Colorful Names

their way towards superstardom. But not every band makes it to the top, and some need to make serious changes to even come close. The Beatles famously replaced their original drummer Pete Best with ring Go Star when it became clear that Best wasn't a good fit. When singer Robert Lamb and his friends first formed their group in nineteen sixty seven, they called themselves the Big Thing until they

transformed themselves into Chicago Transit Authority the following year. One year after that, they shortened it down even more to the name they're known by today, Chicago Change. As you see, is common for a band, and sometimes it can be the difference between obscurity and success. Roger and Nick knew that in England growing up during the nineteen forties and fifties. Roger was something of an athlete, growing up playing cricket in rugby for his high school teams, while Nick went

to college to become an architect. They moved in together in nineteen sixty three and formed a rock band a year later with another pair of friends. They called the group Sigma six. That was before they were named The Mega Deaths, The Screaming Ab Dad's, Leonard's Lodgers, and the Spectrum Five. Finally, they settled on what they had hoped to be their final name, The t Set. Roger played

lead guitar, with Nick on the drums. Their buddy Richard played rhythm guitar, while two other members, Keith and Clive, sang and played bass respectively. Eventually, Keith and Clive split off to start their own band in nineteen sixty three, leaving Roger, Nick and Richard to find two replacements. Now as The t Set, the group often rehearsed in a basement tea room at the college that Roger, Nick and

Richard attended. They would then go out at nights and play various clubs and private engagements, building up their repertoire songs. Late nineteen sixty four saw The t Set join a local London hot spot called the Countdown Club. In residency. They would start playing late at nights and go until dawn, rocking out over ninety minute long sets. They had a problem though, Playing for such a long time meant that

they had to repeat songs in each set. To avoid this problem, the guitarists began taking longer solos in each song, adding enough to buffer them to let them complete their sets without any repeats. Audiences liked it, and it helps solidify the t Sets sound. As they worked their way up the club circuit, they started recording some of their tunes in a studio in West Hampstead and getting more gigs. It was one performance in particular, though, that would change

the fate of the group forever. It was a coincidence, really, They were set to play on the same tickets as another band calling themselves of all things, the t Set in a Panic. Vocalist and guitarist Rogers sought inspiration in his record collection, specifically from some albums by A couple of prominent blues musicians. The first was an album by

a guitar player named Pinckney Anderson known as Pink. Born in Laurence, South Carolina, in nineteen hundred, Anderson had come up playing at medicine shows, performing for crowds while Snake oil salesman pitched their questionable wears. The other album featured a blues guitarist named Floyd Counsel who hailed from North Carolina. Counsel was a busker and specialized in playing the Piedmont Blues, which was big in the South. And Roger wasn't a

string jurs to nicknames. His full name was Roger Keith Barrett, but everyone knew him as Sid. And he took Pink Anderson's name and Floyd Counsel's name and put them together, changing the t set into something else entirely the Pink Floyd sound. Later on, Barrett, Roger Waters and Nick Mason, David Gilmour and Richard White shortened their name to simply

Pink Floyd and went on to make music history. They released fifteen studio albums and twenty seven singles over the course of their career, entertaining audiences all over the world with their psychedelic and progressive brand of rock and It's funny. Even though several of the band's members met while attending architecture school, it was clear that in the end they would build a wall, and they didn't need no education to do it. Celebrity deaths are always hard to take.

When beloved actors, singers, and comedians pass away, it feels like losing a part of ourselves too. We grew up with them, watching their movies or listening to their albums. Their work becomes an integral part of our lives, and so when they inevitably die, it's hard not to feel like the light of the world is just a little bit dimmer. But scientists and doctors have been working in

ways to reverse death, or at least postponent. One of the most well known concepts is called cryonics, a scientific field in which living tissue is preserved at extremely low temperatures. And we've all bumped into the concept before in countless sci fi TV shows and movies such as Futurama, Idiocracy, and Alien, where someone is placed into a deep cold sleep and woken up decades later, or in the case of Alien, when a murderous space creature is loose on

a ship. But yes, the idea of freezing and preserving a human body does sound like science fiction. However, it has been accomplished new furst times over the years as experts continued to research and develop the technology. For example, a fourteen year old girl in the UK who died of cancer several years ago petitioned the courts to allow her body to be cryo preserved until a cure could be found. In two thousand twelve, baseball legend Ted Williams

had his head surgically removed postmortem. It was stored separate from his body by a cryonics company in Arizona. And there was also Dick Claire, a television writer and producer who worked on programs like The Bob Newhart Show and the Facts of Life. Claire died in nineteen eighty eight of complications from AIDS, but was cryonically preserved in Arizona. Along with many others, but one celebrity death has been synonymous with cryonic preservation since his death in nineteen sixty six.

He was an entrepreneur, an animator, a business mogul, and an icon. He created what is arguably the most recognizable character in the world and two of the most successful theme parks in history. Obviously, I'm talking about in another than Walt Disney, who succumbed to lung cancer at the age of sixty five. Of course, Walt Disney was a futurist who anticipated a time when holmes ran automatically, with robots handling things like vacuuming and mopping, not unlike the

future we enjoy today. Some of the original tomorrow Land attractions at Disneyland were called things like the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry and the Bathroom of Tomorrow, exhibits where visitors could see how companies were planning to advance our world, from the chemicals in our food to where we brush our teeth every morning. So it's no wonder that when Disney passed away in December of nineteen sixty seven, rumors

quickly spread about what had happened with his body. Those rumors seemed to kick off in early nineteen sixty seven, just a few weeks after his death. You see, Disney had been being treated for his cancer at St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, California, which sat right across the street from Walt Disney Studios. After he died, a reporter with the National Spotlights, a tabloid ragnell for publishing salacious rumors,

allegedly pulled off some entertainment espionage for a scoop. According to his report, the reporter had dressed up as an orderly and snuck into a storage room. They're preserved in a massive metal container was the body of Walt Disney himself, waiting to be revived at a time when his disease could be cured. Over the years, the stories about Disney's cryonic corpse only grew. They even worked their way into several biographies about the late animator, painting him as a

man desperate for a cure by any means necessary. And there is some truth to that notion. Disney was terrified of dying and often worried about his premature death, especially when he was depressed, although he kept many of his personal feelings close to the vest. According to one biographer, Walt had asked his older brother Roy not to let anyone know about his cancer. As for the circumstances surrounding his passing, those were kept secret from the public for

hours after he had died. The fact that only add it to the mystery of what doctors or scientists might have been doing with his body. Some people believe that Walt Disney is currently being stored beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean Ride at his California park, waiting until he can be resurrected to live on his remaining years as the head of the company he co founded. But the truth he was cremated as per his wishes. There's no

cryonic chamber nor top secret storage facility under Disneyland. Walt Disney created one of the most successful companies in history. That is his legacy. All that other stuff about his body being frozen in perpetuity, that's just a rumor and one that needs to be put on ice. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about

the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with House of Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com and until next time, stay curious, yeah,