Hat tip to CB Mark who sent in this article three weeks ago:
https://www.spin.com/2012/06/making-brand-40-greatest-band-names-all-time/
The Velvet Underground is on the list – and they have a new movie coming out on Friday:
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Lame without “Human Sexual Response.”
How do you leave them out!!??!!
I really enjoyed this sequence:
30. Bathroom Shitter
29. This Bike is a Pipe Bomb
28. The Band
27. Black Flag
Roadkill Ghost Choir:
https://youtu.be/eVR-wNOyK9s
The Dead Kennedys (#6):
Two different people at a party — a friend named Richard Stott and the Mysterians drummer Mark Bliesener — approached DK frontman Jello Biafra with what the latter called “the greatest band name no one could ever use.” There’s still conflicts over who slipped it to Biafra first: Bleisener says it was inspired by “Ted Kennedy,” a teddy bear owned by his girlfriend; Stott confessed to Biafra that he nicked it from an earlier band from Cleveland with the same name. Either way, the wildly provocative moniker succinctly represented the savage gutting of the American dream. Says Biafra, “The deeper meaning came quickly as we had to justify the name. Keep in mind, this was the ’70s. It was when all the cool things of the ’60s were co-opted, stale, sold back to people; when people went from antiwar hippies to hanging-plant yuppies. What made people so apathetic and greedy and dispassionate? What really got the ball rolling was the Kennedy killings and the murder of Martin Luther King. The feeling that you as a citizen cannot stand up and change anything anymore.”
Why It’s Great: The name not only played perfectly into hardcore’s neverending quest to push the buttons of buttoned-up suburban squares, but maintained an intense political feel that you wouldn’t get from a name like “the Meatshits.” It prevented the band from booking shows in Boston and New York for a while — and Biafra even had the pleasure of saying it in a court of law on more than one occasion. (T, P, I, WP, JNSQ)
From the Band: “I’d always been a strong believer in the value of shock value,” says Biafra. “When it came time to name our band, the first one I proposed was Thalidomide, but nobody else in the band liked that one. The second one that came out of my mouth was Dead Kennedys and immediately they recoiled even more. I could tell it struck a nerve. East Bay Ray said, ‘Record companies will never sign us with a name like that.’ I thought, yeah, mission accomplished. There were major labels sniffing around the underground in ’78 and ’79. There was more than one major-label flunkie who told me to my face, ‘You can have all the artistic control you want, as long as you change your name.’ We had no interest in putting on any brown lipstick for clowns like that. The first time we came to New York in 1979, CBGB wouldn’t book us because of the name. That didn’t stop them from calling Klaus [Flouride, bassist] years later demanding we fly out and play a benefit for them….I think it affected [the band] in nothing but positive ways. The name was so notorious that people were curious about it from the moment we set foot onstage. So many people told me over the years they were blundering in their record store in their small or remote town looking for anything that was an antidote to MTV and bad radio and stumbled across something with that name. ‘Oh, I know, I’ll take this home.’ And their lives were never the same.” C.W.
When CB Mark sent in the link, he noted my favorite X was #27. But today they are up to #15:
15. X
Known origins: Singer-bassist John Doe scavenged a giant X that once sat atop a demolished Ex-Lax factory in Los Angeles. He kept in it his apartment. He later started dating a lapsed Catholic poet named Christine Cervenka who had X’d out the “Christ” in her name, á la “Xmas.” There are no coincidences in God’s universe, even after you’ve stopped believing.
Why It’s Great: X is the most visually striking letter in the alphabet, and maybe the letter most heavily freighted with meaning too. In addition to the Jesus-y connotations, X stands for obliteration and denial. It marks the spot and represents the unknown. Also, it’s probably the second-least-utilized first letter of a band name (after Q), ensuring that you’ll stand out in the record bins. (VA, P, JNSQ) K.H.
Now we can argue about best album covers. Obviously #1 is taken but #2-10? I nominate the aforementioned HSR’s “Fig. 14”, Brain Salad Surgery and “Who’s Next?”
#1 – Sgt. Peppers or Dark Side of the Moon? We always thought Zappa’s Over-nite Sensation was worthy, though maybe not Top 10.
Which one has been on t-shirts for near half a century? Dark Side of course.
Then we have to choose a Roger Dean cover for Yes. Cars Candy-O. King Crimson. Aerosmith cover by Hirschfeld.