Black Flag were named after the flag used by anarchists, but when Adam & The Ants were touring the US, they used the tag line for the bug spray: "Black Flag Kills Ants".

bands named after eraserhead:

erazerhead
eraserhead
the eraserheads
henry spencer
apartment 26
henrys final dream

10CC:

Manager Jonathan King had a dream including a band called 10CC.

Lovin' Spoonful:

From the lyrics of John Hurt's "Coffee Blues".

Just getting those two out of the way.

Heaven 17, Clock DVA & Moloko - All references to "A Clockwork Orange"

they forget the words at one of their early gigs and someone shouted that out

Fanx, eye ddnt no dat.

husker du:

during a rough demo of talking heads "psycho killer", the band kept yelling out phrases in french and gibberish where "qu'est-ce que c'est" would eventually be, one of these phrases being "husker du!".

That seems a bit far-fetched. Could be, though.

Blonde Redhead - named after a track by D.N.A

Whirlwind Heat - front cover of Goo

Pink Floyd - Syd named the band after two obscure blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

Iggy & The Stooges

Iggy and Iguana were nicknames since childhood. Pop was inspired by Jim Popp, a local junkie. The Stooges were originally the Psychedelic Stooges. which combined their love of drugs with "The Three Stooges". They dropped Psychedelic to avoid any hippie assumptions.

David Bowie named himself after a knife, didn't he?

Sounds like something thought of in hindsight methinks.

Another version is that Courtney's mum used to tell her "you can't go around with a hole in your head, just because you had a bad childhood".

Yes, apparently he wanted to change his name so people wouldn't confuse him with Davy Jones of the Monkees.

I thought HOLE was a joking/insulting reference to the way some men perceive women, like a hole for their cock.

re: black flag.

they were named panic but there were tons of punk bands called panic, raymond pettibone suggested they use the name black flag, him being a card carrying anarchist and after the black bars design he had made and someone in the band noted (i think it was chuck) that it looked like a flag; they also knew of the roach spray of the same name, so they kept it.

like tons of stuff in their career, there's multiple meanings about flag's name.


after marilyn monroe's last movie before she died, to be more specific.

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after seeing my signature:

metallica named themselves that after a scenester talked to lars about possible names for a fanzine he was putting together, one of the names being "metallica".

earth: after black sabbath's name before they became sabbath.

merzbow: from an artist who used trash to make his artwork, one of his works was called merzbau.

thanks.

pretty girls make grave is a line from kerouacs the dharma bums

they both probably got it from the Kerouac then.