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Damn
Yankees
As for the name, it's
apparently derived from the long-time broadway show about a devil-bargaining NY
baseball team. What this has to do with rock and roll is unclear, but perhaps
they were mostly from the New England area? In any event, it's not much of
a rock band name. Heavy Metal goes with "damn" pretty well,
though it would have been a lot cooler if they'd gone "Damned Yankees"
and done some Satan-lite posing, ALA early Mφtley
Crόe. The
Dead Milkmen
They were best known for one song, Punk Rock Girl, and the
accompanying bizarre and vaguely-sexy video. The funny naming tactic
extended to the group, who went the titles of Rodney Anonymous, Joe Jack Talcum,
Dave Blood, and Dave Clean. I just bet you're giggling at their irreverent
and sophomoric college radio fun already. Or not. The name pretty well sums them up. Obviously they had nothing to do with
death, or dairy product delivery, and picked the name since it was wacky and
pointless. It is, and fits well with the band's overall image and message. I really liked them when I was about 12 and
they were the closest thing to metal I'd yet encountered, going so far
as to learn a font based on the lettering on their name, from the Pyromania
album cover. No, I'm not proud of this, but I was young and stuck in
Arlington, Texas, so when you consider the various shit-kicking alternatives,
it's a rather harmless vice to have acquired. As for the name, it's not bad, but is pretty cheesy. Was it
supposed to be cool, with the weird spelling of both words? They
picked it when they were young, and they're English, so you must make
allowances. They also get bonus points for not desperately working
big cat puns into their song and/or album titles.
Deep
Purple
The group suffered through an
amazing amount of member changes, changed their sound totally a couple of times,
entirely disbanded at least twice, reunited after years off with a big-selling
album twice, lost members to ODs, and generally surpassed all expectations in
their pursuit of the rock and roll life style. This gets them a bonus
point, though it's just a small one.
I was tempted to give them an absurdly high score just based on their
name (coincidentally) being part of the color scheme of this site, but decided that sort
of thing would be wrong. It would cheapen this band name review
section, and destroy the complete objectivity that this section
demonstrates. As for the name, who knows. It's probably some
sort of post-hippy drug reference.
Deicide
As for the band's name,
it's hard to find flaw. It's evil, and even sort of clever. It is
a real word, not just something they invented, which earns them a point,
yet costs them one for being less original than I first thought. Like or hate the
music, it's a good name, and an accurate one. Not much on
subtlety, but then again that's not exactly an quality death metal bands
seek out.
As for the band's name,
it's meaningless, and yet evocative, and seems appropriate for their
sound. Destiny's
Child
Her sound appears to be
sort of Aretha Franklin light, with lots of annoying samples and such in
the background, so we'll assume the rest of Destiny's Child sounds more
or less the same. I'm not about to suffer my ears to find out, be
it site research or not. The band name is very clever, though it would be better
for a solo artist, not a group. Dexy's
Midnight Runners
The name means nothing, makes no sense, and yet is oddly-appropriate
for their half-assed act.
Reports are his ego acts as a
counterbalance to his actual popularity, and has soared upwards even as he's
faded from popular view. The name sounds like a stage
name, but as far as I can ascertain it's his own birth name. Real names
that sound like stage names are very rare, and while encouraging sloth, they
score pretty well. Other than that, "Dio" gets hit with the eponymous name
curse, and is pretty meaningless if you don't know of the person in
advance.
Celine is famous mostly for being Canadian, which brought her to the
attention of South Park, (where she's had several staring roles), and
possessing a remarkably equine face. Supposedly she's a great
singer and all that, but it's not rock and I'm not that old, so she
exists largely off of my radar. As for her name, it's
imminently-forgettable, in the proud tradition of blandly-named female
vocalists. She dated or was married to an old guy with a scary beard,
which costs her another
point.
Dire
Straits
The name is a nice
semi-literary allusion, though you have to wonder if most younger fans
have any idea what "dire straits" means. I thought it
was part of a line from some famous novel, or perhaps Shakespeare, but
if so I can't find what.
They get a
bonus point for playing some sort of charity concert for Prince Charles,
which got a lot of news mention due to clips of Princess Diana rocking
out, while her uptight husband spent the evening looking
dyspeptic. God knows how I remember that. However since the
band was sort of mellow rock, and nothing exactly "dire" leaps
out at you, their score isn't all that high.
Disturbed
Their first album
dangerously exceeded the Nό Metal limits by packing 4 great songs,
though Stupify is pretty borderline, upon reflection. Based on
this success rate, their next album is only allotted one great song, or
possibly even just one good song, with a great chorus. This seems
cruel until you realize that the only way twenty bands that all look and
sound just the same can survive in a fickle marketplace is with careful
rationing. This way they avoid overfeeding, which while
momentarily-satisfying, would merely hasten the inevitable mass
extinction, now scheduled for August, 2005. The Doors
No one cares
really, but at least there are questions to be asked. If they'd
called themselves "The Coffee Tables" would they have been as
famous? Of course not. Plus they had that junkie guy for a lead
singer, whose name I can never remember correctly, merging him with
another mopey singer, another hippy rock star, and thinking he's "Jimi
Morrisey". Close enough. Duran
Duran
Oddly they vanished
just a few years later, unable to craft any more of the totally
addictive tunes they cranked out initially. Even now I could sing
three or four of their songs perfectly from memory, having not heard any
of them for at least ten years. At first this seems like it should earn
a bonus point, but on reflection it's a bad thing. All those times I
forgot one thing on a shopping trip, it was probably due some portion of my mind
retaining memory of that drum/synth solo in Girls on Film, where the
Japanese masseuse is chopping that sumo wrestler in the video. The
Dust Brothers
From that semi-novelty start
they branched out into a variety of music, and created much of the sample-heavy
sound of the Beastie Boys' classic album, Paul's Boutique. The benefit of
being producers is that you can work on a lot of albums quickly, and make a lot
of money. The drawback is that you have to work with all types of music,
and while you get to work with the Stones,
the Beasties, or Beck,
a week later you can find yourself suffering through endless remixes of MMMbop. Their name is an oddity, since
they invented it after meeting in the early 80's and DJ'ing together. Then
years later the UK artists now known as The Chemical Brothers were using it for
themselves, having picked it to honor the original Dust Bros for their work on
the Beastie Boys record Paul's Boutique. The
UK guys never thought they'd get famous, and when they did the name became a
legal issue. Faced with a cease and desist when their proposed "Dust
Brothers UK" was turned down, the other guys switched to Chemical
Bros, and have gone with that ever since. What the actual name means is
unknown. Why "dust"? There's nothing cool or electronic or
remixable about the word. Perhaps they felt they could leave all others in
their dust, or took it from the dry and ugly area of Pomona that they were
living in at the time.
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