Jimmy Eat World, Manic Street Preachers, Cats and Cats and Cats, Enter Shikari (bordering on made-up
** One better: There was a Norwegian punk band called "Morten Jørgensen og Spekkhoggerne som fulgte etter danskebåten uten å røre spyet som rant fra ripa", which translates to "Morten Jørgensen [the lead singer] and the killer whales who followed the Denmark ferry without touching the vomit running from the railing".
** System of a Down's name comes from a poem that one of them wrote called "Victims of the Down" (which makes about as much sense).
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=== [[Real Life]] ===
* Fugazi named themselves after a word that guitarist Ian MacKaye found in a book about the Vietnam War. This also counts as an acronym name, as "Fugazi" stands for ''Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In''. Fugazi also happens to be Italian for "fake".<ref>Which might qualify them as a real [[Fake Band]].</ref>
* Sixpence None The Richer: According to Leigh Nash, the main singer, "[i]ts name comes from a book by C. S. Lewis called Mere Christianity. A little boy asks his father if he can get a sixpence—a very small amount of English currency—to go and get a gift for his father. The father gladly accepts the gift and he's really happy with it, but he also realizes that he's not any richer for the transaction. C.S. Lewis was comparing that to his belief that God has given him, and us, the gifts that we possess, and to serve Him the way we should, we should do it humbly—realizing how we got the gifts in the first place."
* Coheed and Cambria (characters in the story line their albums and vocalist Claudio Sanchez's comic, ''[[The Amory Wars]]'', share)
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* Don Knotts Overdrive.
* [[Joy Division]] (from a book they read about [[World War Two]] history-- "joy divisions" were groups of Jewish or Gypsy women that the Nazis kept for... certain purposes)
** Both '''this''' band and its successor ([[New Order]]) having names with Nazi origins (chosen for [[No Such Thing as Bad Publicity|shock value]]) has [[Unfortunate Implications]]. However the substance of the
* Maxïmo Park are named for a park in Cuba
* Mogwai are named after the species of Gizmo in the movie ''Gremlins''
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----
== Special subcategory of bands named after ''one of their own'' songs
=== Named after one of their own songs Examples ===
* [[Black Sabbath]]
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* [[Green Day]]
* Iced Earth
* [[wikipedia:Bad Company|Bad Company]] -- [[wikipedia:Bad Company
* Similarly, Blackfield's first album, Blackfield, contained a song titled Blackfield.
* [[Blind Guardian]]
* Inverted by [[They Might Be Giants]], who wrote a song called "They Might Be Giants", but it went on their third album, ''Flood'', rather than their first album, which was of course called ''[[They Might Be Giants]]''. They were named after a film, not their own song.
* The Shins almost fit this trope: Flake Music, who were essentially The Shins prior to a name change and some switching instruments around, had a song entitled, er, "The Shins".
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* Subverted: [[Restart]]'s [[Signature Song]] is named "Recomeçar" (which translates to "restart", natch), but the band wasn't named after it. It just happened to be a coincidence.
* Schoolyard Heroes
* Nine
* 4Lyn started as Headtrip, but they changed their name after the success of their song "Lyn".
* Angels Of Light were originally supposed to be called The Pleasure Seekers, but the name was already taken, so they simply used the name of one of their songs, "Angels Of Light".
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* VersaEmerge
* [[Nickelback]]
** Came from Mike Kroeger's time working at Starbucks, at which the coffee was priced so that the customer would get a nickel in
*** And the similarity to the words Nickel Bag, slang for a $5 bag of marijuana, [[Sarcasm Mode|is purely coincidental]]
*** Coincidentally, a nickelback is also a term used in American football for an extra (fifth) defensive back, coined by analogy with "quarterback" on the offensive side.
* [[Coldplay]]
* Finntroll
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