Best band names

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Caveat

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They can have comical or artistic merit.

Black Sabbath is amazing IMO - powerful, sinister, iconic.

Roxy Music I really like too - louche, ambiguous, arty.

Not unlike the bands themselves I hear someone cry - self fulfilling prophecy etc. Not quite though. I mean I love Radiohead - awful name though. Killing Joke, ditto.

John Peel in his heyday (mid 80s?) threw up a fair few funny ones.

The Seven Kevins and especially Joan of This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language stand out :)

On the metal side, I went through a reasonably intense 'death metal' period at one stage where subtlety and variety was in short supply: Possessed, Obituary, Dark Angel, Death Angel, Morbid Angel...

I love the fact that some crowd just thought "ah to hell with it" and called themselves: Death.

Kind of makes me smile. :)
 
This thread could turn into The Commitments Part Deux :)

For me the most perfect name for a band is fairly obviously The Band although if you add up all the instruments they could play as individuals they should have named themselves The Orchestras. Collectively they were probably the most talented band of rock/pop/country/fusion/cross-over musicians ever assembled. Not for nothing did Mr. Zimmerman look to The Band to support his transition from beatnik-poet / solo folk and protest singer to rock-and-roller. They also managed that most artistically rewarding of all musical initiatives, they restricted American membership to 1. :) Pretty good for a country whose most recognisable popular musicians were respectively rumoured to be responsible for pandemics of depression and drinking Canada dry.

Second in the perfect-name stakes has to be The Beatles. Before there was rock 'n roll or pop music there was "beat music" played by "beat groups" of "beatniks" in "beat clubs" and the beat goes on. They started out doing exactly what it says on the tin and then so much more.

For sheer craziness names like Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch or Captain Beefheart (note neither is a "The") or even The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band trip easily and poetically off the tongue.

Another "non-The" band with Irish connections were the excruciatingly badly-named Eire Apparent, yet another Chas Chandler creation that toured with The Animals and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, their untimely demise allegedly triggered by Henry McCullough's visa deficit.
 
Have to agree , for me The Band recorded the best music of any era .

I saw Rick Danko in Whelans and unfortunately he cut a rather tragic figure at that stage.

I also saw Garth Hudson in Ballymore (!) with the late Sneaky Pete Kleinow of Hot Burritos fame.

I always thought Creedence Clearwater Revival was a great band name redolent of the deep south , it was only later that I discovered that the Fogertys were Californian boys.
 
Deiseblue said:
... it was only later that I discovered that the Fogertys were Californian boys.
Click to expand...
More Beach Boys than Good ol' Boys in origin but a good solid Redneck Rock n' Roll sound all the same. A lot of CCR music has survived the test of time, a great indicator of quality. I find it hard to describe their unique sound.

Their very clever name conjures up some kind of fundamental Baptist thing, but the songs are somewhere north of Tony Joe White's "swamprock" and East of Jerry Jeff Walker's "cowjazz".
 
Heres a couple - nothing to do with the music, right? Just cool names?

Paddy Goes to Hollyhead
Sigue Sigue Sputnik
Sultans of Ping FC
The Teardrop Explodes
Mouse on Mars
Napalm Death
Neds Atomic Dustbin (how can that not be a cool name!)
 
There was a band I remember playing in pubs around Munster called Hector Pickaxe and the Floating Crowbars. I think they came from Kerry. Always thought that was a great name.
 
Thrashcan Sinatras
Led Zeppelin
Happy Mondays
Joy Division
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
 
Fit Kilkenny and the remoulds

Kinky Friedman and his Texas Jewboys

Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers
 
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