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Quick Navigation: Click here to see the full alphabetical listing. Click any of the letters to jump to that page.
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Page - FAQ - Feedback Bands on this page: Coming soon: Snoop Dog, The Stooges, Salt-n-Pepa, Joe Satriani, Seal, Selena, Shakira, Tupac Shakur, Sisqo, Sisters of Mercy, Skid Row, Slaughter, Slip Knot, Social Distortion, Staind, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Sugar Ray, Sum 41, Styx. Send feedback here. Use this address to submit new bands for ranking; include any information you feel is relevant to their scoring and bonus points. You may also bitch/cheer about current rankings, this page in general, or just ask why every band and their brother starts with an "s". |
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I can't remember any of their music in particular, probably since I'm about five years too young. They were big (well, as close to big as they ever got) in the early 80's, when I was in grade school. I'd hear about them as a cool band, mostly from older trouble-making skateboard type kids, or see them mentioned in graffiti or independent music store ads in Thrasher, but they got zero radio play, so had to be sought out. I didn't do so, since at the time I hadn't heard anything closer to actual metal than Def Leppard and Mφtley Crόe. This did no more than slightly delay my eventual discovery and almost immediate embrace of the dark side. The name isn't much, but for some reason it seems evil, and is inexplicably-memorable. The word is the pagan name for Halloween, which doesn't mean anything especially evil or subversive, unless you are very Christian and suspicious.
The
Scorpions
The name is pretty weak, when you analyze it. First of all, do they
even have scorpions in Germany? I think of them as hot-weather
insects, fond of deserts and the tropics. Secondly, it's just not
cool. The name sounds like the name of one of those
dancing street gangs you see in 50's musicals, the ones where all the
tough guys wear matching denim jackets with their collars up, while looking
like their biggest regret is coming along 20 years before they could have
auditioned for 'Nsync
and 98Ί. Sepultura
They score major bonus points for tragedy and vicious
infighting. The lead singer and creative force, Max Cavalera,
married their manager, a woman nearly 20 years older than he was. A
couple of years later they got word that her teenaged son had been
killed in a car accident just before they were due to perform at
England's Monsters of Rock festival. Max and the manager grabbed
the next plane home, while the other three guys performed as a
trio. After a couple of months of inactivity the other guys
approached Max about getting new management and moving on, and that
apparently didn't go over well, for he quit the band shortly afterwards.
The remaining three guys are trying to go on, but given that Max did all
of the singing and most of the writing, the next two Sepultura albums
haven't sold for crap, while Max's new band, Soulfly, has been a bigger
success, relatively speaking. Tragedy and squandered opportunities
are what bonus points are made of. As for their name, it's not bad. Means nothing in English, and that's
the language they sing in, but "sepultura" means
"grave" in Portuguese. I think it's safe to assume it's
"grave" as in "burial spot", rather than
"deeply somber mood". It's much cooler to have called
"Sepultura" than "Grave" anyway, as I think we can
all agree. It wouldn't be a bad rock band name even if it didn't
mean anything death-related.
As for the name,
it's pretty much WYSIWYG, but see it fast, since this novelty sound will
be as gone as The Stray Cats before you know it, leaving us to wonder
what permutation of 50's rock Brian will cook up for his next comeback,
scheduled for a McDonald's old style burger ad in 2009. Eponymous
bands/artists have one advantage, and that's immediate name
recognition. One thing this band misses out on is the whole
"name it after someone famous" portion, which is sort of
mandatory, as it turns out, so that costs them a point. Only the
"orchestra" part saves them from a really low score.
The name is cool though. It sounds like a rock band, or perhaps some
new and lethal narcotic, and that's the vibe that rock bands should evoke. The
Sex Pistols
Their musical style wasn't new; they just played fast and very loud
rock and roll. It was mostly Johnny Rotten's lyrics that were so
upsetting to society, as he sung of anarchy and abortion and other
subjects that were unmentionable at the time. Their first single, Anarchy
in the UK, was banned by the BBC and got them dropped by EMI, their
record company, but still went to #1. It was listed on the charts at the
time with a blank space, since official publications would not mention
the band or song by name. Their original bassist, Glen Matlock, was fired after their first
single and replaced by Sid Vicious, a street thug who could do
everything required but actually play his instrument. He's become
as famous as the band mostly due to his girlfriend/groupie Nancy
Spungen's heroin OD, for which Sid was arrested. He died in
similar fashion while out on bail before the trial could begin, and for
whatever reason this particular junkie tragedy has refused to fade into
history quietly, even inspiring a feature
film many years later. Much like Mφtley Crόe, the bonus
points for this band would be so great as to break the scale, so the
previous two paragraphs must unfortunately be stricken from the
calculations. Despite this cruel twist of judicial fate, they
score very well. Is there a more perfect name for a band? Is
there a more appropriate name for this band? That's almost double
perfection. Since their first album they've pretty much vanished from US radio, but are
still apparently pretty popular world wide, and their sound has also evolved and
become less of a grunge rip off. At least that's what the
information I read about them said, as far as I know they were all eaten by
squid in 1996, since that's the last time I heard anything about them. The name is sort of cool, I mean it's "silver" and
"chair". It gets your attention at least, though you're probably
like me and have no idea what it means or was inspired by. Supposedly they
wanted to be called "Sliverchair" but misspelled it on the copyright
form. That seems like a bullshit story to me, frankly. They went on to release five more albums, all of them quite successful and
the last one most of all. It was released in 1970 and was #1 for ten
weeks. They capitalized on this by breaking up, in true rock and roll
style. Paul Simon had done almost all the writing and Art Garfunkel's vocals
were really all he contributed. Simon went on to be as or more successful
with his solo career while Garfunkel began a busy career of eating out of
garbage cans and sleeping on park benches. There has been talk of a
reunion for decades, but it's never happened, aside from a few charity concerts
and short tours in the early 80's. As for the name, it's boring and unimaginative. They at least got the
order correct, since Simon did all the heavy lifting/song writing, and therefore
deserved and hopefully demanded top billing. For two guy's last names,
this isn't a bad band name. You could do worse than "Garfunkel"
for a folk rock act, even if it is his real name, rather than some funny name
they thought up for their band. They'd score better if this were a stage
name, come to think of it.
The long time trio lost one of the members to a heroin OD during the long
and difficult post production of their last album, and as always, that's
good for a bonus point. The name is awesome. It sounds sick and weird, and that's very
appropriate for their sound and image. I can't think of a better name
for them, based on their recordings and career. Slash is one of the ugliest men in rock and roll, and he wears an enormous
ugly top hat, as well as burying his face in straggly nappy curls. Despite
this myriad of handicaps he still manages to be a sex symbol, and for this a
bonus point is awarded. The name isn't real imaginative. His rock name was Slash, and he was well
known for having pet snakes, and of course "snakepit" is a word for a
really sleazy or criminal dive. It's sort of clever and alliterative, but
it's such an easy "clever" that we can't in good conscience part with
a bonus point.
The name is pretty self-explanatory. They're an evil hard
thrashing metal band, and they've got a name to go with it. Over
their career they've written lyrics about everything from Nazi medical
tortures to first person serial killer accounts to detailed accounts of
the deepest pits of hell. Admittedly it's not that great a range
of topics, but they certainly live up to their name.
Despite outward appearances of being a band, almost
everything was done by the legendarily-smug Billy Corgan, including the invention
of the name, which Billy allegedly
got from a dream related to him by
Gene Simmons of KISS. Which makes for an interesting anecdote, but
doesn't help their score any. What does help their score are the
myriad of nasty internal fights. The bass player was a girl, and
she and the guitarist were lovers for a while, then broke up while on
tour. That had to be awkward. On their next tour the drummer and
keyboardist were doing heroin together and the keyboard guy OD'ed
fatally, while the drummer survived and was fired. This delayed
the tour for two months while they got new musicians. They also released
their last 25 left over songs for free over the Internet, which is damn
nice of them, even if most of their fans were pretty burned out on them
by then. They also broke up for real, on purpose, while still popular.
Rock stars always say they'd rather burn out than fade away, but that's
as big a lie as when they claim to be drug free and/or sober.
"Burn out" comments aside, nearly
every band hangs on as long as possible, and then reunites and does a
few reunion tours 10 or 15 years later, if they think they can play for
any larger crowds than your average Long Island bas mitzvah. As for their name, it's weird and puzzling, and yet
strangely-appropriate. "Smashing" is a great word to
have in your rock band's name, but following it with a type of large
gourd most often seen at Halloween is quite debatable. Better would have
been a noun that might be applied to humans, like say,
"bastards" or "homunculi". That way the name
would appear to have two meanings. Alas. Smash
Mouth
It's hard to say what Green Days possess that Smash Mouth lacks, since they
are so similar in their punk/pop rhythms, but somehow Green Day has an
authenticity and soul, while Smash Mouth always feel so plastic and cheap.
They lose a point for essentially ruining four minutes of Shrek with
their crappy All Star song, and while that's not entirely their fault, someone
must take the blame. The name is like everything else about them; catchy and meaningless.
The common assumption about the origin is that it's from the football term,
which means just what it sounds like. Playing with a very aggressive and
attacking style, with nothing fancy. Just running up the middle, smashing
the defense in the mouth. However it can be used for just about anything
hard-hitting and powerful. How accurate this is for a catchy, light-punk
sound like this band possesses is certainly open to debate. I would say
"not very" but it's still a pretty good name for a rock band, though
ideally it should be hung on one with a lot bigger balls. Soft
Cell
Fortunately Marilyn Manson did a pretty good cover of it, with a colossally
cool video, which redeems things somewhat. From 1981 followed twenty
years of sorrow, but since the MM cover, at long last, there's an
antidote. So now when the at last, when the cheesy "Whoa-ooh-ooo
Tainted Luh-uvh..." chorus happens into your head, you can just pretend
you're humming the MM cover version, and think
of those hot cheerleaders and the goth strippers and the girls in the bead
wearing giant animal heads.
For this a bonus point is presented, though undeserved. As for the name of the band, I always assumed it was a pun or play on
words. "Soft sell" as opposed to "hard sell" which is
very aggressive marketing tactics. And that it meant they were sort of
sneakily implanting their product (music) in your mind. Which is nifty, if
they really meant that, but in the mean time, what the hell does "soft
cell" mean? Biology reference? I dunno, but it's dumb, and
doesn't help their score much.
They don't appear to have ever released a Greatest Hits album, and
since I'm feeling merciful, I'll let you insert your own joke
here. Yes, I know, it's pretty much taking a sawed-off shotgun
after a dead carp in a shot glass. Their early work was experimental (also known as "can't write
real songs") and weird, which is the sort of thing that critics
love and fans like if they are stoned enough. Over the years they grew
more conventional (also known as "learned to write songs" and
gained a large underground following. Despite their biggest
selling album ever hitting an unimpressive #34 on the Billboard chart,
they were briefly popular enough to get the headline spot on Lollapalooza
in 1995. (Even more surprisingly, "Lollapalooza" was in the
spell check dictionary of Front Page 2000. Remember that next time
you're about to rip on Microsoft for something.) The name is certainly appropriate for a rock band, but it's one that
will not age well, at least not unless the band has a turnover rate like
Menudo used to. They don't, and most of the same people are in the band
that were in it back in 1981 when they first started off, and actually
were young. At that time the name would have earned a top score,
but with everyone in the band now boasting more gray hairs than Mariah
Carey + Whitney Houston's boast hospitalizations for "exhaustion",
it's a bit less accurate. It also sounds like a boy band, and probably
would be, if it hadn't been taken already. The name sucks, frankly. Yes, it's short, but it's not
distinctive, it doesn't sound rock and roll, and it's not
memorable. If you had to guess you'd probably think they were some
sort of country band, singing about the day them rev'nuers came to take
pa's farm away. Soul
Coughing
Their name is not their strong point, however. It screams for
attention, in a pretentious way. If it were the new kid in junior
high, it would be shampooing with tidy bowl and doing without lunch
money for at least a semester. Cute, artsy, and annoying, it tries much
too hard. It does sound something like a rock band, but only just. Their music is probably the hardest of the grunge bands, often being
classified as heavy metal, but it's never especially angry or speedy.
Chris Cornell, their most famous member and one of the best known rock vocalists
alive, was originally a drummer (in pre-Soundgarden bands) amazingly enough. A
bit like putting Joe Satriani on keyboards that, and his trademark wailing is
probably Soundgarden's best known element. You want to talk about vocals.
the guy sung Ave
Maria on a Christmas album, for Christ's sake. The
namesake sculpture. Their name came from a large public
sculpture in Seattle, a collection of huge
pipes on poles that make eerie noises in the wind. This isn't especially
edifying to know, but it might serve you well in a music trivia contest
someday. The name isn't great, but it obviously sounds musical, though
perhaps more like a chamber orchestra or a string quartet than a rock band. Well, all
except an interesting name. "Britney Spears" screams
"female singer". Which I guess gets the basic message
across well enough, and helps build personal fame, but it's utterly lame
as a band/artist name. Bonus
points for the inexplicably
variable boobie
size. They hit it huge with their first album and several #1 hits off of it, sold
far less of their second album but squeezed out a quickie movie based on it, and
pretty much vanished from the face of the earth with their third album, before
which Geri Halliwell, owner of the most famous (and most often seen) boobies in
the band left to launch her own tepid solo career. Despite this, they get
a bonus point for the tons of Page
3 style nudie shots she did pre-Spice. Their name is hard to beat. Most boy bands have boring but functional
names. You hear "New Kids on the Block" or 'Nsync, or 98Ί, you
pretty well know what to expect. The names identify them for their formulaic
choreographed crap, and that's good enough. The Spice Girls have a much
more clever name, while it's still obvious enough what they'll be when you hear
it. Everyone likes spice, and most everyone likes girls, even if they are
all near 30 by this time. As for the name, it would be a great one for a bunch of DJs.
For a regular alternative band, it's not quite as appropriate, but at
least it does sound like a rock band. As for the name, who knows. It sounds like a country band to me, or
perhaps a 50's cheesy B flick, or even a name hippy parents would give their
kid. I can't remember any way to differentiate this
band from Gravity Kills, and since I gave GK a 7 and they have a
slightly better name, it's 6 for SW. The
name is sort of nonsensical. A friend tells me that
they're named after a dildo, but I have no idea if that's true. It
makes for a good quote, at any rate. The name isn't bad for a
band, but there's no one in the band named Dan or Steely, and they don't
really have a "steely" sound. Probably they got the name
from some old song lyric, since that dildo thing sounds pretty unlikely. They also did that Magic Carpet Ride song, which continues to be
popular for one reason; you can use it to try and get girls to drop acid with
you, and then potentially engage in deviant sex acts they wouldn't normally
attempt with a 10 foot pole. Or even your 5" one. The
name came from a classic Herman Hesse novel of the same name, one that
postulated that men are half man and half wolf. Not in some sort of
lycanthropic way, but in their behavior and personalities. A rather
highfalutin concept for a rock band's name. It's a good word; wolves
are cool, at least they used to be before they
were "New Aged" and became as ubiquitous on posters as
unicorns were circa 1983. I preferred them back when they were
still rabid, livestock-savaging killers; the scourge of Middle Ages
Europe. Now they have pretty eyes and are noble symbols of freedom,
like furry quadrupedal Indians, but with fewer dreamcatchers. Bleh.
His score is partially
for his artist name, but has to lose a point or two based on the
late-life personal name change. He gets a bonus point for being the target of the enduring stupid rumor about
having to have his stomach pumped of a gallon of male ejaculate, or whatever
version of it you heard. Plus he banged his way through half the models in
Europe back in the big cocaine days of the 70's and 80's. He should lose a
point for that obscenely-annoying Forever Young video, where he sings into the
face of a mop-headed child while riding around in a wagon, but I'd rather just
not think about that memory. As for his name, what can you say. It appears to be his birth name, or at
least a stage name he's been using forever. He was in various groups
before hitting it big as a solo act, and for a while in the 70's he was the lead
singer in Faces, while doing far more commercially successful music on his
own. The name doesn't sound like anything in particular, and even the
penis reference of his first name is less than inspiring.
Now this is a cool name for a rock star. Beats "Gordon
Sumner" by a long shot, by anyone's measurement. Before you give him
too much credit for the name, he got it since he used to wear a black and
yellow sweater when performing. In other words, he was one karma point away
from being named "Bumblebee". Unfortunate origin aside, the name is good. If you're going to be a
rock star, you might as well think up a good stage name. One word
names are iffy; you are cool if you can pull it off, but it's hard to
manage without seeming pathetically pretentious. Sting managed it,
and despite his rapid devolution to the pabulum and pap of soft adult
contemporary rock, he used to be cool, so still gets some credit. Brian
Setzer was the main guy in the band, and he pulled off an amazing coup
by having success with this fluke revival novelty sound, and then repeating
it with a slightly different fluke revival novelty sound nearly twenty years
later. The name is a good one, and
it's hard to not be utterly stupid as an animal named band. They
resisted the temptation to work cat metaphors into their album titles, and
for that they receive a bonus point, and a bowl of thick, rich cream. They have a better name than their twin-band. Yes, both have, "The
Meaningless Plural Noun" for a name, but "strokes" has a
semi-dirty masturbatory connotation, while "vines" doesn't mean
anything at all. Therefore they score slightly higher. The name means nothing, yet is catchy. They get a bonus point for originally being named "Shirley Temple's Pussy", and upon
having to change that, sticking with the same three letters. Also
it's a motor oil. The fact that their initial sound and therefore
their claim to fame was entirely derived from Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and
that their first album now sounds terrible dated and is unlistenable should
cost them a point, but we'll be merciful since they've improved since
then. It's damn hard to make it big; and if you have to utterly sell
out to get your foot in the door, it's understandable. SoaD provides additional commentary bait with their progressive/socialist
lyrics, and they were briefly-infamous after 9/11/2001 when they posted an
accurate, but slightly anti-American message on their official site.
In political commentary, as with stand up comedy and blaming a fart on the
dog, timing is everything. Theirs was poor in this case, at least in
terms of the mainstream giving their comments any real thought, rather than
just reflexively howling about them being terrorist lovers. The name is said to be a rough abbreviation of "The system is going
down the drain" or words to that effect. System being a synonym for
"Machine", something that people of their political mindset are
likely to Rage Against. It's not a bad name once you know about the
band, but the first time you hear it it leaves you pretty cold and it lacks
any real clever or evocative aspects. |
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All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007. |
