Friday, October 26, 2007

Weekend Listomania (Special Quel Est Le Meilleur Nom? Video Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental manservant Hop-Sing and I are off to Paris for a weekend with French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Nick's a little depressed of late -- seems his ungrateful bitch lovely wife has up and left him, so we're taking the poor man for a tour of the colorful waterfront bars and bistros of Marseiles. As they say -- allo, sailor!!!!

So posting by moi will be necessarily sporadic for a while.

But in my absence, here's a fun project for you all to contemplate:

Best Rock n Roll Band Name Ever!!!!
You know -- the coolest, the funniest, the most original, the most apt. However you define it.
[Totally arbitrary rule: It has to be a band that actually made records. So friends or acquaintances, like the guys I knew who had a band called Ape Law (they all wore Planet of the Apes soldier costumes) -- are ineligible.]

Okay -- my totally Top of My Head Top Six.

6. The Velvet Underground



5. Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias



4. Gaye Bikers on Acid



3. The Brian Jonestown Massacre



2. Teenage Jesus and the Jerks



1. The Rolling Stones



(C'mon -- what name could be more perfect?)

Honorable Mention: Kathleen Turner Overdrive (sorry, I couldn't find a video).

Okay -- and your choice would be??????

47 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK, in no particular order:

The Band (and this is a nominee for best live performance evar)

Rockpile

X (nothing beats simplicity)

XTC

The Thirteenth Floor Elevators

The Sonics

Pearl Harbour & The Explosions (w/ the also well-named Clash filling in as the Explosions)

Crazy Horse

Young Fresh Fellows

Jane Aire & The Belvederes (couldn't find a video clip)

Mister Pleasant said...

Olivia Tremor Control (have never heard them but love the concept)

Dead Kennedys

Los Reactors (new wave band from Tulsa OK in the early 80s)

Imperial Drag (musically stunning amalgam of 70s gloss and pyrotechnics - in the late 90s)

Plastic Ono Band With Elephant Memory And The Invisible Strings (obviously not a single band, but a mouthful for sure)

900 Foot Tall Jesus

dave™© said...

Well, they don't have an album (that I know of), but there's a band in SF called The Fucking Champs.

I like that!

And then there was a Marin County band made up of vestiges of Quicksilver called Terry and the Pirates...

NYMary said...

Well, there's the aforementioned Jane Aire and the Belvederes, but I also liked Holly and the Italians.

I always thought Guided by Voices was a fucking brilliant name. And as long as we're stopping in Dayton, we should note The Giggling Faggots and The Breeders.

But honestly, my friends (but they have CDs!), Philly's Milton and the Devils Party, have a name that still cracks me right up. It's based on an obscure William Blake comment about John Milton's Paradise Lost, where he argued that Milton makes a better case for Satan than he does for God. ("Milton was of the devils party without knowing it.")

Anonymous said...

Not awake enough to provide the color commentary, but here are my initial choices, in no particular order:

Lords of Acid

Mothers of Invention

Garbage

Talking Heads

The Who

Anonymous said...

Oh, forgot to mention .... Lords of Acid are not kid-safe, in case anyone wants to check them out over at YouTube.

Anonymous said...

Avoiding bands that perform in blackface, I would have to go with:

Lords of the New Church

Chocolate Watchband

Hapshash and the Coloured Coat

The Pink Faeries

TMink said...

OK, we made a recording (cassette with limited (read 2 copies) distribution) so this really violates the spirit of the post, but it is a great name:

Buck Private and his Guitar Army.

Trey

TMink said...

Kid wrote: "Avoiding bands that perform in blackface"

Words to live by!

Trey

Slig said...

The Adult Net
Microdisney
Telefauna
Swervedriver

Anonymous said...

Ooooh, Microdisney. Good call.

David Rasmussen said...

Scruffy the Cat

Cleveland Bob said...

Wow. brooklyn girl and maike and I are in serious sync mode.

Here's my list in no particular order:

The Who
Audioslave
Pere Ubu
Gang Of Four
The Cramps
Jane's Addiction
Talking Heads
Violent Femmes

And I must throw in some long ago local dudes who were an offshoot of the original Rubber City Rebels,(which isn't a bad name itself).

Akron's own...Hammer Damage

Anonymous said...

Ah, Hammer Damage"! I saw them a ton of times at the Bank in Akron. Apt name.

Anonymous said...

The The
(a Talking Heads-ish band out of Toronto in the late 70s/early 80s)

Them

Love of Life Orchestra
(a one-off of NYC downtown musicians - made a GREAT 12" 45 back in the day)

DNA
(hated the music but cool name)

Pere Ubu
(of course)

The Kinks
(such an ugly grotty little name!)

Uriah Heep
(again, not for the music....)

And rules be damned, there was a great bar band in the Pasadena area back in the late 70s called Snotty Scotty and the Hankies....

Anonymous said...

And no one's mentioned Steely Dan???

David Rasmussen said...

A couple more:
Zombie Bazooka Patrol, a current band.

Jello Biafra; he named himself after a non-nutrious corporate food and a starving country.

Anonymous said...

And no one's mentioned Steely Dan???



Too obvious. ;>

Anonymous said...

Well, I don't like my band name: Whiskey Ina. When people ask me my band's name, I offer it up apologetically. It arose organically enough: I had a pedal steel player named Katy at the same time that I had a woman client named Katie. During one early morning phone call, I wasn't quite awake enough to distinguish to whom I was speaking. The person on the other end of the line offered up, "It's pedal Katy," and Pedal Katy was born. So, we were to be "Pedal Katy and _______ Ina," and 'Whiskey Ina' sounded country enough. Then, Katy started her own band, Katyland, so she wanted to take her name out of my band, and rather than think up something new, I just ended up with Whiskey Ina... (I know, get your own damn blog!)

Now, for the matter at hand: I like '999' and 'the butthole surfers.' 'the flatlanders.' 'scritti politti.' and probably others...

ms. rosa said...

jodie foster's army
the queers
miss carriage and the casual t's
pain teens
linus pauling quartet (a five-piece band, natch)
the mydolls
red crayola
red krayola
the lyres
...oh! and bubble puppy!!

Cleveland Bob said...

Since I'm usually the guy at the party that late in the evening will commonly shout drunken yet affectionate non sequiturs to someone, I just want to say thanks to Steve, Mary and the Kid for running the show out there.

I've always revered Fridays and Weekend Listomania has made them all the more special. And so with that I say to Steve Simels, "I love you, man"!

I'll also add Skinny Puppy to the list.

Anonymous said...

Scott Kempner once said a good band name would also make a great name for a street gang or a bowling team. So three bands he played in make this list:

- The Dictators
- The Del Lords (how can you not like a band named after one of the producers of the Three Stooges shorts)
- The Little Kings (a local beer from Cincinnati)

Jim

TMink said...

Taking inspiration from those who come before me:

The Meat Puppets
The X Teens (Chapel Hill new wave band in the day)
the dB's
Funkadelic
The Art of Noise
Barenaked Ladies
The Basement Wall (60s psych)
Belly
Body Count
br5-49
The Buzzcocks


OK, I am only at the B's of my iPod and the post is already too long.

Trey

Anonymous said...

there's a nu-metal band from detroit called coke dick motorcycle awesome. gotta love it, people!

Slig said...

Here are some more:

Killing Joke
Golden Earring
Quarterflash
the March Violets
Her Majesty's Secret Cervix
the Colourblind James Experience
the Chesterfield Kings

Anonymous said...

Forgot one:

Lancelot Link & the Evolution Revolution

Wonder if it was the same guys that did the music for the Banana Splits, Joey Levine, et. al.?

dave™© said...

Hey, Kid - here's a little background on the music of Lancelot Link.

Apparently, it was more of a Grass Roots thang!

Anonymous said...

Thank Dave,

VERY interesting!

Heather said...

Can I just say how much I love Scruffy the Cat? Thank you.

TJWood said...
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TJWood said...
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TJWood said...

Surprised no one has mentioned the Sex Pistols yet. I'll throw out Mission of Burma as well.

Got to second Mike's choice of The Band. Don't know what made them choose that name, but there has never been a more apt band for that name.

Anonymous said...

If you are mentioning the Sex Pistols, you have to mention their Australian counterparts, the Celibate Rifles!

The Kenosha Kid said...

The 4 Skins (oi band)
The Peanut Butter Conspiracy
Splodgenessabounds
Blue Oyster Cult
Echo & The Bunnymen
Flamin' Groovies
Heaven 17

and this violates the rules, but according to legend there was once a punk band called "The Very Idea of Fucking Hitler"

Anonymous said...

Cream (like "The Band," simple, monumental, and unabashedly immodest)

The Vapours (my favorite New Wave "The" name)

Bo Diddley (not a group, but hey)

The Beatles (still the best pun in rock and roll)

Anonymous said...

The Blossom Toes

MBowen said...

One of my all-time favorite band names (and, as far as that goes, bands - they were easily the best band of the '90s) is The Loud Family - aside from the nifty pop culture reference, what else is a band except a loud family?

Other cool band names:




Be-Bop Deluxe - great name, so-so band

Big In Japan

Blue Öyster Cult - Umlauts rock!

Bunnygrunt

Cheap Trick

Cansei de Ser Sexy - Portuguese for "Tired of being sexy"

The Coal Porters

Concrete Blonde

Continental Drifters

Donner Party

Echo & The Bunnymen

Fairport Convention - Perfectly captures a certain British elegance. This video must be seen by any Brit-beat group fan!

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

Harpers Bizarre

Hatfield and The North - Taken from a highway sign on the M1 leading out of London

The Jesus & Mary Chain

Jules & The Polar Bears

The Little Willies - Norah Jones has a sense of humor - who knew?

Martha & The Muffins

Martha & The Vandellas - Don't you wish you were a Vandella?

The Mendoza Line - named after the dividing line between the minors and the majors

Mission of Burma

Modest Mouse - nice classical music joke

Mott the Hoople

My Bloody Valentine

My Friend The Chocolate Cake

? & The Mysterians - I swear I was nearly run over by their tour bus in the middle of nowhere Jersey back in 1978

The Negro Problem - Stew and the gang once went out on tour with Dan Bern and his band. Really - the bill was Dan Bern and The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy with The Negro Problem

The New Pornographers - "Johnny, what are you listening to?" "The New Pornographers, Mom!"

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

The Presidents of The United States of America

Primitive Radio Gods

The Psychedelic Furs

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Ramones - short, punchy, to the point...wonder why they chose it...

Reparata and The Delrons - a Delron isn't quite as cool as a Vandella, but then, what is?

Romeo Void

Shooglenifty - Gotta love a Scottish folk band who have an album called "Venus in Tweeds"

Squirrel Nut Zippers - named after a candy bar

Super Furry Animals

The Swimming Pool Q's - I used to see these guys a lot back in 1985-86 when I lived in Raleigh...a really great band!

Tall Dwarfs

The Teardrop Explodes - taken from (of all things) a Sub-Mariner comic

They Might Be Giants

Timbuk 3

Trashcan Sinatras

Young Marble Giants

The Kenosha Kid said...

I left out Buck Naked & The Bare Bottom Boys as well as Millions of Dead Cops.

Anonymous said...

Adam Ant
The Gothic Archies
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
Southern Culture on the Skids
Sonic Youth
Pearly Gatecrashers
Wall of Voodoo

Anonymous said...

Wow...nobody mentioned (unless I missed 'em) these:

The Fugs
Paul Revere and the Raiders
The Rutles
Edgar Winter's White Trash

Anonymous said...

How about best band name in a song? Like, say, Willie and the Poor Boys, in "Down on the Corner?"

As I recollect, there was a one-shot celebrity band involving some of the Stones or something that used that name for an album.

Anonymous said...

The Strangers. (as in Merle Haggard and)

Anonymous said...

I hate to say it but I would nominate the Grateful Dead as a top 12 name, since it fit the image and the music so well. And since it shortened so easily into "the Dead," which is pretty cosmic too.

steve simels said...

You guys slay me...
:-)

Feral said...

May I add one of my favorites?

The Subdudes

Anonymous said...

The Flying Burrito Brothers!

Oh, by the way feralliberal, the Subdues are one of my favorite bands. Came across them in NOLA the year after Katrina.

Anonymous said...

Free Beer!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVFxh996Tk0