Husker Du is Danish for ''Do you remember?''.

did not know that!

Psychedelic Horseshit was coined by a band member while very drunk.

Whitehouse - Named after (thankfully very dead) English morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, and also the porn mag of the same name.

Consumer Electronics - from the notorious adult film convention that happens every year Stateside.

Reynols' name was chosen, according to the band, by a one of them's dog, which apprently made a record too.

Astral Social Club is named after an old working man's club in Leeds.

The supergroup that is Cunt got their name from a rare Louis-Ferndinand Celine short story, called , "L'Heur des Cons" (The Hour of the Cunts).

There are lots of bands who got their name from the Simpsons
Pray For Mojo
Disco Stu
Fall Out Boy etc etc


There are also bands anmed after Smiths songs
preety girls make graves
shakespeare's sister
etyc

Kraftwerk is German for ''Power Plant'' and they've chosen it for its ''electrical'' qualities.

Hijokaidan apparently translates as "Emergency Staircase".

Ramleh got their name from an ancient Crusades battle in Palestine.

Loop got their name from a John Cale flexidisc, which was released pre-Velvets.

Huggy Bear took their name from the eponymous character in TV series Starsky and Hutch.

I hateto be a prick about these things, but I thought it was a reference to the sordid entertainers in apartheid-era SA?

I also wanted to nit-pick about the Velvet Underground being a fetish magazine; the book concerned with VU was Venus in Furs by Sacher-Masoch.

I claim my wanker points and will gladly be leaving now.

Herr von Glice - Was you at ATP in Dec 206 when the Sun City Girls played?

Oh, I posted about reading a fantastic story about that book on The Velvet Underground thread a while ago, but I'll do it again because I like this thread a lot:

One night Lou Reed was about to go onstage and the girl working in the box office booth at the entrance of the venue told him: ''Nice name there, my dad wrote the book that you took it from''. Small world.

Yes, yes I was. And do you know what I was doing? Drinking in my chalet when they were on.

did they know that? or did they name themselves after the boardgame?

Good point. I can't obviously tell if they were aware of the game or they just picked it up because of the way it sounds.

Ah man, you missed a great set. Mind you, you should take comfort in the fact that I fucked my arm up later on that evening. I tell ya, me and stairs are a deadly combination, especially after several pints of the good stuff.

a place to bury strangers -its a story by Aleister Crowley

Beastie Boys - They just wanted a name with two words that both started with the letter 'B'. It was supposed to be an homage to Bad Brains.

Boris - After the Melvins song.

Misfits - After a movie.

Radiohead - After the Talking Heads song I think.

Also, I think I too have heard that Black Flag was named (at least in part) after the insect spray.

Or an alternative version put forward by the boys (ain't hey the cheekiest):

Boys Entering Anarchistic States Toward Internal Excellence.

Black Flag were named after the flag used by anarchists, but when Adam & The Ants were touring the US, they used the tag line for the bug spray: "Black Flag Kills Ants".

bands named after eraserhead:

erazerhead
eraserhead
the eraserheads
henry spencer
apartment 26
henrys final dream

10CC:

Manager Jonathan King had a dream including a band called 10CC.

Lovin' Spoonful:

From the lyrics of John Hurt's "Coffee Blues".

Just getting those two out of the way.

Heaven 17, Clock DVA & Moloko - All references to "A Clockwork Orange"

they forget the words at one of their early gigs and someone shouted that out

Fanx, eye ddnt no dat.

husker du:

during a rough demo of talking heads "psycho killer", the band kept yelling out phrases in french and gibberish where "qu'est-ce que c'est" would eventually be, one of these phrases being "husker du!".

That seems a bit far-fetched. Could be, though.

Blonde Redhead - named after a track by D.N.A

Whirlwind Heat - front cover of Goo

Pink Floyd - Syd named the band after two obscure blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

Iggy & The Stooges

Iggy and Iguana were nicknames since childhood. Pop was inspired by Jim Popp, a local junkie. The Stooges were originally the Psychedelic Stooges. which combined their love of drugs with "The Three Stooges". They dropped Psychedelic to avoid any hippie assumptions.

David Bowie named himself after a knife, didn't he?

Sounds like something thought of in hindsight methinks.

Another version is that Courtney's mum used to tell her "you can't go around with a hole in your head, just because you had a bad childhood".

Yes, apparently he wanted to change his name so people wouldn't confuse him with Davy Jones of the Monkees.

I thought HOLE was a joking/insulting reference to the way some men perceive women, like a hole for their cock.

re: black flag.

they were named panic but there were tons of punk bands called panic, raymond pettibone suggested they use the name black flag, him being a card carrying anarchist and after the black bars design he had made and someone in the band noted (i think it was chuck) that it looked like a flag; they also knew of the roach spray of the same name, so they kept it.

like tons of stuff in their career, there's multiple meanings about flag's name.


after marilyn monroe's last movie before she died, to be more specific.

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after seeing my signature:

metallica named themselves that after a scenester talked to lars about possible names for a fanzine he was putting together, one of the names being "metallica".

earth: after black sabbath's name before they became sabbath.

merzbow: from an artist who used trash to make his artwork, one of his works was called merzbau.

thanks.

pretty girls make grave is a line from kerouacs the dharma bums

they both probably got it from the Kerouac then.