Best bands with bad names

Can

The Beatles

so far: 1 great name, 1 bad band

beatles: not-the-best-band-on-earth with an ok name

Can is a perfect name

Can: always finf that name boring and too simple as oppose to their music

Prefer "The Can," as it appeared on Monster Movie.

the beatles is a good name!

always thought 'the smiths' was an underwhelming name.

seriously? The Beatles is such a crappy pun.

band names on the whole shdn't strive to be "interesting" imo

The Band

yeah thats bad

tbf, not their choice. They wanted to be called The Crackers.

Phil Collins

agreed on the band -- they should've kept calling themselves the hawks.

My Bloody Valentine

My Bloody Valentine: it's not a bad name per se but it's getting there

roxy music

Roxy Music and My Bloody Valentine are good - maybe great - band names.

didn't mbv wanted to change their name at some point?

A word on band names from Ian Svenonius:

The powerful associative effect of names is often misunderstood. While fondly thought of, mammalian names are a mistake--unless one chooses a mythical beast. A wild animal is a graceful creature that needs no clothes or grooming to look spectacular, and your onlookers--their expectations heightened--will inevitably be disappointed by the oafish onstage display of whatever crew of humanoids you've managed to muster. "Oh dear," they will say, "they are nothing like wolves/foxes/etc." If one hangs sucha name on one's group, one is raising the bar too high.

Male groups with "Girls" in their name have a similar problem. In literature and film, the "girl" represents the reader's/viewer's pure self-image. The audience is supposed to identify with the "girl," who is innocent, brave, artless, attractive, and clever (e.g., Chihiro of Spirited Away, Pippi Longstocking, and Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz). Film noir is predicated on the opposite idea--that audiences like to identify with cynical, morally bankrupt, been-there done-thats. These roles are typically played by middle-aged men with five o'clock shadows (Humphry Bogart, Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum). Most groups now resemble the stars of the noir genre, physically if not sartorially. Bands with "Girl" in their name are almost invariably these kinds of hairy and less attractive men. As a rule, then, males should avoid group names with "Girl."

Oasis
Blur
The Verve
Animal Collective
Broken Social Scene
Fleet Foxes

bad
good
ok
ok
ok
bad

ok bad name cop

jk i guess it's pretty subjective

i'm the judge of bad names!

your thread, you dole out the street justice

~nirvana~

more like okay band, terrible name i guess

fugazi

The Books (not so much a bad name as it is an awkward one to say and an even more awkward one to google)

Joy Division
New Order

Metallica. Horrible name, a great band for a while there.

Fugazi is a decent name but I never thought of a post-punk/hardcore band when I first heard it.

Metallica is hard to think of anything else but metal.

(Insert 90s Load/ReLoad joke here)

Spoon

Joy Division is a great name

The Flying Burrito Brothers

Starving Weirdos

Phew

Oasis
Blur
The Verve
Animal Collective
Broken Social Scene
Fleet Foxes

― brio, Tuesday, August 20, 2013 3:54 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these bands are all much better at names than music

well 'oasis' sort of sucks

dog faced hermans
the flaming lips
mercury rev
pavement

Recently:

1975
Snakadaktal

Most of these names are OK. Roxy Music's a bad name??!?!? WTF?

Can is great. The Can isn't.

Prefab Sprout. I never liked their songs because of their stupid name, even though I like the sort of stuff they did.

Ween

1975 is a really bad name.

What's the relatively recent band whose name is just !!!!! or something? Tried to look it up, pretty ungoogleable.

Moby Grape

off topic and xpost but Tim F is that snakadaktal album worth hearing?

They were originally "Moby Cock" but their label made them change it.

is there at least ONE band that we all can agree about?

Love (arthur lee)

They were originally "Moby Cock" but their label made them change it.

― Treeship, Wednesday, August 21, 2013 9:34 AM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, the label airbrushed the album cover so you couldn't see any cock

(xp) No, that's a good name. Prefab Sprout is silly but, I don't know, it works somehow, ditto Throbbing Gristle.

The The

Neutral Milk Hotel is a pretty dumb name

Moby Grape
--Shart Week (Tarfumes The Escape Goat)

great call imo. for all i know they might be great but i've never even tried why because that name.

feel like there are tons of metal bands that outlast their youthful punk rock names. Septicflesh doesn't really reflect the latter-day grandeur of a great band.

Moby Grape are good xp

ramones
radiohead

Ducktails. Their buzzfeedwave nostalgia name belies the fact that their music is awesome.

"Christmas" was an especially bad choice. Confused people at the time, and now it's impossible to google.

ramones

Awesome name

what's so awesome?

The Ramones' name

why is it so awesome?

Conceptually its cool they pretended to be related

the concept is arguably cool, but the name is not.

What's wrong with it?

i don't like the name "ramone"

if they called themselves The Smiths for example, not that would be awesome!

i think subconsciously people are prejudiced and sometimes tend to like a band name if they are fans of their music.

Souls of Mischief

What the fuck is it even supposed mean?

I agree. I also think most names sound at least a bit forced and awkward until a band establishes itself and its name becomes inconspicuous, like individual's names are. This is also true of other things, like the "iPod"

Sorry xp to nostromo

ok so let's try all over again:

Best bands with bad names: pretend you never heard the band.

Japandroids

i'm fine with that name

every band with the name "family" in it

Ramones also cool because of the Beatles reference. xpost.

Ducktails. Their buzzfeedwave nostalgia name belies the fact that their music is awesome.

― Treeship, Wednesday, August 21, 2013 3:46 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have had this argument before, but what you're thinking of is DUCK TALES, not DUCKTAILS. If you were going to name your band after the cartoon rather than the haircut or the tail of some actual ducks, surely you wouldn't double-bluff pun back to the non-pun version? I mean, fair enough, if this is what he did then the name is even more stupid than *you* think and is just a tidal wave of stupid.

ok Ramones is a cool name, i'm convinced.

if they called themselves The Smiths for example, not that would be awesome!

I think I've disagreed with every post you've made on this thread!

The only deal-breaker for me with band-names is when people spell their names in all lower-case. k.d. lang did it and that was for a good reason. the cranberries, moe., fun., all not ok. Everything else is cool, fuck. I like Fuck. I like Diarrhea Planet.

I mean, I don't actually like the band Fuck's music but their band name is fine. I'd love to be in a band called Fuck (but we wouldn't sound like Fuck). I think the highest quality music to lowest quality band-name in my listening experience is Carissa's Wierd. That's a pretty bad band name tbh

totally agree re: punctuation and all lower-case names - Fun is a dumb but OK name, fun. is terrible.

Misspelling is a deal-breaker too.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v284/ShampooCell/traxx/yktr.jpg

Starfucker is a pretty shitty name, I think, much as I love the Rolling Stones song. But their music is good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE-C8dgpDb8&list=PLDA52A31463A8A0AC

puddle of mudd

all band names that take the form of sentences, rather than noun phrases, suck.

I realize that we are running out of noun phrases, but that's no excuse.

Godspeed You! And The Trail of Dead You Rode In On, Motherfuckers!

flamin groovies

... is a great name

Uncle Acid

The only deal-breaker for me with band-names is when people spell their names in all lower-case. k.d. lang did it and that was for a good reason

Which was?

Pretty & Nice