Pop Will Eat Itself (not what you think)

Oh, and my favourite, for the record, is either Pulp (Arabacus Pulp, some kind of commodity on the stock market apparently) or Pixies (picked at random from a dictionary by Joey Santiago, as I recall).

Exactly! But why is that? It's not like it isn't a good film, but to align yr band with it (and the adherent lifestyle) seems horribly, punchably desperate.

Likewise, the appearance of Hepburn and, to a letter extent, The Drowners, made me reach for the keys to the gun cabinet...Steely Dan, somehow, isn't offensive at all...perhaps just obscure/cred/initially incomprehensible enough for it not to grate.

I await with interest the appearance of Strummer (Louis Walsh's answer to Deep Blue Something) and Turquoise Hexagon Sun (anonymous indie drummer goes glitch with hilarious consequences).

Who would have thought it?

Next up, Howard Donald reveals he coined the name Take That after watching Umberto Eco's "Accidental Death Of An Anarchist"...

That's my experience, therefore the only thought I give a band name is "Oh, that sounds good" or "Oh, that sounds crap" because that's usually the level of thought that the band themselves have given it.

We'll see if I really do end up calling my next band "The Phantom Phingertip" after all.

I've never been fond of the b-movie titles, especially budget horror films (e.g. My Bloody Valentine, 10,000 Maniacs). I would say I wasn't fond of the mid-90s alterna-rock "common household items likely to be found in kitchens" trend (Sugar, Flour, Ammonia, Spoon) but it's incredibly fun to make jokes about, so it's served a purpose. The last time I tried to make a joke about this somewhere on ILE my parody example turned out to be an actual mid-90s alterna-rock band.

Still the bass player had previously been in a band that were forced to call themselves the Swords Charlie Don't Surf as they were from Swords and there were at least 2 other bands in Dublin called Charlie Don't Surf.

Still I never found another Flying Paxo Twins, because obviously its a crap name.

errr... there are LOADS more but I can't remember them off my head...

you actually got one of those right.

See, those are all great names! But maybe if I had a clue what the Illuminatus! trilogy was, I might not think so...argh, it's so complex!

nb I always thought KLF stood for Kings of Low Frequency? Or was that another Drummond/Cauty pisstake on LFO's po-facedness or something..?

Read Illuminatus. Everybody should.

Sonic Youth is a really terrible band name when you stop to think about it.

I think Yaphet Kotto is an awesome band name, especially since most fans of the band probably don't know its origins. Naming your punk band after politicians, though, is a quick way to make me hate you. (Dead Kennedys being an exception, mostly because they were one of the bands that got me into punk in the first place. If I had never heard of them until this very moment, I would probably shun them for having such a shite name.)

Sadly, 'death & dismemberment' insurance isn't uncommon in real life; my old high school actually sent home forms to our parents so they would be insured if we were dismembered or killed in school. You actually receive more money if you lose all of your limbs than if you die. I wonder what quadraplegics think of that... being considered worse off than a dead man.

the more i think about it, i'm sure KLF meant tons of things, much like EMF was open to interpretation. I like bands who use acronyms but won't disclose what they stand for, it's FUN.

Bus as an aside, I thought Bentley Rhythm Ace was a great name til I noticed its acronym...idiots.

I really rather like Pam's Tan as a name, but it was in fact, as you mentioned, Black Car. The others were Upstairs and The Book Lovers (although Accidentals was also considered)..

This reminds me, Hot Water Music were named after the Bukowski book.

I quite dislike the "twee" band names, Talulah Gosh and Field Mice and Another Sunny Day. But they absolutely serve their purpose, which is to attract certain people and repel others. They reveal something of the contours of the genre and its limitations.

Godflesh, simillarly, used to call themselevs Fall of Because, also a Killing Joke song (and originally an allusion to Aleister Crowley's writings, I do believe.)

Sisters of Mercy, according to Baron Andrew Von Eldritch, was not named after the order of cut-the-crap nuns as one might immediately suspect, but rather from the title of a Leonard Cohen song about prostitutes.

Cringe-worthy industrial goons, Spahn Ranch, are named after a one-time Manson Family compound, which they probably learned from Vince Bugliosi's book, "Helter Skelter."

Equally cringe-worthy, bald, meatnecked nu-metal band, Mad Parade, take their name from a line in the Pistols' "God Save the Queen."

Bentley Rhythm Ace are named after the Bentley 'Rhythm Ace' drum machine...