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Odd Band Name Stories

#41
Swampish said:
Excellent idea! Here are some at a glance that would be cool: Whirlaway, Smarty Jones, Affirmed, Unbridled, Phar Lap, War Admiral, Spectacular Bid, Big Brown, Frankel, Sunday Silence, Genuine Risk, Winx...there are so many of them. That is a killer suggestion!
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Just... don't try using Phar Lap as a band name in NZ or Australia. That, um, wouldn't go over well.
Last time I lived in NZ, his skeleton was on display in a museum, and I'm pretty sure people made pilgrimages to visit it.

That said, I believe Windbag was one of the approved names for horses on the championship circuit. Fits somewhat with the old-fart theme.
 
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#42
NZBassman said:
... we ended up choosing the name 'The Dawnbreakers'... that is until I went to work and proudly announced the name of my band to my work colleagues.
One of them asked if I knew what a 'dawnbreaker' was, then said it is a slang term for morning sexual activity.....
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Personally, I would have stuck with just calling it "Dawnbreaker". that's a good name, and the low-key innuendo is awesome. :thumbsup:

So, my first band I was responsible for the name. It was the late 80s and we were a hair metal thing so I settled on the most hair metal thing I could think of....Quick Fixx. :cool:

I had a buddy who had a band across town. They practiced in a barn that had a leaky roof. In the middle of their practice space sat a 5 gallon bucket to catch the water drip. Every day they'd go dump the bucket out before practice. Thus the band name became "Bucket".

My little brother started a 3-piece band, early 90s, copying the Nirvana trend and style, so he named is "ASB" which stood for "Another Seattle Band".
 
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#43
Now I have vague memories of an up-and-coming metal band called Wool.
Apparently they wanted a name they all hated equally, to have something to bond over.

(I still feel gypped that none of the members of Toto were former members of Kansas)
 
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#45
Swampish said:
Excellent idea! Here are some at a glance that would be cool: Whirlaway, Smarty Jones, Affirmed, Unbridled, Phar Lap, War Admiral, Spectacular Bid, Big Brown, Frankel, Sunday Silence, Genuine Risk, Winx...there are so many of them. That is a killer suggestion!
Click to expand...
Except everyone would ask you “Why did you name yourself after that horse?”
Because I already knew the names of every one of those horses. Anyone who ever watched racing would.
 
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#47
PaulS said:
.

The blind mechanics of disaster is an awesome name!

For a while one of the bands I was in went by 8-1/2 because we all wore that shoe size lol. After too many jokes that it was about the size of something else, we dropped it lol
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In the 90’s, during the swing revival, there was an outfit from Texas called 8 1/2 Souvenirs(after the Fellini film, the title denoting how many he had done at that point). Two albums on RCA, they involved themselves in Django Reinhardt type lounge...
 
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#51
In the 70s I was in a band called Goofy Foot. Not named for the surfing term but for a pipe shaped like a foot. It got a lot of use. :D

From 2005 through 2015 we called ourselves Sub Atomic Barnacles. Obviously a play on subatomic particles. Some folks would get the name, some were confused by it. :laugh:
 
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#52
I was in a newly formed 3 piece cover band and the drummer wanted us to be called "Pumpin' Ethyl". Neither the guitarist or I liked it because we thought the obvious sexual reference was incredibly juvenile, the drummer was so attached to the name that we gave in and let him have his way.

We played gigs for a few months as a 3 piece until we finally acquired a 2nd guitarist, who happened to be a woman. After being with us for a short time, she admitted to me that she was very unhappy with the band name and wanted to know if we were willing to change it.

I told her that it was the drummer's idea and no one else was happy with it. We had a band meeting about it and the 3 of us who wanted to change the name made it clear that the decision was final. We decided on an alternative and made the change official.

The drummer complained about it for months and kept bringing up the issue at every opportunity, for no reason except to pout like a baby.

Epilogue: We fired the drummer a short time later because of his alcohol fueled antics, including sexual harassment of our guitar player.
 
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#53
I first told this story in another thread:

And then there was that time a friend of mine asked me what I thought of his new band name (after they had already printed flyers, tshirts etc,). Then he told me “it’s Satyre”. Pronounced ‘Satire’.
After stumbling for an answer and wondering if he said ‘Flat Tire', (cause that would have been better),
I asked “ is that intentionally funny?” He said “No”
and the conversation went downhill...
they did not know what satire meant. I don’t have a clue how they came up with the name. I cringe when I remember trying to explain that they just wasted all their money. Very awkward
 
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#54
I put together a 4 piece band that included a fellow university student who shared my major of physics.

He suggested the name "Moving Bodies" which is a somewhat obscure reference to the groundbreaking research paper published by Albert Einstein in 1905, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", introducing the theory of relativity.

The band lasted about 2 years and almost everybody assumed the name had something to do with transporting corpses.
 
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#55
My favorite original band name came from a kid who had just joined us, we were all brain storming bouncing dumb ideas off of each other after rehearsal. This kid was normally super quiet, but suddenly blurt out- “how about Moment of Clarity”? We all instantly agreed it was the perfect name for out progressive metal band. We looked it up on the primitive internet and it wasn’t taken, so we went with it. It was the only contribution the kid ever made, and he never even made it to the first gig.
 
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#56
equill said:
Now I have vague memories of an up-and-coming metal band called Wool.
Apparently they wanted a name they all hated equally, to have something to bond over.

(I still feel gypped that none of the members of Toto were former members of Kansas)
Click to expand...
upload_2020-7-13_5-39-53.png
 
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#58
hbarcat said:
I was in a newly formed 3 piece cover band and the drummer wanted us to be called "Pumpin' Ethyl". Neither the guitarist or I liked it because we thought the obvious sexual reference was incredibly juvenile, the drummer was so attached to the name that we gave in and let him have his way.

We played gigs for a few months as a 3 piece until we finally acquired a 2nd guitarist, who happened to be a woman. After being with us for a short time, she admitted to me that she was very unhappy with the band name and wanted to know if we were willing to change it.

I told her that it was the drummer's idea and no one else was happy with it. We had a band meeting about it and the 3 of us who wanted to change the name made it clear that the decision was final. We decided on an alternative and made the change official.

The drummer complained about it for months and kept bringing up the issue at every opportunity, for no reason except to pout like a baby.

Epilogue: We fired the drummer a short time later because of his alcohol fueled antics, including sexual harassment of our guitar player.
Click to expand...
So what was the new name?
 
#59
Guild B301 said:
I first told this story in another thread:

And then there was that time a friend of mine asked me what I thought of his new band name (after they had already printed flyers, tshirts etc,). Then he told me “it’s Satyre”. Pronounced ‘Satire’.
After stumbling for an answer and wondering if he said ‘Flat Tire', (cause that would have been better),
I asked “ is that intentionally funny?” He said “No”
and the conversation went downhill...
they did not know what satire meant. I don’t have a clue how they came up with the name. I cringe when I remember trying to explain that they just wasted all their money. Very awkward
Click to expand...
In the '80s, I was in a band that we named Cygnus, after the constellation and with very lightly veiled references to Rush's Cygnus X-1, but so many people thought the name was Sickness. Since we weren't a punk band, we ended up changing the name to the dull and overly used Rebel.
 
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