Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Name That Tune

Been wondering about band names …

Lynyrd Skynyrd, http://lynyrdskynyrdhistory.com/faq.html#b, named themselves after Leonard Skinner, a coach who punished two band members in high school for their long hair. The band explained y’s were substituted for the vowels “to protect the guilty.”

Pink Floyd,  http://www.pinkfloydstyle.com/pinkfloydinglese.htm, was named after two blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. More logical than you might have guessed, right?

Nine Inch Nails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails. Trent Reznor says he chose the name because it “abbreviated easily” to NIN and not for any meaning. This article quotes Reznor: “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to think of band names, but usually you think you have a great one and you look at it the next day and it’s stupid … It’s a curse trying to come up with band names.”

Cage The Elephant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_the_Elephant . Awww, I thought this band got its name from Horton Hears A Who. Nope, it got its name from a connect-the-dots drawing on a cereal box.

The Arctic Monkeys, http://www.nme.com/news/arctic-monkeys/60048, don’t even like their name, reporting that they are embarrassed to say it when asked. One member had the name picked, at age 15, before they ever started the band.

Modest Mouse, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Mouse, got its name from Virginia Woolf who wrote of  modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.”

Gorillaz, http://www.reddit.com/r/showerthoughts/comments/36atp6/the_name_of_the_band_gorillaz_is_a_pun_because_a/,  the virtual/cartoon band, got its name when its musical creator, Damon Albarn, also of the band Blur, was dissed by Liam Gallagher of Oasis. An interviewer compared the competition between Blur and Oasis in the ‘90s as like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the ‘60s, to which Gallagher replied that Albarn was more like “the fucking Monkees.” 

Wow, someone beat me to all this. For more, look here.

No comments:

Post a Comment