Names of Bands...


I'm a 91.1 WFMU listener(www.wfmu.org) where often I listen to the very cool talk shows and great non-commercial music.

The show I realy liked unfortunately was heard recorded where DJ-s were accepting a phone calls from everyone who knows the name of band and the reason of that name.

For example the name Can was always accossiated with nown but in reality as per band name selection it's a verb that realy uncovers meaning of the band: Yes, they can!

What about King Crimson? Jethro Tull? Yes? 10CC?
128x128marakanetz
Cedar Walton Trio: let's see, cuz the leader of the group is named Cedar Walton, and there are two other cats--usually Billy Higgins (RIP) and Buster Williams. There! Another mystery solved!
Stevie Ray Vaughn's rhythmn section is called "Double Trouble," which is a classic Otis Rush song--a minor blues.
Uriah Heep invented something, can't remember what (the cotton gin?). 10cc is supposed to be the average volume of a typical male's ejaculation...whatever...

What about:
Fairport Convention
(Nick Cave and) the Bad Seeds
If you read a lot of in-depth music mags like Mojo etc and music biographies. the origin of most band names come up-as is the way and what can be seen from some of above these can turn into Chinese whispers and the truth gets distorted or lost totally even by those involved-such is history-e.g Jeff is about 98% correct with the origin of Zeppelin-the actual well known phrase is "going down like a lead balloon"-Keith Moon usually gets credit for this as part of a proposed supergroup around the time of birth of Zeppelin-he changed it from balloon to Zeppelin but the idea of failure was the central one-Peter Grant then made the phonetic change from Lead to Led (so it wouldn't get mixed up with the word lead, as in to shephard forward).
10cc I used to read was the average volume of sperm ejaculated by a male during climax-I recently read in fact the average is about 8 or 9cc so the Manchester band increased it to 10cc as highlighting their supriority.
Mott The Hoople are named after a novel by William Manus.
There is even debate about the likes of Bob Zimmerman changing his name to Dylan-nearly always accepted as taken from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas-Robert Shelton also mentioned that Dylan as a teenager was a big fan of Gun Smoke a TV series who's main hero was Matt Dillon.
Clearly the history of band names has two main inspirations-usually to change a dull real name or to avoid confusion with existing names and/or to simply create something that sounds good or interesting.
I have undoubtly forgotten more origins than than I can remember-not least down to the fact they are usually pretty mundane.
I forgot to mention earlier that Lovin' Spoonful was taken by John Sebastian from a line in a Mississippi John Hurt song "Coffee Blues". Cheers, Lee
Jethro Tull was a farmer-inventor born in the 1600s who invented among other things the Seed Drill for planting multiple rows at once. Cheers, Lee
Alice Cooper was a 17th century witch that was burned at the stake. Led Zeppelin implied failure, borrowed from the old phrase in the first world war that goes something like "it'll go down like a lead Zeppelin".
The Cocteau Twins from Grangemounth,Scotland in 1979 took their name from a song from fellow Scotmen Simple Minds.
Pink Floyd is named after two american blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

Which band got their name from a manhole cover?
Lynyrd Skynyrd was the [misspelled] name of a high school teacher. Wet Willie is a, well, wet willie. I don't want to know about the Butthole Surfers.

Charlie

p.s. Jethro Tull, I think, also invented the seed drill.
Steely Dan is named for a vibrator mentioned in the book The Naked Lunch by William S. Bourroughs.
If I remember correctly, Jethro Tull was the name of a 17th century British poet/politician. Don't know about the others. To add to your list ... Chubby Checkers was coined by Mrs. Dick Clark as a response to Fats Domino; Beatles comes from the word BEAT;
I once knew of band called Freud Chicken, but, frankly, I would NOT want to know why it was called that ^_^