Killers - Who are the real killers?

Struck by the idea for their band name after seeing a video clip of New Order these American post punk revivalists from Las Vegas, Nevada baptized their group The Killers.

In the clip Crystal the New Order drummer plays a kit with a bass drum with the imaginary band name Killers written on it.

There are sources mentioning that the name Killers can also be seen in the New Order clip Touched by the Hand of God, but so far we have not been able to capture this.

Active: 2001-present, USA
Site: http://www.thekillersmusic.com/

See also: New Order

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New Riders of the Purple Sage

Performers of country rock, coming from San Francisco, California. Known in part as the group that was carried by a number of (former) members of Jerry Garcia's The Grateful Dead.

The name Riders of the Purple Sage was in use much earlier already – on the internet clips from the 1950s circulate in which country group Foy Willing & The Riders of the Purple Sage are seen and heard - so the word New was added to the name of the subsequent band.

The old and new Riders have drawn from the same source: Riders of the Purple Sage is the title of a novel from 1912, written by 'Pearl' Zane Gray.

Active: 1969-present, USA
Site: http://www.nrpsmusic.com/

See also: Grateful Dead

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Idlewild - JFK

Scottish Edinburgh is the home of alternative indie rock band Idlewild.

The more senior readers may know Idlewild as the name of an American airport (now: John F. Kennedy International Airport), yet this prosaic complex does not seem to be the source of inspiration for the Scottish band name.

Idlewild is a somewhat idyllic place described in Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, exactly the book Idlewild singer Roddy Woomble was buried in when a name for the band needed to be chosen.

Active: 1995-present, GBR
Site: http://www.idlewild.co.uk/

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Skillet - Stir it up

The band name Skillet (it concerns a Christian rock band from Memphis, Tennessee) requires only little explanation: skillet is a frying pan, and the word of course gets some additional flavor from the word skilled.

The lead singer of Skillet, John Cooper, explains that the trio commands several music styles – punk, funk, rock and roll – so for them it is a matter of throwing everything in a pan and stirring it.

So Skillet could have been called Mixer or Blender just as well.

Active: 1996-present, USA
Site: http://www.skillet.com/

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Lemonheads - From the Ferrara Band Name Company

Originally punk rockers, but later switched to a bit sweeter alternative rock.

The group from Boston, Massachusetts first played a while under the name The Whelps, until they met with candy marketed as Lemonheads.

Singer/guitarist Evan Dando described the lemon cups once as sweet on the inside and sour on the outside, which is probably a reference to the Lemonheads' music.

The candy manufactured under the same name comes from Chicago. The manufacturer, the Ferrara Candy Company, makes more sweets, such as Jaw Busters ('The Original Jaw Breakers'), Atomic Fireballs, Original Boston Baked Beans, Grapeheads (formerly Alexander the Grape) and Red Hots.

If there are no good band names among these then we don't know what a good band name is.

Active: 1986-1997; 2005-present, USA
Site: http://www.thelemonheads.net/

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Heldon

Electronic rock band from France, basically built upon the fantasies of guitarist Richard Pinhas.

The particularly productive Pinhas borrowed the name from a science fiction novel by Norman Spinrad, The Iron Dream. In this book most pages have been reserved to print the full text of Hitler's posthumous novel Lord of the Swastika.

That obviously fictional story is about young and 'genetically pure' Feric Jaggar. This Jaggar lives on a planet that becomes the object of a thermonuclear war and has a population consisting largely of mutants. Many hours of reading pleasure guaranteed.

Active: 1974-present, FRA
Site: http://membres.multimania.fr/schizotrop/

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Equals - Funky statement

English reggae and rock band from the North of London with a band name that was a kind of statement.

Because three fifths of the Equals were 'colored' musicians (including blonde wig wearing Eddie Grant, who wrote their biggest hit - Baby Come Back) and the remaining two fifths were not.

And apparently at that time that was still odd enough in the Anglo-Saxon world to dedicate a band name to.

Active: 1965-1979, GBR

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Bidston Moss

It sounds somewhat like a Pixies and Clouds hybrid, this indie pop band from Melbourne consisting of three members.

Bidston Moss took its name from a passage from a John Pilger book, Heroes, in which the author describes a photograph showing how in the eighties unemployed people and their children are searching a rubbish dump for anything edible and / or usable.

Active: 1998-present, AUS

See also: Pixies

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Simple Plan

We can be brief about how the Canadian pop/punk band Simple Plan (Montréal, Québec) arrived at its band name: thanks to the film A Simple Plan (1998), directed by Sam Raimi, or actually - but now this lemma is becoming more complicated again than we had anticipated - thanks to the novel of the same name by American author Scott Smith.

Active: 1999-present, CAN
Site: http://www.simpleplan.com/

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Chop Tops - Go their own way

Rockabilly band from Santa Cruz, California with an identity that is sufficiently their own to claim their own music style: revved-up rockabilly.

Not so strange, this automotive industry jargon, because a chop top is a car of which the body has been taken away partly and replaced by streamlined parts, resulting in a whole new, personalized means of transport.

Chop topping became popular in the 1950s. To get an idea: see (now and then) Pimp My Ride on MTV.

Active: 1995-present, USA
Site: http://www.thechoptops.com/

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