Best band name?

Great names and great bands don't necessarily go together.

Made the charts: Strawberry Alarm Clock

Obscure but funny: MC 900 Foot Jesus, Ned's Atomic Dustbin.

Local: Avogadro's Number

Mothers of Invention and Level 42.

Butthole Surfers

Nirvana (can't believe nobody used it before them)

I totally saw Avagadro's number perform as the live soundtrack to a play called "Hellcab".

Munson wrote:

Nirvana (can't believe nobody used it before them)

Actually, Nirvana was originally a band formed in 1967 in the UK, a band that very few people had heard of. When the "other" Nirvana hit it big in the 90's, the original Nirvana sued, but it was settled and Kurdt and company got to keep the name.

La Musica wrote:

Mothers of Invention and Level 42.

Sorry to be a dick and to keep correcting people, but the band was just called the Mothers. The record company made them use Mothers of Invention because they thought the term Mothers alone was offensive, according to Zappa's autobiography.

Speaking of obscure, does anybody know where these bands got their names? (Hint, two are from films and one is from a book, name the films/book and the band name reference) Duran Duran, Heaven Seventeen, Steely Dan.

I also liked Mothers of Invention. I always thought Yes was a good name. I was never fond of the city/locale names (Boston, Chicago, Kansas, etc. with the exception of UK). A nice play on words/letters was XTC. I was in a band in college called "Mother Duck". The next band I have, I'm calling "Hypnotic Voodoo Hamsters".

When Bob Dylan went electric he toured with a group of guys and they kept getting referred to as Bob Dylan and the band... they wound up calling themselves The Band.

In a related vein, a regional band in VA/NC/DC area, when asked what their name was, kept saying they were "in decision" on the subject... eventually called themselves Indecision.

Another one, semi-fictional, is Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

There's a band out there (don't know anything about 'em) called Drunken Boat... which, I can only guess, is from Rimbaud's collection of the same name.

Similarly, I think there's a band called Tripmaster Monkey after Maxine Hong Kingston's book of the same name.

[quote]JimFiore wrote:

Speaking of obscure, does anybody know where these bands got their names? (Hint, two are from films and one is from a book, name the films/book and the band name reference) Duran Duran, Heaven Seventeen, Steely Dan.

Duran Duran is named after a character in the movie "Barbarella" starring Jane Fonda.

Steely Dan is from a book... I wanna say "A Clockwork Orange" or something like that...

JimFiore wrote:

Speaking of obscure, does anybody know where these bands got their names? (Hint, two are from films and one is from a book, name the films/book and the band name reference) Duran Duran, Heaven Seventeen, Steely Dan.

Duran Duran was the name of a character in Barbarella.

Heaven Seventeen was the name of a band in the music store that Alex picked up two young babes in A Clockwork Orange.

Steely Dan was the name of a huge dildo in William Burrough's book Naked Lunch.

Jim Croce

Whatever.

Bleach wrote:

Heaven Seventeen was the name of a band in the music store that Alex picked up two young babes in A Clockwork Orange.

Steely Dan was the name of a huge dildo in William Burrough's book Naked Lunch.

Damn... I mixed 'em up... shoulda know it was Burroughs for Steely Dan. Didn't know the Heaven 17 one but funny that I mentioned Clockwork Orange anyway!

I like Built to Spill as a name.

Best rap name? Easy: Robert De Negro

The Libertines

Sweep the leg Johnny--I have no idea what they sound like but that is a pretty funny name. Of course the title of the thread is "best" so it would be hard to argue with "The Band" as best band name.

1000 Homo DJ's

10,000 Metric Tons of Rock

The Who