Ask Lemmy

Yo La Tengo - after a hapless baseball Mets fielding incident

Green Day - Named after something that should be cool and celebrated worldwide, but turned out kinda lame.

They Might Be Giants - a reference to the George C. Scott movie of the same name, where this is his character's answer to why Don Quixote jousted with windmills

There is that joke from Peep Show "we were thinking of calling ourselves 'Various Artists' just to fuck with people with iPods"

Fair to Midland.

I don't know that it's clever but it always gives me a good chuckle, Steely Dan is named after a steam powered strap on.

The Who

The Hu

Propagandhi

Minor Threat

Ruskaja

Circle Jerks

The Slits

Eagles of Death Metal

The Beatles. It's a plural of people who can keep a beat.

Theres sooooo many. I'm really into bands.

Can't think of a lot at the moment but Some I think are clever or interesting:

• deftones ("tone deaf")
• muse (short and to the point)
• limp bizkit (yeah, I never knew the origin of this till a few years ago). Not a fan of the band myself.

Dunno if they ever did it but my friend wanted his band to call themselves Free Beer. He figured they would get gigs as an opening act. This Friday at the Paramount - Boy Genius, with Free Beer!

There's a group that does live band karaoke events in my city. (For those unfamiliar, in live band karaoke instead of a recording you go up on stage with real musicians and you sing the song.)

The name of this band is the Nakatomi 5. There are four band members, but the 5 in their name is because when you go up and sing with them you're the 5th member.

• Glass Hammer - I like oxymorons [prog rock]
• Blind Guardian - also kind of an oxymoron [power metal]
• Animals as Leaders - political messaging at its finest? [prog rock/metal]
• Carbon-based Lifeforms - that's us (and our surrounding) [ambient]
• Envy of None - yeah... [not sure about genre]
• Ayreon - sounds cool, is basically a play on words of the creator's name (Arjen Lucassen) [prog rock/metal]
• NoFX - quite fitting for [punk rock]

Save Ferris

Flogging Molly

TV on the Radio

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats

LCD Soundsystem

Jack Off Jill

Some bands I like with names I think are clever:

The Callous Daoboys

Drop Dead, Gorgeous

unpeople

Bloodywood

There used to be a Christian band in Tassie called 'The Fish That John West Rejects'. (A reference to an ad campaign running at the time)

Also another aussie band that'd play bluegrass covers of rock classics called 'The Fargone Beauties'

The 13th Floor Elevators, based on the fact that many buildings don't have a "13th floor" because of superstition, so they named themselves after something that doesn't exist.

Leftöver Crack, same deal! There ain't no such thing as leftover crack!

Metalachi - It's a mariachi band that plays metal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_5y5KrBoO8

Barenaked Ladies - they wanted something that caught peoples attention when looking at random small town band posters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_q9KPczAg

Bilmuri - he just was a big fan of Bill Murray
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGTsevoF23Y

Fair to Midland - a play on fair to middling, they were also from Texas who has a town called Midland.. A band created and revolved around little quips and folksy sayings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpTHbOkrSu0

Cease

Was an excellent local drone band.

I always thought the name was curious and succinct.