[Closed] Band names people don't know they don't understand

pearl jam 🙂

I think if you're including status quo then you can probably also get away with

scissor sisters
dire straits (?)

I only get one of those!

And I don't care!

Keep reading FHM boys

how can you not list "Steely Dan"?

go back and start again

(edit)

i'll add

Duran Duran
Depeche Mode
Heaven 17

pearl jam . S**** s**** 🙂

only one i dont get is pearl jam
i'll add pet shop boys

The Doors

10CC

Uriah Heep
The Boo Radleys
Zuzu's Petals
This mortal coil

Loving spoonful

So is anyone going to give an explanation then ?

From memory, so don't be shy about correcting me if I got these wrong.
Rolling Stones = From Bob Dylan lyrics.
Beatles = apart from the obvious "beat" pun, the insect themed name was inspired by Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
The Doors = The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Heaven 17 = a ficyitious band in the novel A Clockwork Orange
The Straycats = A fictitious band in a film with Ringo Starr and David Essex, I can't remember the title.
Duran Duran = A character in the film Barbarella.

I'm guessing pearl jam is what makes the same necklaces... never thought of that before!

jethro tull

Rubicon

I do know that the 10cc refrence is nor about the amount of erm, man juice according to one of the band members( can't do this without absurd double entendres) it was just an invention by a record company drone. Something short and snappy that people would remember. The " explanation" came ( oh dear) later

Butole surface

Mark, 'surfers' has the same number of letters as 'surface', so its seems your new language isn't just laziness, you're actually incapable of spelling anything. what are you a student of? how do you cope submitting projects if you write them all with thumbs on your mobile?

jethro tull ? seed drill ?
what about mott the hoople ?

I always thought Pearl Jam was a reference to Eddie's great grandmothers jam, mainly because he said it was, but wiki says:

In an early promotional interview, Vedder said that the name "Pearl Jam" was a reference to his great-grandmother Pearl, who was married to a Native American and had a special recipe for peyote-laced jam.[13] In a 2006 Rolling Stone cover story however, Vedder admitted that this story was "total bullshit" (even though he indeed had a great-grandma named Pearl).

instead it is just a reference to jamming.

FFs dude u sownd lik my gramma

if your gramma sounds like an Irish bloke, that might explain a few things innit

Anyone here know the genesis of Pearl Jam. They formed from the remnants of a one off album made in tribute to a mutual friend of the bands Mother Love Bone and Sound Garden, the former lead singer of Mother Love Bone was called Andrew Wood and his nickname was Dog. The tribut album is called 'Temple of the Dog'. If you're a Pearl Jam fan and don't know about this album seek it out as it's utterly brilliant.

Eartha Kitt ? 😆

I have always wondered which is the correct genesis of

REM

FFs dude u sownd lik my gramma

I do hope not, your grammar is appalling.

Unless the band has been invented by Simon Cowell, it is almost inevitably full of smartarses who are determined to select a clever name for their band by a process of try-hard cultural referencing. 🙂

And [i]Butole surface[/i] is a really good effort. 😉

Datz rite

Spear of Destiny
the levellers

Apart from the Datz (hoo iz jeany-us innit), is this a convention of the sort of music fan that 6Music desperatly wished it had more of (but thankfully doesn't)?

So is everyone else going to carry on smugly listing band names without an explanation as if they are some sort of in joke that no one else gets ?

The Levellers = A movement during the English Civil War that promoted equality for all people rather than being ruled by parliament or monarchy.

UB40

[i]So is everyone else going to carry on smugly listing band names[/i]

Yes. Yes, they are. 🙂

Take That
East 17
Boyzone

kiss my arse you fascist love slaves !!!!

UB40 = A WW2 German submarine, famed for the a cappella harmonies of it's crew.
Take That = The name of the Indian restaurant where the band members played their first gig.
East 17 = The grid reference of the bands home town
Boyzone = A [i]gentlemen's interest[/i] magazine.

status quo- no change
the pogues- used to be called pogue ma hone gaelic for kiss my ar5e
joy division- think this was nazi sex workers
New model army- wasnt this Oliver cromwells army?
scissor sisters- lesbial sexual position
Uriah heep- character in a Dickens novel
Boo Radley- Anti hero in To kill a mockingbird (one of the best books ever IMO)
Rubicon- think this refers to a river crossed as a point of no return by Caesars army (and what about Styx)
Spear of destiny- ? the spear used to pierce christs side on the cross
UB40- Signing on card
E17- Bands postcode

And i always thought pet shop boys was gay slang but im not so sure now

The Thompson Twins = Two characters in the Tin Tin comics.

Level 42

eritrky love how folk think they know one then it turns out to have been fabricated by NME etc.

Loosers!

Level 42

seriously, love how folk think they know one then it turns out to have been fabricated by NME etc.

Loosers!

Why do we have to 'understand' anyway? Can't we just listen to the music, or is that just too mainstream? 😉

Led Zeppelin = Some sort of pun on going down like a lead balloon, however, as "The Who Live at Leeds", meaning a live performance, not recorded, often got mispronounced as if the Who lived in Leeds, they deliberately misspelled lead.

Heaven 17 - A band mention in clockwork Orange although I didn't know until I read the book.

Why do we have to 'understand' anyway? Can't we just listen to the music, or is that just too mainstream?

The Corrs = Maybe an urban legend, but the band were being interviewed on the radio and the interviewer must have been working from a stock list of questions because he asked "Where did you all first meet ?"

UB40 = A WW2 German submarine, famed for the a cappella harmonies of it's crew.

I was about to go, "no, no, no...it was a form that you had to fill in....", then I read the rest.

I thought Dire Straits was just a reference to how flippin' broke they were when they were starting out. Is there something I don't know about Dire Straits?

Any advances on Steely Dan (and please [i]know[/i] it, don't just google/wiki it)?

Maximo Park = Maximo Gomez Park in Havanna Cuba
Siouxsie & the Banshees because Susan Janet Ballion & the Banshees sounded a bit crap

Why can't we just have a thread without asking why we have to have a thread ?

That's, like, reeeaaaallly deeeeeep.....man....

Steely Dan was an instrument of torture in either a Clockwork Orange or the Naked Lunch I forget which

Why can't we just have a thread without asking why we have to have a thread ?

That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking why we have to understand the band name. Is it just so we seem cooler...?

I'll not google any, and im not precious about music, I just like trivia.
Someone give us steely dan then?
Edit- gotta be quick round here)

The Rolling Stones pre-dated the Bob Dylan track.

Spandau Ballet................

Arab Strap

OK, to try to give a more serious reply, why try to understand anything ?
If a band chooses a name with a meaning, then why not try to understand that meaning ?
If the name was inspired by another band or a book, then maybe, if you like one, you will also like the other.

Anyway, I found this...
http://library.thinkquest.org/4626/rock.htm
...which kind of makes this thread redundant.

[i]Any advances on Steely Dan [/i]

Steam powered giant metal d!ldo 😯

Deacon Blue is the name of a Steely Dan track.

Choclate Girl is the name of a Deacon Blue track

The Rolling Stones pre-dated the Bob Dylan track.

The Levellers are good guys. Saw 2-3 gigs in a row on a tour (not as a fan) and all of the gigs were sold out and *everyone* in the crowd seemed to have a great time. They also provided the Urban75 guys with their first modem (back when modems cost a lot of money) and they did a lot of work with Schnews (www.schnews.org.uk).

Rolling Stones comes from a Muddy Waters track

I met an italian who said he loved 'the bristol sound' and was a big fan of Porti Shed. Took me a while to figure out who he meant.

Anyone here know the genesis of Pearl Jam. They formed from the remnants of a one off album made in tribute to a mutual friend of the bands Mother Love Bone and Sound Garden, the former lead singer of Mother Love Bone was called Andrew Wood and his nickname was Dog. The tribut album is called 'Temple of the Dog'. If you're a Pearl Jam fan and don't know about this album seek it out as it's utterly brilliant.

Just gave it a go on Spotify and I thought it was pretty pants.
Occasional flashes of better stuff, but it mainly sounded very dated and flat.

Sorry.

Van der Graaf Generator ( a bit of an acquired taste).

Van der Graaf Generator

At a guess, are they named after a Van der Graaf generator? Cunning.

arab strap -- anyone know that one then ?

YEp, but it's not safe for work

Keeps u up longer supposedly

New Model Army is indeed the name of Cromwell's army. So links there with the Levellers. Whom I saw on the next table to us in a pub in Oxford once a long time ago.

Now when I was a kid my sister liked Wet Wet Wet, and that is apparently a quote from some other song (forget who) that says 'my eyes were wet, wet with tears' and they thought wet wet was a bit short so they extended it. Crap, but that's the one I know.

I heard that the Stones got their name from the Dylan track, but it's also a long standing proverb (a rolling stone gathers no moss). That line also appears in a Buddy Holly track called Early in the Morning.. don't ask me how I know that, as Buddy Holly died a long long time ago 😉 before I was born.

Stiff Little Fingers - From a Vibrators song....

The Mothers of Invention - 'cos Mothers was deemed as being short for something rude - so by necessity they became the Mothers of Invention....

Monster Magnet - from a Zappa track

Bob Dylan - from Dylan Thomas probably

Captain Beefheart from what his Uncle said what 'meat' looked like 'looks just like a beef heart'

AC/DC - not because of liking boys and girls they say...

Queen - because Freddie was probably

[i]I thought Dire Straits was just a reference to how flippin' broke they were when they were starting out. Is there something I don't know about Dire Straits?[/i]

I understood the name came from one of Mark Knopflers' teachers commentating that if he carried on playing the guitar rather than studying he'd end up "in dire straights"

U2 obviously from the spyplane, did I hear a story that they were going to call themselves SR71, or did I make that up?

Asobi Seksu, any-one?

Guns N Roses....

I as told it was slang for male & female privates, respectively.....

Guns N Roses....

I as told it was slang for male & female privates, respectively.....

IIRC it was an amalgamation of the band members previous bands. LA Guns and another one I can't remember but it had Rose in the name although it may be a spin off from Axl.

On that topic, anyone know how he came up with Axl Rose 😉

"Showaddywaddy"
nuff said

If not already mentioned - Led Zep

So named because Jimmy Page played Keith Moon some early demos and Keith commented that the music was far to heavy and it would go down like a lead balloon.

Black Sabbath - A horror film with Boris Karloff

Dexy's midnight runners - a reference to the amphetamine Dexadrine which was popular with Northern Soul Types

The "Eagles of Death Metal" is quite a good one

The band were in a bar - where a very drunk man was moshing to the jukebox playing "Winds of Change" by the Scorpians

He got heckled for this - to which the drunk took objection - insisting that The Scorpians were "Death Metal"

Someone in the band comes back with the line "If the Scorpians are Death Metal, they're the Eagles of Death Metal"

haven't read the whole thread - so sorry if this is done already

Bu "Moloko" is the milky drink the Droogs have in the club in "A Clockwork Orange"

rkk01 - Member
I have always wondered which is the correct genesis of

REM

REM stands for rapid eye movement and I think it's what your eyes do whilst you are dreaming

To answer the above Q:

axl rose is an anagram of oral sex

Which sums up a lot of what i think about the man himself.

Motorhead = speedfreak (as in amphetamines, rather than driving quickly... 😉 ).

Stiff Little Fingers - From a Vibrators song....