Unusual band names
The following are 10 of the most bizarre band names that I have encountered. I am sure that there are stranger – or at least as strange – band names, but either I am not coming up with them at the moment, or I have never heard of them.
Many groups name themselves after one of the members; Dokken and Dio are examples of this convention. Others choose to adopt the name of the city in which they were founded; groups such as Chicago and Boston used this method. Still others choose movies references for their names like Duran Duran and White Zombie. However, none of the following groups (at least to my knowledge) felt any such constraints.
| 1 | Death Cab for Cutie |
| Why does Cutie get her own death cab? Why can’t she be killed by the same out of control vehicle as everyone else? | |
| 2 | Kajagoogoo |
| I’d be pretty shy too if that were my name. Did they horribly misspell kangaroo? | |
| 3 | Concrete Blonde |
| Are they a statue of Marilyn Monroe? Or maybe a blonde who is very resolute in his or her beliefs? | |
| 4 | Front 242 |
| What happened to Fronts 1 – 241? Is there a Back 242, or is that just what you get when you play their albums in reverse? | |
| 5 | Flaming Lips |
| Seriously, if you have flaming lips, get off the stage and seek immediate medical assistance. And no wonder they have flaming lips, “they probably don’t use Blistex, or ChapStick, or anything I’ve seen. They probably use kero-o-o-sene”. | |
| 6 | Pearl Jam |
| I prefer strawberry jam myself, but to each their own I suppose. | |
| 7 | Grateful Dead |
| I have always wondered why they are so gracious. Perhaps it is because in spite of the fact that they are dead, people still attend their concerts. | |
| 8 | Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark |
| Honestly, this sounds extremely dangerous. It is all fun and games until the cellist gets their eye poked out with the violinist’s bow. | |
| 9 | Butthole Surfers |
| What ever you are into is fine with me, but I don’t need to know all of the details. | |
| 10 | Super Tramp |
| What powers does a Super Tramp have? Is she “super freaky”? Or is this a question better left unasked? | |
Please feel free to reply with any groups that I may have omitted. Or, if one of the bands listed actually picked their name from a movie reference and I just do not get it, please enlighten myself as well as the other readers.
I always liked the Meat Puppets name, which came from one of there own songs.
Interesting, I always wondered where they got their name.
one of the weirdest i can think of is barenaked ladies for a group of three Canadian guys
True, although they probably wouldn’t get as much attention if they called themselves the fully-clothed men. 🙂