KMC Forums - The 2,000,000th post game

Maybe we're just getting old, or perhaps it's that dodgy pasty we bought from the all-night garage, but band names seem to be getting increasingly silly. In the coming weeks, a visit to your local gig venue could well be rewarded by a performance from Cancer Bats, Die! Die! Die!, A Place To Bury Strangers, Chairlift, Dananananaykroyd or, winning the rosette of ridiculousness this week, Cheeky Cheeky and the Nosebleeds.

And we always thought Radiohead was a stupid name.

What's the stupidest band name you've ever heard?

Cheeky appears to have taken his cue from Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong, where the only thing more absurd than their name is the fact they recently pulled their debut album because it wasn't good enough (the last people in the country to realise it!) The Nosebleeds aren't the first Nosebleeds in pop either.

Short-lived Manchester punks Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds can claim that dubious honour, but at least their name told you what to expect of the live musical experience � rapid dangerous head movements followed by nasal haemorrhaging.

Today's Nosebleeds just sound like they're trying too hard to be uncool (which is clearly the new cool. It's hard work being young and fashionable).

Names are important. For a band not to be instantly hindered by their name, it should either be a blank canvas that allows the music to do the talking: Coldplay, The Smiths, Nirvana, The Beatles, etc. Or it has to describe the product exactly: Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Rolling Stones� What you don't want to do is paint a picture of yourselves in a potential listener's mind as the kind of group who laughs at their own farts (we're looking at you Limp Bizkit).

Some names, like The Beatles, may have sounded slightly silly at first (especially with the odd spelling) but very quickly set a precedent for others to follow: The Hollies, The Kinks, The Shadows and the supremely functional The Band. It's a formula that still works today, hence a plethora of 'The' bands like The Courteeners, The View, The Kylie Minogue...

But you can take that idea too far. Early eighties New Wave weirdo Matt Johnson attempted to sprain the tongues of a nation with his ultimate definite article project The The; a very silly name, very difficult to say and near impossible to search for on the internet.

Pronounceability is a factor which must be taken into consideration, and that's what a lot of these wackily named combos are forgetting. How is it going to sound when read out on Radio? You have to imagine Jo Whiley getting her lips round your consonants.

Californian disco-punks !!! were far too arch for their own good by calling themselves after the subtitles on a film of African bushmen speaking in mouth-clicks. Everyone was forced to cheat and pronounce it "chk chk chk", which is barely an improvement. And back in the mid 80s, future East 17 svengali Tom Watkins launched a boyband with a series of odd symbols for a name. It looked good on the adverts but would've proven impossible to ask for in the shops and the group settled on being called Spelt Like This for their two Stock Aitken & Waterman produced singles (it didn't help, they still stiffed).

These were both misguided attempts to stand out from the crowd, but at least they produced intrigue. More often than not, an outrageous band name merely induces embarrassment and a guarantee you'll never get booked to appear on Loose Women.

Some such examples are too offensive to print but believe it or not, the following are all real bands: Admiral Poopy Pants and His Dancing Teeth, Aggressive Crotch Display, Alabama Thunderpussy, Alien Nymphos From Uranus, Anal Badger Flap� and we're not even past the first letter of the alphabet. Is it any wonder we've never heard of any of them?

Of course, one man's Butt Trumpet is another man's Babyshambles and it may be hard to predict just how your chosen title will be received by the music press.

14 Iced Bears, for example, were a terrific pre-My Bloody Valentine 80s indie band, laden with gorgeous psychedelic melodies and warm fuzzy guitars. Yet we distinctly remember them receiving a review where the journalist refused to listen to the record on account of how much he hated the perceived tweeness in the name. They didn't stand a chance. Indie back then was a shy, anorak wearing adolescent compared with the stadium filling, beer swilling monster it is today.

The bands seemed to take perverse delight in naming themselves in the wettest ways possible: Field Mice, Biff Bang Pow!, Panda Pops, Grab Grab The Haddock (yes really, they had records out and everything). Things became so unbearably cutesy that indie label Waaaaaah released a spoof track by a fictitious group called Fluff Fluff Fluff Fluff and Cuddliness. We laughed at the time but it's not far off from the aforementioned Cheeky Cheeky and the Nosebleeds.

Not all stupid names will doom you to failure. Things went fairly well for Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch, in the 60s. Wet Wet Wet still managed 15 weeks at the top of the charts with an awful name inexplicably taken from a Scritti Politti lyric, and art rockers �And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead are still thundering on, despite not being able to fit their name on the fanclub badge.

In This City hit makers Iglu & Hartley seem to be flavour of the month even though they sound like 70s cartoon characters.

It's all the more ridiculous when you discover they don't contain any members called Iglu or Hartley, and the band claim they got the name came from a ship that transported cinnamon between Hawaii and England even though a search of the net reveals nothing to back that up.

If they'd known how successful they were going to become, do you think they might've taken the name a little more seriously?

Not that we don't have room in our hearts for the occasional lapse of common sense.
There was a German group rather delightfully called Silly, which reminds us of Scottish folk legends Silly Wizard (though that doesn't excuse current Celtic traditionalists Deaf Shepherd.) We're very fond of Wow, Owls, though we've never heard a note of their music, and Half Man Half Biscuit have brought us much joy over the years.

Some stupid band names thankfully never made it to fruition. The recently published notebooks of Rob Gretton, former manager of Joy Division and New Order, revealed some of his alternative suggestions for what to call the group, following the death of singer Ian Curtis. These included the deeply rubbish but gloriously wrong Angry Brigade, Anti-People and Teutonic Knights. But the worst, and a name which almost certainly would've changed musical history by denying its owners access to the path of greatness, was Radical Jesuits. What was he thinking?

Sure, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But you're gonna feel a right fool wearing it on a tour t-shirt.