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

A friend was recently waxing rhapsodic about the band Pissed Jeans, but I simply can't get beyond that stupid name. Perhaps I'm missing some great music as a result. I've loved a lot of embarassingly-named bands in my day too, but I just can't support a band called Pissed Jeans.

Et vous?

This is terrible, but I've never given John Vanderslice's music a chance because of his last name. I don't know why.

Killing Joke

2 pac

harry pussy

I was a fan, but I very quickly stopped telling those "not in the know" that I admired the band Garbage because of the response the name alone generated.

I quite liked Nashville Pussy when they first made the rounds (when Corey Parks was still the bass player). I've since lost interest/sobered up. I even have a Nashville Pussy t-shirt (complete with since legally-contested bobcat design), but never feel like wearing it, as it'll mean explaining to offended parties that (a) it's a band and (b) they took their name from a ludicrous Ted Nugent quote on Double Live Gonzo and (c) who really gives a damn anyway?

hey guys if it's OK with you I'm going to totally hate this band sight unseen for their name having the phrase "pure AT heart" in it instead of "pure OF heart." even if they did it on purpose to be 'funny' or something.

― some dude, Tuesday, February 10, 2009 12:45 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lots of people i respect seem to think my morning jacket is alright but there is no way i can get past that name

Agreed on My Morning Jacket. CANNOT get beyond it.

Used to really be bothered by At the Drive-In too. Even if it's a stab at Poison's "Talk Dirty To Me" (is it?), it's just lame.

Gentle Giant
Scout Niblett
Blind Melon
Pearl Jam
Black Moth Super Rainbow
Wolfmother
Animal Collective

Toad the Wet Sprocket
New Found Glory
Boards of Canada

the whitest boy alive

I refused to listen to Death Cab For Cutie for years because of their name. Even after I inadvertently heard and liked them, I've refused to ever own any of their music, just because I hate their name.

Basically 95% of indie/emo bands

Took me a while to shell out for anything by The Butthole Surfers.

c-murder

clap your hands say yeah

Gentle Giant
I don't really like prog but I always liked the name

It took me a long time to listen to Of Montreal because I thought the name was so pretentious. My Mom despised the band Hole because of their name but I caught her singing along to Violet once!

xp iatee: I think I have an aversion to anything that has a name that smacks of "elves and fairies in the forest" or new age/hippie stuff - Animal Collective made me think of hippie jam bands where the musicians have power animals.

yeah agree on animal collective at least

my two were mentioned:

My Morning Jacket - got over it and think they're pretty ace
Deathcab for Cutie - i think i heard them once and found them unremarkable enough to go on ignoring

I know it's shallow of me but no matter how many times they sweep the Voice poll I still can't bring myself to listen to The Guys Who're Gonna Beat J0hn D's Ass

Big Dick McGee

I like the name but I couldn't forgive him for killing his wife marion

Black Moth Super Rainbow OTM.

clap your hands say yeah
the yeah yeah yeahs

basically

Fucked Up, for awhile, now i like them a lot

minus the bear

Dr. Dog, I guess. I've still never knowingly heard them.

It took me a while to get around to checking out Eyehategod because of the name. I'm glad I got past that.

Pissed Jeans, oddly enough, doesn't bother me as a name. It suits their sound. They're good! One of the better pigfuck revival acts out there.

yeah yeah yeahs is a great band name, except for when you have to say it aloud

funny, i do remember, way back when I was a teen, hearing about this band Pavement and thinking, come on, come up with a real band name, dudes. Just sounded boring, along the lines of grunge bands naming songs "Porch."

You couldn't pay me a million dollars to listen to one second of the work of a band with a name like "Death Cab for Cutie". No fucking way.

Final Fantasy
Dr. Dog

ryan adams

i figured anybody w/name that close to bryan adams who didn't change it couldn't possibly be any good.

maybe i'm in the minority here, but Death Cab For Cutie's name is my fave thing about them, becuz it makes me think of that funny Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band song.

!!! is another one, actually

In case y'all didn't know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Cab_for_Cutie_(song)

(oh xpost!)

and yet, they are totally humorless and sound nothing like the Bonzos AND are just terrible in general

agreed

Dogs Die in Hot Cars

They've been too ubiquitous here for me to write them off solely because of their name, but I think I might have given Arctic Monkeys more of a chance if they were called just about anything else instead.

I gave Dananananaykroyd a listen on emusic out of morbid curiosity (expected some horrible joke band) and was pleasantly surprised with my favorite album of the year to date...

^^^^I have been struggling with friends' recommendations owing to their name

Used to really be bothered by At the Drive-In too. Even if it's a stab at Poison's "Talk Dirty To Me" (is it?), it's just lame.

Haha, I never made that leap from At-the Drive In to Poison, but I love it!

i had a friend who was really into the pAper chAse & kept insisting i check them out but i refused because i thought their name looked dumb. now, "When & If The Big One Hits" is one of my favorite songs but i still don't like looking at their name.

more recently, i had a similar experience with tUnE-YaRdS.

Gastunk has a name that just doesn't entice.

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

I suspect that ceramics class was somewhat oversubscribed.

Beabadoobee is really the most impressively awful name I've encountered in some time. Maybe since Hoobastank?

JUST IN: Mega Bog

toiletcore

i actually love the name mega bog

It's kinda cute. My cousin has a (now in her thirties) kid named Meg, and called her Megabug when she was a little one. And of course we haven't let either one of them live that down.

"Roxy Music" is perfect for them and their sound.

I remember going to a friends' family's Christmas get-together one evening. Everyone was getting pissed and doing Playstation karaoke. It was mine and the patriarch's turn to do a song together, so we picked "Love Is The Drug". The Dad's big lunk of a son, 30 going on 17, goes up to him: "Dad! Dad! What you gonna sing?". Dad tells him: "I think we're going to go for some Roxy Music". Son: "What the fuck is that?"

Just one of these exchanges that's stuck in my mind for years, it was more in the delivery of the conversation though

i actually love the name mega bog

Unfortunately to anyone in the UK, a bog is another word for a lavatory. It's even worse in Australia though where it apparently means 'the act or an instance of defecating'.

wow i’m even more into mega bog now that i know it means mega toilet in the uk

I knew this but i'm sure nobody is surprised that I know of all of the names for toilet giving my posting history

Cludgie?

I was not familiar with the Australian term "dunny" until I watched the show Mr Inbetween.