Artists You've Written Off/Pointedly Ignored because of their name

I've written off bands whose titles come from cool and completely non-obscure choices: The Grifters and Twin Peaks are two that come to mind.

*whose names

We Were Promised Jetpacks is a great name I think. And they're a nice wee band.

In defense of the Grifters, I don't think the Jim Thompson novel was "completely non-obscure" when they chose their name (tho I also don't generally favor band names that are just the name of something else "cool").

It's interesting that the Scorsese adaption of that novel came out soon afterward; I guess something was in the air.

khruangbin

...it just... i don't know. what even

None of the band members actually speak Thai so arguably they don't know either.

re the Grifters tbh I just thought they were named after the bike (not really, but that was my reference for the word when I first heard them)

I feel like I heard of them not too long after the movie was in the theaters and thought they'd named themselves after a John Cusack movie, not unlike the rock band Say Anything.

The Grifters is a perfectly good band name people.
Having never heard their music, I have a pretty good idea what it's going to sound like based on that name (unlike Khruangbin).
If I'm also assuming that they're a middling, anodyne band, it's only because I've never heard anyone rave about them, not because they got their name from a Jim Thompson book.

Thrush Hermit. OK, I’d never actually heard of them before they popped up here but I’m just treating this thread as a repository for off-putting names at this point.

khruangbin

...it just... i don't know. what even

― maelin, Friday, July 16, 2021 4:35 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

None of the band members actually speak Thai so arguably they don't know either.

― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Friday, July 16, 2021 5:13 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

When asked to play their first gig, Laura Lee, who was learning to speak Thai at the time, decided they should use her favorite Thai word "khruangbin" (Thai: เครื่องบิน; RTGS: khrueang bin), which means "aeroplane", as their name.

I don't know how far she got in her language lessons, but they definitely know the meaning. And given their influences and covers of non-Western music I think it's a fine name, just a little hard to remember. I like them a lot.

Hiatus Kaiyote

I see I have played some tracks by them in past, but it's just such an unappealing name

in *the* past

steely dan

always irritated me in a way probably inextricable from my impressions of their weird/complicated/impenetrable cultural context. but i just looked up the origins of the name and fucking hell could these guys be any more not for me

Not a Burroughs fan?

i don’t know enough about the beats to distinguish them stylistically but i anything even slightly adjacent is hard for me to bear (eg lou reed, patti smith) I don’t understand that version of cool whatsoever. also not a big fan of men who kill women in general

^I'll remember that if I ever need a new reason to write off/pointedly ignore Chappaquiddick Skyline.

Wait who killed women

Donald Fagen

Left seems really annoying

Burroughs killed his wife

Fagen's?

So that's what Do It Again is about

Sometimes I try to imagine having a conversation with a person like that in real life and I shudder.

Fagen does seem like a prick, it's true

Like I said, I've never actually done this, but among the off-putting names that probably marred my enjoyment of the music upon discovering it, be it only for a split-second, I could cite

Aerosmith
American Football
Arctic Monkeys
The Band
British Sea Power
The Flying Burrito Brothers
Jefferson Airplane
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Megadeth
The Modern Lovers
Modest Mouse
Of Montreal
The National
Roxy Music
Soft Machine
Sonic Youth
Steely Dan
Supertramp
Thin Lizzy
Yo La Tengo

I like most of these bands btw.

My friend's dad thinks Roxy Music are called Sexy Music.

Megadeth is the perfect name for Megadeth.

Most of those are good band names. No accounting for taste I suppose.

puddle of mudd
alice in chains
staind

i still wanna know who killed Donald Fagen's wife

We were promised jet packs for sure fuck those people idc if they sound like Alice Coltrane never hearing a note

Most of those are good band names. No accounting for taste I suppose.

The Modern Lovers, Roxy Music and Sonic Youth are three band names I've always thought were really good, specifically. And yeah, I'm not really into Supertramp, Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy or Megadeth but they're pretty good for what they are too.

British Sea Power is a terrible name, no arguments.

We were promised jet packs for sure fuck those people idc if they sound like Alice Coltrane never hearing a note

― kurt schwitterz, Friday, July 23, 2021 10:17 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Here, let me make that worse for you:

“The name came about after we heard a Ricky Gervais podcast,” explains Palmer. “The actual quote was ‘We were promised hovercrafts’ but we thought jetpacks sounded cooler.”

Any band name with 'Music' in it is a no-no in my book ('The Music' are the worst offenders).

Was about to lay harder into We Were Promised Jetpacks but just discovered they were another high-school band who stayed together, which seems to be the case with a lot of the worst band names. God knows what name I’d have come up with at that age.

hope no one makes fun of my band Ricky Gervais Podcast

a few locals that I refuse to listen to....

Dismembering the Carcass (oh neat you mashed up two famous metal bands into one)
Catcher AND the Rye (not convinced they don't think that's the actual title of the book and not them being 'clevar')

imagining the lead singer dressed up like mike piazza and the surrounding bandmembers dressed up as bundles of grain

honestly that would rekindle my interest

Carcass in the Rye would be OK
Dismembering the Catcher also acceptable

catchers should always be dismembered

Any band name with 'Music' in it is a no-no in my book ('The Music' are the worst offenders).

They were originally called Roxy but there was an American band with the same name.

Luckily they didn't end up being called Roxy England

The London Roxy
Roxy UK

Oh god, we were spared well.

Roxy Music much better than just Roxy imo

Definitely.

In November 1970, Bryan Ferry, who had just lost his job teaching ceramics at a girls' school for holding impromptu record-listening sessions

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall.

Ugh my hot teddy boy teacher is making us listen to Xenakis again