Guess what, Mango, what's that? Will? So I know we're both pretty good at celebrating each other's accomplishments. But I do have to admit there's one thing you have on your resume that I've honestly always been a little jealous of. You have a band named after you, Mango.
I mean, that's a bit of a stretch.
I don't think it's a stretch at all, all right, So our listeners will know. When we were in college, Mango was playing the keyboards and a band that a few of our closest friends had started. Well, this also happened to be around the time we were trying to start Mental Floss, and Mango realized there just weren't enough hours in the day. So, fortunately for all future fans of Mental Floss and even part time genius, Mango decided to keep working on our new venture, and he dropped
out of the band. Now, this was also around the time that the band was just starting to get a few more gigs, and I mean some of their shows were getting I don't know, what would you say, Mango, like tens of people in the audience.
It was at least ten.
It was impressive, but they needed to settle on a name, so they decided to simultaneously honor and throw a little bit of a friendly jab at Mango by calling the group Minus Mango.
Well I'm not sure honor is the right term for that.
Well, either way, the band ran with it, and they had a short but fun run. And I've even heard the band inspired some songs like I think it was meatloafs I would do anything for love and shares believe if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, I mean, there's only one problem with that theory, Will, And actually there's several problems with that, the main one being that it's not true, but the other being that both those songs came out well before the band formed.
Well, I just think that's what makes it so impressive. I mean, that is really remarkable. But anyway, we're not here to talk about Minus Mango today. We're here to talk about the origins of some other band names and maybe even create a little hall of fame of great and terrible band names. So let's get started, Hey, their
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangeshot Ticket and on the other side of that Soundproof Glass rocking a T shirt for his favorite mashup cover band, Mango. I don't know if you'd heard of this one before. I had not. It's called Beatallica. Anyway, that's our friend and producer Tristan and McNeil, and you know, Beatles songs
covered in the style of Metallica. It's not something you'd expect to work, but Tristan played me a few tracks earlier and I've honestly got to say I really kind of dug it.
Yeah, I mean, the way they blended Blackbird with Fade to Black is pretty masterful. That My favorite probably is still All you Need is Blood.
I mean, it really says it all, don't you say. But anyway, as funny or clever as cover band names and song titles can be, the stories behind them are usually not all that interesting. I mean, by definition, they're pulled from or at least made in reference to existing works by other artists, and all the origin stories for the names of original bands tend to be a lot more interesting. Even that's not a sure thing. I mean,
take the Beatles, for example. They've definitely earned their place in the rock and Roll Hall of fame, But in the band name hall of fame, I really don't think they belong there. I mean, they took the name of an insect and kind of turned it into this obvious pun on musical beats, and so it doesn't tell you anything about the group or the kind of music they play, and honestly, worst of all, there's no hidden meaning or interesting story behind it at all.
That's right.
So for today's show, we're gonna set aside the artist and their work and really focus instead on what they chose to call themselves. Even bad band names are on the table, just as long as the stories behind them are strange or interesting.
Yeah, and I thought we could do this like we did a while back in that episode where we tried to assemble our own version of Mount Rushmore. And of course it was so much fun to hear from all the listeners with ideas of what other presidents we should include on Mount Rushmore and why. So we're kind of doing the same thing here. We'll each pitch some of the best band name origins that we had, you know, come across while researching and kind of gradually fill out
our Hall of Fame. And you know, the one thing we noticed while preparing for this episode is how many band names fall into similar categories, whether that's band's name for literary works or band's name for TV shows. So we'll try to limit our picks to one per category so that we end up with a pretty good mix of origins. So, all right, Mango, I'm gonna leave it up to you. Where do you think we should start?
So I was thinking about this, and I think we should start with band names inspired by history, because those were, you know, some of the most interesting to me and also some of the hardest to choose from. So a
few are pretty well known at this point. I mean you think about like Franz Ferdinand, which takes its name from the archduke whose assassination led to World War One, Or there were lots of other ones I knew that were taken from history, Like did you know that U two was actually named after a spy plane currently You two's were used to monitor the Soviets in the nineteen fifties.
You know, I've heard of this term before, but actually didn't. I didn't realize that, but I guess it makes sense though a lot of You two songs contain, you know, references to political and historical events. And actually I was just thinking about one the other days. Isn't Sunday Bloody Sunday about the gorilla warfare in Northern Ireland?
It is?
Actually have you watched that Alan Partridge episode where Steve Coogan's like a total buffoon and he's talking about this inspiration for the song and he's like, it's just so relatable, like when you're in line at Tesco's and you just think Sunday Bloody Sunday.
Maybe that actually is the origin. I'm not sure. That's pretty good.
But what's funny to me though, is that the band really didn't choose you two to make any sort of political statement, Like they went with it because it sounded ambiguous and also I guess inclusive, like you know the phrase you two. And also it was just more interesting than their earlier names, like they started out as Feedback in nineteen seventy six before switching to the Hype and then U two within the span.
Of two years. Yeah, it's funny because I found another band that couldn't seem to settle on a name until they stumbled upon an historical one. So you remember Jethro Toll, right, m hm well, they had a hit with that song Aqualong in the early seventies, and apparently Jethro Toll was a real person, just not a member of the band. He was actually this English agricultural pioneer who played this pretty pivotal role in bringing about the British agricultural revolution
in the early eighteenth century. And so his biggest claim to fame was the invention of a horse drawn seed drill to easily sew seeds in orderly rows, which really laid the groundwork for modern agriculture.
That's just so rock and roll, you said. The band just happened upon that name.
Yeah, So, in the band's early days, they had this habit of making up a new name for every single gig because their performances were so spotty and most places didn't book them a second time. So after about seriously like four something name changes, the group finally hit on this unexpected winner with their homage to an eighteenth century agronomist. You know, that's the way it goes.
That's pretty incredible.
Well, but agricultural roots aside. My favorite band name with an historical origin probably has to be Foo Fighters.
So this is strange, right, because I consider myself something of a history buff. I actually won mister Zippy's History Award in tenth grade. But I have no idea what part of history that could possibly come from, like where the Foo Fighters, Genghis Khans, elite bodyguards or something.
Not even close. It actually comes from the tail end of World War Two, and this is when the Allied pilots began reporting some sightings of these mysterious German aircraft and they really couldn't be identified, and so the pilots took to calling these UFOs foo Fighters. And when frontman Dave Grohl came across the nickname he was reading a book about UFOs, he actually just decided it was perfect for his new band.
So did he ever elaborate on what made it sound so perfect to him?
Well, girl actually cour of the entire first Food Fighters album all by himself, but he kind of wanted everybody to think it was the work of a proper group, and for whatever reason, he thought a World War two term for UFOs would lead people to assume there was more than just one man behind this music.
That's pretty funny reasoning.
So you know, I read this history article of Nirvana where the guys would always apparently remind Dave Grohl that he wasn't in the first iteration of the band. So, I mean, it's kind of like telling Ringo he wasn't an original Beatle, just over and over, and I feel awful for him, But you know why, food fighters like he could have.
Chosen any word that was a plural noun.
Well, you know, girl apparently came to a similar conclusion because later he said in an interview, he said, had I actually considered this to be a career, I probably would have called it something else because it's the stupidest effing band name in the world.
So I almost kind of want to add it to our list just for that reason. But really, if we're going to narrow it down to a single band per category, I think we have.
To give this to the Decembrius.
Okay, So I know their songs tend to be very literary and sometimes recount or maybe pull from historical events. And I do remember a little bit about the Decembers from a Russian history class I took years and years ago. But I think I need a little bit of a refresher.
Right, So the historical Decembris, whose spelling actually is different from the month in the band because it doesn't actually have a third e in it. They were this group of Russian revolutionaries who led almost a failed uprising in the December of eighteen twenty five, and so the group was composed mostly of these young Russian officers and also members of the upper classes who they wanted to reform
the autocratic government into more of a liberal system. And they actually took advantage of the chaos surrounding the death of one tzar and the sension of another to stage rebellion. But because it had been so poorly organized, their revolution was quickly put to an end, and their hope of overturning an oppressive system has really only lived on. With martyred December is now serving almost as a source of inspiration for new generations of Russian rebels.
So is that actually where the band name comes from.
Yeah, so that's the thing it does, and it doesn't. So, according to the band's frontman, Colin Molloy, the name's partly derived from the Russian freedom fighters and partly from the month of December itself.
I mean, it feels like you might be cheating a little on this one, Mango. It's only a half reference to history, So why do you feel like it deserves a spot on our list because.
This is the only historical band name we've mentioned where the reference wasn't chosen at random. So with the December is there's actually this real thematic connection between the band's
name and its music. And as Colin molloy puts it, quote, I like to think that the drama behind the month of December, there's a group of people who that is their month and they're sort of stuck in this month, And I think that sort of speaks to the songs and the characters and the songs sort of marginalized, sort of on the outskirts, all living in the coldest month.
Well that is pretty interesting, But actually, didn't you say the real Decembers were from the nobility. It kind of doesn't sound like they were marginalized people living on the outskirts as he was describing.
Yeah, so they were definitely a minority in terms of openly opposing the system that ruled them. And once their rebellion was sort of stifled, the Decembrists became well and truly marginalized. Most of the surviving members were sent off to remote work camps in Siberia, where their descendants still eke out a living even though they brought education and culture with them to that land.
Well all right, well it's not the cheeriest historical connection, but but you're right, it certainly seems like one of the deepest. And because of that, I agree, and I'll give it to you. The Decembrists deserved the first spot in our band name Hall of Fame.
Ding ding Dings, So they probably don't know it, but that's a huge honor. And since it took us a while to decide on that first entry, I actually have a category that we can probably knock out pretty fast, and that's best band named acronym that isn't actually an acronym. And remember ARIM is disqualified from this one because it really is an acronym and it stands for rabbit eye movement. Apparently Michael Stipe just cribbed it from the dictionary after pointing to the word at random.
Yeah, probably the laziest way to come up with a band name, but you do hear that happening a lot, right, Well, I guess my pick for this one would be kiss. I would think, you know, everybody's heard the rumors that the name secretly stands for something sinister. I remember hearing as a kid that it stood for things like kids
in Satan's service. But you know, according to Jane Simmons, the name doesn't stand for anything and was simply just this, like this idle suggestion from one band member to another. And it was it was Paul Stanley that came up with this, And he's actually gone on record that he chose the name Kiss because it quote just sounded dangerous and sexy at the same time.
I mean, I guess you can't argue with the results, or I guess you can actually, but.
I'm sure some people found them sexy and others dangerous.
I think my sister would be included in that category. I know I've told you this before, but my sister is a few years older than I am, so when I was little, I would sneak into her room and to her music. But i'd also, of course go through all of her stuff. And one of the things I remember finding was this shoe box, and it was full of these Kiss trading.
Cards, kiss ianthing.
It's hilarious to look at it. I really wish she still had.
These and that's pretty amazing.
But you know, for my money, the best faw acronym band name is still wasp Oh.
I remember them. So they were a heavy metal band and back in it was this seven. I guess this was the eighties, right, And I can't believe that's not actually an acronyman. They even put a period between each of the letters.
I know, I mean, I guess it's from the era where you'd put gratuitous like umlots and nonsense and names like wing dings and whatever. But supposedly it was just because not many other bands had done it at that time, and they hoped it would make them stand out and get people curious about the band. But just like Kiss, rumors swirled that the acronyms did for all sorts of naughty stuff, like we are sexual perverts, we are Satan's preachers,
we all smoke pot. But my favorite red herring of that lot is an answer that one of the band members gave when he was doing an interview, and he said, you know, they asked what does was stand for?
He said, we ain't sure, pal.
Oh, I like that. There's some pretty good ones there, all right, So the periods were just a marketing technique. But what about the name itself, I mean, does it stand for anything or like, why WASP?
I guess one of the band members saw wasp one night and thought it might make for a cool band name.
All right, Well, I guess you kind of stacked the deck with this category, but I'm still gonna give you this one as well for WASP, so we will add them to the list here.
Which is awesome because I'm two for two and I don't think you have any points on the board.
Right No, but don't don't get too cocky. We've still got a bunch of origins to get to and I really doubt you're gonna be able top this next one. But before I hit you with it, let's take a quick break. You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the weird stories behind famous band names, all right, mango. So now our Hall of Fame needs to be the best story for a band name taken from a TV show or movie. It can be either one, and I
actually think I've got the perfect contender. Now. At first I thought about fallout Boy, you know, because I'm always thinking about Fallout Boy, or maybe not, but you know, They've been this nameless band until they pulled the audience at their second show and someone in the crowd shouted out the name of Radioactive Man's superhero sidekick from The Simpsons, and it actually just sort of stuck.
That's amazing, that's where it comes from.
Yeah, it's a pretty good story. So but actually then I thought I'd go with something a little more obscure, and that's what led me to the Bloodhound Gang. Do you remember the Bloodhound Gang?
Yeah? I mean I wish I didn't, because they had that annoying song bad Touch, and the video of it was just them in monkey costumes running around town and I guess doing weird, dirty things to everyone inside.
I don't know. It was just art mango. I don't know why you don't want to remember that. Well, there is something interesting I found out about that when you talk about them running around doing weird and dirty things to everything in the video, And honestly, that's that the Bloodhound Gang was actually a lot more wholesome than you might think, or or at least their name was. And that's because the band took it from this recurring sketch that was on the old three to one Contact show
the Way from PBS in the eighties. I know you were a big fan as a kid, definitely. Well, the sketch was all about this group of dorky kids called the Bloodhound Gang, and so they'd get together and try to solve these crimes using math puzzles, and that's where they got the name.
That's pretty funny that, you know, such a raunchy bend would take their name from kids program. But uh, you know, even though three two one Contact Magazine was actually a huge influence on me in mental fluss. Seriously, I'm I'm still not sure I want those guys in our Hall of fame.
Oh wow, I guess that video did a number on you. But all right, I do agree with you. No Bloodhound Gang allowed, So we got to come up with another one.
So what sort of slammed on entry do you have for TVA movies?
Well, that would be a little band I like to call exclamation Point, exclamation Point, exclamation point, or as fans have wisely decided to call them, Chickchick Chick. Yeah, of course. So they're this post punk funk group out of Sacramento, and they actually took their unusual name from the nineteen eighty South African comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy. You remember this movie, right.
Yeah, that's crazy.
So for listeners who haven't seen it, it's about this remote African tribe that lives in peace until they find a coke bottle that falls out of an airplane and they all start fighting over it. And you know, it's a funny movie. But I have tomit. I don't know what it has to do with those three exclamation points.
Well, in the movie, the Bushman Shoshin language was subtitled as a series of exclamation points, and the band liked this idea of using that to refer to a different kind of sound, you know, one that's hard to categorize, And I guess that's how they viewed their own music now, because the bush language sometimes sounds a lot like clicking sounds. I guess you know, the most common pronunciation is chickchick, chick.
But according to the band, the intention was for people to use any three repetitive sounds and they could just choose them, so you could call the band bam bam bam or pow pow pow, and you know, you technically still be talking about the same band. I can give you other examples example, that's.
Right, all right, Well, I think you sold me on Chick Chick Chick, and that's gonna get my vote. But I have a feeling this next category is going to be a bit more hotly contested, and it's the best band name for somebody who isn't in the band.
Oh yeah, there's a bunch of good examples for this vote. Actually. For instance, you you know Alice Cooper, right, mm hmm. Well, the band was originally called the Earwigs, but after playing around with a Wuiji board, it put him in touch with a ghost name Alice Cooper, so they decided to switch to that instead.
So I love that Wuiji board story.
But you know what's weird is that I didn't even know Alice Cooper was a band, Like I thought it was just the one guy.
Well not at first. There was the guy that ended up taking the name, and it was the front man. His real name was Vincent Fernier. But after he split off from the band, he went solo and he actually ended up just taking the name Alice with him.
Well, I mean that is pretty cool, but you know, I prefer bands named after real people, thank you very much.
And that's why my pick for this category is Pink Floyd.
No way is that they have a real person.
Yeah, it's actually the name of two real people.
So you know, one of the band's founding members, the legendary said Barrett came up with idea for combining the names of two of his favorite blues musicians, and that's Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
Oh wow, I had no idea about that, all right, but that does mean if I'm not mistaken that Anderson Council would still be on the table then.
Right, definitely.
So for any nameless bands out there, here's the answer you've been looking for, all right, Well, I have.
To give it to you. Pink Floyd is a two for with that double homage, and that is tough to beat. But I have one I've been saving, and I think I want to give the edge to, you know, to my Alabama brothers Leonard SKINNERD.
I mean, aren't they from Florida?
Details details name.
I mean in terms of fake sounding names like Leonard SKINNERD, Like, no real name has that many?
Wise?
Right, how many times I've written it? I don't know how many times I've actually written it, but I never can seem to get it right. But you might have a point, because you know, while the band did take their name in honor of their real life gem teacher and basketball coach, they also tweaked it a little to sound a little bit more interesting. So the real guy's name was Leonard Skinner, and after the band made him their namesake, Skinner reconnected with his old pupils and actually
even m seed one of their shows. But really, though, the band might have been better off just sticking with Leonard Skinner, because you know, their name was just so hard to remember how to spell, and the misspelled version they went on was just so phonetically confusing that even their self titled debut album, it had this little pronunciation. Guy, I don't know if you've seen this before, but on the cover of the album to help people know how to pronounce it, you know, just to be safe.
That's ridiculous. Okay, so I guess you're two for two. I'm gonna give that one to you.
But this next category I think is all mine because I found the all time best band name inspired by another artist, and it belongs to none other than the man who taught the world to do the twist, mister Chubby Checker.
Oh wow, So who inspired Chubby Checker's name.
So apparently it's a riff on the name of fellow
musician and near contemporary Fats Domino. Yeah, but the first person to ever call Ernest Evans by the name Chubby Checker was actually Dick Clark's wife, and they met when Chubby appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand in nineteen sixty and during the recording, Chubby launched into this impression of Fats Domino, And afterwards he told missus Clark that his friends actually called him Chubby, and she smiled and said as in Checker, and he just kind of liked it
so much that he used it as a stage name from then on.
You know, this is one of those that, in hindsight you think that Fats Domino and Chubby Checker, it seems obvious, but I actually had never made that connection before. All right, so I will concede this when Chubby Checker should have a spot in the band Name Hall of Fame.
Well, I'm glad you're on board, because I really like that one, and it just kind of lines up perfectly with an article I read about the science of choosing the perfect band name.
Oh, I definitely want to hear more about this, but first let's take a quick break, all right, mango, So it's time to spill it. What is the secret to coming up with a truly top shelf band name?
Well, if we've shown anything today, it's that memorable band names come from all different places.
You know.
Some are homages to real life events and people. Others are nonsense words or appealing phrases crib for media or other musicians. And some names come in sudden flashes of inspiration. I mean, others just seem to be whatever a drummer happened to be looking at at the time. And there's really no one fixed approach that works. But there actually do seem to be some linguistic patterns that crop up among the best band names.
All right, So what do you mean by patterns?
So, just on a basic level, most compelling band names have something unusual about them. So you know, you think about like the Grateful Dead or the Flaming Lips, and those are just these unexpected word combinations that you find together and when you hear them, they kind of grab your attention. But there's also this other factor that's more cultural than linguistic, and what's that. So this might sound a little strange, but it comes down to the way
people connect words and names that belong to a certain category. So, for example, like think about something the naming patterns for cars, right, two big ones that might come up are fast moving animals. You've got things like the Jaguar, the Mustang, even the viper, And also astronomical figures, so like turists or mercury, nova, Saturn, Subaru. Like, at this point, we're kind of so used to these recurring patterns and carnons that any words that fit into that genre like that rings true to us.
Is a good name for a car?
That's yeah, that's true definitely, But so are you're saying that the same kind of thing happens with band names.
Totally, But this isn't something I recognized on my own. It's actually the theory of this linguist named Chilu. And one important thing she points out in her research is that these cultural associations that we create for categories of names are always changing over time. So here's actually a quote from her article in Jay Store where she lays out some of these generational patterns of music, she writes. Quote short names beginning with the and a common noun
is an obvious pattern from the mid twentieth century. We've got the beetles, the monkeys, the animals, the Kanks, and that scene a revival in recent times. The heavy metal genre is one of the classes with more obvious linguistic patterns, usually involving death, so Megadeth's Layer, of course, and other perils such as dangerous animals, white snake weapons, guns n' roses, iron Maiden, or sometimes drugs and unhealthy substances poison.
All Right, so I guess it does make sense. Like when you were talking about Chubby Checker before, it lines up pretty well with this idea of these these naming patterns. Obviously, in this case, it was picking a name that wasn't too far off from somebody else's, you know, Fats Domino in this case. And so he kind of found that ultimate shortcut to making a recognizable band name.
Right, And I mean that seems to be like the cardinal rule of rock and roll, where the music's always derivative, right, Like it's always pulling from the blues. So why shouldn't been naming conventions be derivative? As well just copy the other guys.
Yeah, it's a good point and it does seem to work all right. Well, I wanted to come back to some of these other names, but I'm not sure if you experienced this, but in doing the research, there were definitely a ton of fun band name origins that they kind of don't fit into a particular category. I feel like we should take a little bit of time to just throw out a few wildcard entries for our band name Hall of Fame. Yeah, I love that.
It's perfect.
So I've actually been dying to talk about Dexy's Midnight Runners, and I don't think there's any other way I could work them in.
Yeah, it sounds like kind of a tough sell, So I have to admit, who are they exactly?
So you might remember them as the British band they gave us the eighties hit song come On Eileen.
No, I definitely don't remember them as that. I mean, of course I remember the song that I couldn't have told you who sung it.
Yeah.
Well, either way, their naming situation is basically the exact opposite of what happened with the Bloodhound Gangs. So instead of being like a raunchy band with an innocent name. The Dexi's Midnight Runners were I guess, like a squeaky clean band with a highly suspect name.
That sounds pretty funny, but I think you're gonna have to walk me through because I honestly have no clue what a Dexi's Midnight Runner is.
Okay, So the band openly admitted that the Dexi's part of their name comes from a you know, a stimulant called dexa Dream and this was popular among soul music fans in Northern England during the seventies, and the Midnight Runners part that refers to the users who used the drug as a way to dance all night long.
Oh wow, so so, but you said these guys were like a squeaky.
Clean band totally.
So they were completely sober and they didn't even have alcohol at any of the shows.
Oh wow, that's pretty bizarre. But that's great, all right. Well, I think my wild card pick is an oldie but a goodie, and that would be the one and only led Zeppelin. You can kind of think of this as the Yankee Doodle Award for our Hall of Fame because, just like in that song, the name led Zeppelin has its origins in something that was originally intended as an insult.
So the story goes that The Who's Keith Moon was actually invited to drum for this new London band, but ended up being so unimpressed with the other members and he mockingly predicted that they would quote go down like a lead balloon. So then John Entwhistle basis for The Who, went even further than that, and he remarked that the new band would be such a colossal failure that it would be more like a led Zeppelin.
Which is pretty harsh but also kind of clever.
Yeah, it was, but maybe as clever as that. When the insult made its way back to Jimmy Page and his manager, they actually thought it was so funny that they decided to make it the official band name, though only after dropping the A from lead, and the whole reason was to, you know, to keep Americans from mispronouncing it as lead Zeppelin.
So I don't know what I should be impressed by how much they cared about preserving like that lead balloon joke.
At all costs.
I guess insulted by how little they thought of American intelligence.
I don't know. I sort of think it was a smart call. I mean, you remember the pronunciation guide I mentioned about Leonard Skinner, right, Yeah.
Of course, And I guess I understand that desire to make sure your name comes across as intended, because the name a band goes with can have this major impact on a musician's career, didnerring everything from their radio exposure to merchandise design to you know, what kind of people
will actually listen to the songs. And even after the music stops and the spotlight shifts to someone else, a good name can still keep a band afloat in the cultural site, guys, so long as there's an interesting story about where it came from.
Oh yeah, I mean I think you're absolutely right. I was actually this close to talk about Hoody and the Blowfish today and Mango. It's twenty eighteen.
Well, you haven't missed your opportunity yet.
It's time for the fact off and there's still a few empty spots left to talk about band names.
All right, Well, dust off your Blowfish, Hoody, you're coming in.
So I'm going to start us off.
And I love it when bands named themselves after songs from other bands, as somewhat of a tribute, and that's actually how Radiohead got their name. When they first formed in the mid eighties, they were known as on a Friday, which was the day that they got together to practice. But then five or six years later, when they signed with EMI, they actually changed their name to Radiohead as a tribute to the Talking Heads and their nineteen eighty six song Radiohead.
You know, something similar actually happened with the Rolling Stones. So Jagger and Richards first formed the band back in the early sixties, and at that point they were called the Blue Boys. But the story goes that during an interview with this jazz focused newspaper, guitarist Brian Jones spotted
this Muddy Waters record. It was just sitting there on the floor where he was doing the interview, and it made him think about that song Rolling Stone from the same album, and that's where they got the name.
That's really cool.
So, you know, having played in a band in high school or several bands in high school, I love stories of groups that you know, met hiss kids and kept performing together. And another one of those was a group
that came together in the nineties out of Cleveland. They were just in junior high school when they started rapping together, and one day Anthony Crazy Bone Henderson had this minor crash on his moped, and in somewhat of an act of solidarity, the group all spored bandages and they started calling themselves the band Aid Boys, And while that name didn't stick, we now know them as Bone Thugs and Harmony.
You know, I also think it's fun when bands don't seem to actually remember their origin, or at least there are competing stories for origins. And one of these where I saw so many different stories on this was Pearl Jam, and so I won't share all of them. But there have been some claims that the band name was inspired by Eddie Vedder's great grandmother Pearl, who apparently made this famous peote jam. I don't know if this is true enough. And I thought that was pretty funny, and then it
ranges to the much less interesting. You know, one of them that they just liked the word pearl and then they added jam to it because that's what a group of musicians do. So I think I'm gonna stick with the great grandmother story. It just seems so much more fun to believe.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
Well, I know, we're not really focusing on cover bands, but there's one that's kind of a cover band but also kind of a weirdly inspired band called Austrian Death Machine, and apparently they sing entirely in the style of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and all their songs are from some of his famous one liners. So you know, like it's not a tumor, which you can actually find on the band's first album, Total Brutal, which is right, that's actually the first album's name.
Oh, just the first album. Wow, this band is something else. I would imagine that's one of those shows that you're like, this is gonna be so hilarious, and for the first five minutes it's so hilarious, and then it's just torture from that point on. All right, Mango, I don't want to disappoint anybody, because we promised to include Hoody and the Blowfish, and I'm here to deliver. I'm not sure that we actually did promise, but we said Hoody and the Blowfish.
We promised, we did.
We promised Hoody. But you know, I think most people assume that the frontman Darius Rucker was Hoody and that his supporting band members were the Blowfish. But it actually turns out that he's kind of both, or at least both names came from people that Darius went to school with. So one was this kid they called Hoodie because I guess he kind of looked like an owl. And there was a separate classmate that had these puffed up cheeks
and was nicknamed Blowfish. So I'm not sure why they decided to combine these two, and I kind of want to see pictures of these guys. It just would make
for an interesting story. But it seemed to work. And I've actually got an equally important fact because just recently a friend reminded me that in our high school yearbook there was a photo of me playing basketball in a game, and for some reason, when I was dribbling, I would do this thing where I'd blow out my cheeks like a blowfish, you know, kind of like Jordan's tongue, but much less cool and much less effective.
Of course, when you weren't dunking.
When I wasn't dunking, that's what I was doing. And anyway, I was doing that in this photo, and the capture under it said Willie and the Blowfish. So how about that Mango? Pretty good.
Well, I feel like you deserved today's trophy just based on that story alone.
Thank you very much, and thank you guys for listening. I know we must have left out so many great origin stories of band names, so please let us hear those from. You can always email us part Time Genius at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also call us on our twenty four to seven fact hotline one eight four four pt Genius, or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening.
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Do we do we forget Jason?
Jason who