He cried with joy over the opportunity to tell readers that even
a dull rock critic ina disparate world knows a little about World War I."When I first heard about Franz Ferdinand, I nearly cried with joy. Pop music is a disparate world. Consensus is hard to come by. But this band ... well, I was pretty sure people of all colors and creeds would rise up as one in hatred of it. Franz Ferdinand is a Scottish foursome that started playing together after a lengthy argument about the essence of art. The name is a tribute to the archduke whose assassination triggered World War I ..." TIME, March 15.
"When a band names itself after the Austrian archduke whose assassination helped trigger World War I, you know the group probably has a wry, somewhat arty perspective [and that I, as a rock critic, cried with joy over the opening to use this in the lede]... " Los Angeles Times, March 5
"Franz Ferdinand, named for the Austro-Hungarian archduke whose assassination is typically blamed for setting off World War I, has already become a force on the British pop charts..." Boston Globe, March 24.
"Named cheekily for the Austro-Hungarian archduke whose assassination set off World War I, Franz Ferdinand at least brings a sense of tuneful humor to the crowded post-punk revival, unlike, say, the mopey enervation of the Strokes." Washington Times, March 9
From the apex of journalism:
"Now from Scotland comes Franz Ferdinand with a self-titled debut on Domino. The group is named after the Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire whose murder..." New York Times, Feb. 22.
"Even before Hardy and Kapranos came to hear of a racehorse called The Archduke, which started a long conversational tangent about another Archduke - the First World War catalyst - that eventually spawned their band's name ('imagine being someone whose death brought such an amazing change in the world...'" The Independent, January 23
"Who was that Archduke whose assassination triggered World War I again?" BBC, January 8
"A few stops down the line and Franz Ferdinand - no relation to the assassinated Archduke - emerges on a rainy Charing Cross Road in the city center. It couldn't be more apt: the band's rise from the underground- music scene has been faster than any London tube-station escalator." TIME Europe, February 2
"...the fact that Franz Ferdinand have arrived with much the same force as their archduke namesake left this world only serves to help them live up to the hype..." Designerpunk, September 2
"They namecheck an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat and once played illegal warehouse gigs using sunbeds for lighting. Franz Ferdinand tell Leon McDermott about their unusual path to critical and chart success..."
"Not bad for a band named after a dead Austrian Archduke..." -- The Sunday Herald, February 1.
"The group, that is, not the ill-fated Austrian archduke whose 1914 assassination touched off the first world war. Evidently, there's been some confusion surrounding the origins of the name, which actually came from a horse..."
"You'd imagine that most people would know about the archduke, but occasionally an odd situation arises..." -- New Toronto, February 19
"Franz Ferdinand, no relation to the late archduke, are a quintet of rakish Glaswegian art-schoolers whose best songs sound like the Strokes if they'd been raised on Mark E. Smith and Bowie instead of the Velvets and Television." -- Boston Phoenix, February 19.
"Clever and witty art-pop that, as ... someone once put it, puts the arch into Archduke..." -- some blog
― George Smith, Tuesday, 9 March 2004 18:00 (twenty-two years ago)
three months pass...