Names for bands

Eric Andre offers the Internet-visiting public a compendium of up-for-grabs band names. Band names are the original Twitter: hyper-compressed witticisms meant to leap off a poster wheatpasted to a telephone pole and lodge in the mind forever. Here are some of my favorites from Eric's list:

Jesus and the Christs
Lionel Nitsche
Polyamorous Brazilian Atheist
Alien vs Predator vs Brown vs The Board of Education
Mega Nintendo Death Hibachi
Mud Butt Monorail
The Beyonces
The Dave Matthews’ Dave Matthews’ Band
Cardboard Swordfight
Alpha Nerd
Lonely Pizza
Organic Pesticides
Teenage Chicken
Axe Body Spray
9 mm Camera

Eric's Band Names (via MeFi)

(Image: poster in Rome, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from davemorris's photostream)

• [SomeDude]

  Boy George Michael Jackson Brown vs Board of Education

• [nixiebunny]

  Yup… when I hear an amusing set of three words next to each other, I often say “that would be a good name for a band.” 

  Favorite real punk band name: A3I, which stands for Any Three Initials.

  • [EH]

    The Adjective Nouns

• [Joshua Kemble]

  Eric,
  I have a journal full of band names, we should go over them in case there are duplicates. a la Pontius Pilate and the Pretentious Pyro Pirates, anyone? nay?

• [lorq]

  Coming up with these is always fun.
  Favorite name for an actual band, of which an old college friend was a member: Colostomy Bag Weekend.

• [SpudNYC]

  My favorite band names came from posters on the wall in Bob Fingerman’s Skinheads In Love comic. My all-time favorite is Fudge Pachyderm.

• [annoyingmouse]

  I find it really hard to believe that there has never been a band called Jesus and the Christs. Somebody somewhere must have used it once. It’s so obvious.

• [cleek]

  once a year or so i run the following Google search and document the results, on my blog:

   * “is a good name for a band”

   a quick look today gives:
  The Chi Machine
  The Shards of Narsil
  Palm
  Blood and Semen
  Forest Heart
  Depresso Loner Dudes
  Modern Slut Deconstruction
  etc..

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    The Shards of Narsil

    I always thought that The Stench and the Peril would be a good name.

• [gwailo_joe]

  Lionel Nietzsche…that’s a winner right there.

  Bands that I named, performed with or participated in:
  Funny Cow
  Traitor
  Meathook Sodomy
  Colostomy Bag Lunch
  Butchers Can Dance
  Pablo and the Escobars

  Not to imply that the music was particularly good, but in retrospect…the times were.

  • [Víctor Jiménez Merino]

     Colostomy Bag Lunch sounds awesome!

• [Lobster]

  One-Winged Stab Bat

• [TheMudshark]

  I´m sure you will be saddened to learn this one is already taken.

• [saint_al]

  The Lou Reeds, Duran Duran Duran, Elvis Hitler, The Hateful Dead, etc.

  • [L8]

     Also, Duran² and Duran∧Duran.

• [notfred]

  That just looks like a list of unreleased Krad Kilodney books.

• [ikelleigh]

  I always thought Lip Skin would make a good band name.

  • [millie fink]

    The Four Skins

• [Hank]

  When I lived in Minneapolis I saw a lot of posters for MC 900 Foot Jesus as well as God’s Favorite Band

  • [IronEdithKidd]

    First Avenue’s playbill has been full of band-name gold since I was waaayyyy too young to go there (which would be around the time that they still lit up the neon on the upper deck, but decades after my grandpa drove buses there).

• [oscarfalcon]

  The name of my band in college was “Mies And The Van Der Rohes”, just sharing. 

• [bishophicks]

  When my son was very little someone tried to take a small toy away from him and he snatched it back yelling, “That’s my this!” That’s been our Rock Band band name for about 4 years.

• [Mark Neumayer]

  I always thought Psychosomatic Fleas would be a good name for a band. My ex and I came up with this to describe the feeling you get when you’re visiting a really filthy house with a lot of animals living there. 

• [mysterymoil]

  Luscious Crack, Son!
  Britches & Hose
  Slumberjack
  Jihad for Jello
  Prophylactic Shock
  Semper Pie
  Vault Pole
  Dwarf Horse
  Brown Eye Blind
  The Mama Casstrators
  The Vonnegut Asterisks

  • [millie fink]

    Semper Pie FTW

• [bo1n6bo1n6]

  The Bloody Stools always got me.

• [Dave Morris]

  Ha! Scrolling happily though the BoingBoing RSS feed, I only went and tripped over one of my own photos!

  Glad it was of use, folks.

• [GawainLavers]

  They’ll never hold a candle to Japanese boy band names.  Here’s a list I gathered from album covers, posters, and the occasional marquee when I was in Okinawa:
  Greeeen
  Lego Big Morl
  Buck-Tick
  Spank Page
  Glay
  Radwimps
  Prank Puppy
  Gun Food
  Uverworld
  Flumpool

  Game time!  Which one did I make up?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Gun Food.

• [Elisa Markus]

  Dude there’s a way better Facebook group called Potential Band Names… scroll through it’s a laugh a minute.  http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/groups/284838728640/

• [Quiche de Resistance]

  The Vagina Splits (credit to the Onion)

  Fingertight (you know, like how you put in the spark plugs before applying the torque wrench? I’m sure that’s what you were thinking.)

• [Nadreck]

  I always liked the “A and the Bs” format so you could play to the trope of a “Talent” or Diva and their mates in the backup band.  Then they can have a “Spinal Tap” breakup scenario – “You’ve changed man.  It used to be about the music!”.

  My favourites were “Teenage Jesus Christ and the Cardboard Brains” and “Doug and the Slugs”.

• [gingerbaker]

  I’ve always been partial to “Tune Pang”.

• [Jen Onymous]

  One of my best friends heads up a band called…

  Perp Walk.

  I’ve had many people say that they wish that they had thought of it firsrt.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    I see that there’s also a band called Walk of Shame.

• [Noctilucent Studios]

  Great name for a cover band: “They Might Be They Might Be Giants”

• [Ian Kerr]

  That Nietzsche one doesn’t work!

  • [Ian Kerr]

     Nvm, failure on my part.

• [janusnode]

  If you want more, my text-generating program JanusNode (http://janusnode.com) ships with a band-name-generating rule set. Some samples:
  The Carnally Obliging
  The Evaded Desires
  The Spontaneously Contaminated
  The Hairy Pleasure Flings
  Waxen Platypus
  The Loudly Delineated
  Unconvincing Unhappiness
  The Strangulater Porpoises
  Chocolate Poverty
  The Overly Compensated.

• [Ladyfingers]

  I was very sad to find out, thanks to Google, that “Urethra Franklin” was taken.

• [David Tesch]

  The Forgotten Passwords

• [Snarf]

  I play in Awesome Texas Massacre (among others)

• [Brant Geeves]

  I started doing this not so long ago. Fair warning, some are terrifically racist/offensive (just jokes!!?!). Some of my favs:

  1. Flock of Segals2. Death By Swan4. The Practical Implications Of Beaks5. Darlings Of The Environment6. Fresh Foot7. Black Spastics8. Beef Jerks9. Codeine Red10. Regret-me-nots11. Last Round For The Burglers12. Sticky Date Rape13. Alkali Bees14. Paper C**ts