Comedians long to be rock stars, they say, and rock stars dream of being comedians. For proof, look no further than band names that found their inspiration in TV comedies. The Simpsons and The Brady Bunch alone are responsible for at least seven band names between them.
Here are six bands that found their names tucked into the episodes of their favorite television laughers…
Fall Out Boy
Don’t Miss
The first time Fall Out Boy performed, they introduced themselves as Forget Me Not. When it was time for a more permanent alias, Pete Wentz argued for tongue-in-cheek names while Patrick Stump wanted something that referenced Tom Waits.
A bunch of names went on a list, including Fall Out Boy, an obscure reference to Radioactive Man’s youthful sidekick on The Simpsons. Friends voted on the name, and Fall Out Boy rose to the top.
Other bands with Simpsons-inspired names include the metalcore band Evergreen Terrace, named after the street on which the family lives, and I Voted for Kodos, a reference to the seventh edition of Treehouse of Horrors.
Toad the Wet Sprocket
Toad the Wet Sprocket sounds like word salad, but it began as a Monty Python sketch. Eric Idle was the newscaster reading this music news report: “Rex Stardust, lead electric triangle with Toad the Wet Sprocket, has had to have an elbow removed following their recent successful worldwide tour of Finland. Flamboyant ambidextrous Rex apparently fell off the back of a motorcycle.”
Idle brought back the fictional band with the intentionally terrible name for a sketch on another show, Rutland Weekend Television. “I once wrote a sketch about rock musicians, and I was trying to think of a name that would be so silly nobody would ever use it, or dream it could ever be used,” Idle told the crowd at a comedy concert. “So I wrote the words ‘Toad the Wet Sprocket.’ And a few years later, I was driving along the freeway in L.A., and a song came on the radio, and the DJ said, ‘That was by Toad the Wet Sprocket,’ and I nearly drove off the freeway.”
Eve’s Plum
Before Colleen Ann Fitzpatrick recorded platinum albums under the alias Vitamin C, she was the lead singer for alternative rockers Eve’s Plum, a cheeky reference to the actress who played Jan on The Brady Bunch.
Weirdly, a number of other bands turned to the sitcom for names as well, including Ohio cover bands Marcia Brady and Johnny Bravo (Greg’s rock-and-roll alter-ego), and a Michigan group that borrowed the name of Greg’s garage band, The Banana Convention.
Frodus
The spazzcore rockers took their name from the final episode of The Monkees, with the slightly different spelling, “The Frodis Caper.”
What the heck’s a Frodis? In the episode, Wizard Glick (Rip Taylor) uses an alien plant called Frodis to hypnotize people through television.
Das Racist
“I think being minorities at a liberal arts college and that type of environment had an impact on both the way we view race and our sense of humor, which people often use as a tool to deal with race,” Heems, one of Das Racist’s MCs, told Wesleyan University’s Midterm Magazine.
“I always felt like Wonder Showzen was a television show that captured that type of thing perfectly. When I saw the little kid yelling, ‘THAT’S RACIST,’ it blew my mind,” he said. “And then we thought it would be a cool name.”
The Stooges
As Iggy Pop and the boys were about to release their first album in 1969, they decided to shorten their name from the Psychadelic Stooges to the simpler Stooges. But before they made the change official, Pop reached out to Moe Howard of the Three Stooges for his blessing. Howard said it was okay by him, and The Stooges were born.
Source link
