Mar 132012
I’m shocked that we’ve never done a Last Man Standing on the following subject: bands named after novels, including characters in novels. Bands named after works of non-fiction do not qualify. Bands named after plays, a short story, and poetry collections do not qualify. Bands named after works of literary criticism do not qualify. The band name must come from a novel, excluding the name of the author of the novel.
Beside Soft Machine, I’m sure you can think of a few bands who do qualify. Game on!
Here we go…
The Grapes of Wrath
Ok, next up: The Go-Betweens named after the (singular) novel by L.P. Hartley.
Also, The Boo Radleys (if you don’t know this character, you failed English Lit).
The Shipping News
The Velvet Underground
I’ll play Steely Dan, named after a dildo in Naked Lunch, just so some smug Steely Dan (the band) fan can’t do so first:)
Not much character development in a dildo…although it is 3 dimensional.
Smug.
Veruca Salt from that novel about a kid and some kind of chocolate factory
Mott the Hoople
Pylon (named after a novel by William Faulkner)
MOBY GRAPE!!!
Oh, wait…Yeah, I didn’t do very well in Lit.
aloha
LD
NOT ELIGIBLE (unless proven otherwise): The Waves (later Katrina and…). Although it’s one of my favorite novels, I suspect the book/band names are coincidental.
ELIGIBLE: The Sneetches.DUH! How fast I violated my own rule. The Sneetches is a collection of short stories. Players beware!
As I Lay Dying – from the William Faulkner novel of the same name.
Tom Jones.
Uriah Heep.
aloha
LD
Boo Radleys – from a character in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Steppenwolf. Achtung, baby.
Sweet Thursday – also the name of a 1954 John Steinbeck novel.
I think it’s not a coincidence. According to Wikipedia, Katrina joined an earlier band, The Waves. One of their lot eventually left to join…The Soft Boys. Literary folk!
Ruling please: Love and Rockets, named after the (graphic) novels/comics of the same name by Jaime Hernandez.
Ha!
Already noted.
Good question. Because that term “graphic novel” annoys me, let’s say no. It’s a comic book for adults.
It’s OK, adults, that you still enjoy reading a comic book.
The Bible, pending ruling whether it is fiction or non-fiction. 🙂
“Graphic novel” for a comic is the same sort of euphemism as “action figure” for G.I. Joe. Sorry, but G.I. Joe is a doll.
Cutout bin heroes Artful Dodger!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKsMPhPV0aU
1960s psychedelic band Gandalf – no point for guessing where the name comes from.
Aerosmith is an intentional misspelling of the Sinclair Lewis novel “Arrowsmith”.
The late 80s NYC band A Confederacy of Dunces, which I got into because 1. They was named after my favorite novel & 2. they were Kinks influenced.
The Doors are named from a book by Aldous Huxley
Genesis
Well, maybe I’m in the minority of classifying it as fiction.
Eh, I guess that’s a short story if you consider the Old Testament the collection
Aerosmith gets bad marks for spelling Sinclair Lewis’ book.
Heaven 17 got their name from A Clockwork Orange
The Bad Seed(s).
None of mine are cutouts, and I’ve got them all! Some I bought the day they came out. You sure picked a strange song, though.
Blood Meridian. They’re an offshoot of Black Mountain. They’re named after a novel by Cormac McCarthy.
Big Brother and the Holding Company
from the movie, not the novel.
The Ellen James Society is a band named after a cult in the book The World According to Garp
Pince nez alert! Although Huxley was a novelist, The Doors of Perception was not a novel but a book about his experiences taking mescaline. The title comes from a passage in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”
Nice work!
Was that a novel or an element of one? I did not know that.
The Amboy Dukes
Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother Is Watching You.
Duh!
A John Dos Passos novel – Manhattan Transfer
Marillion, modified the JR Tolkien novel title “Silmarillion” to avoid lawsuits.
The Memphis indie band The Grifters were named after a Jim Thompson novel (that became a very good Stephen Frears film).
DC mod band — A Modest Proposal.
always love that name.
although it may be considered “a satirical essay.”
George Dorn Screams – George Dorn was a principal character in Robert Anton Wilson’s The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead is fiction, right? “In the land of the dark, the ship of the sun is driven by the Grateful Dead.”
Post of the month contender.
Titus Andronicus!
Nice one!
Does the band have a singer? Or do they just mouth the words?
The Fall, from Camus
The Shangri-Las
Named for the enchanted land in James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon”
Fandom band, “harry and the potters.”
From the Children’s Book The Wonderful Wizard of OzToto!This comment was deleted by Steve Lukather.
ha! gross.
Cinderella (the hair metal band)
So funny that I can’t sanction the Nez Perce for this one. Toto is Latin for “all and all”. I only know that because there was a restaurant by that name here.
You mean a member of the Pince Nez Indian tribe?
Motorcycle Boy – named for an S. E. Hinton character. Does that mean there’s a band called Pony Boy?
Charlotte Sometimes
The Searchers
Named for the John Ford/John Wayne movie adapted from the novel of the same name by Alan LeMay
Something tells me Holly Golightly isn’t her birth name.
Belle & Sebastian
“I will fight no more forever.”
– Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.
Other way round: Kimberley Rew formed the Waves after the Soft Boys broke up.
Tangential: indie label Harriet Records (early Magnetic Fields, etc.) was named after Harriet the Spy.
The Reivers.
LAST MAN STANDING!
Trout Fishing In America.
Unh!
Clem Snide – character in Burrough’s novels.
I thought that was a comic and graphic novels were considered verboten.
Spy in the House of Love – Anais Nin!
I didn’t realize their name was from one of those things. Yes, they will have to be entered in a future LMS for bands named after graphic novels.
Alsan get their name from Chronicles of Narnia.
(New) Riders of the Purple Sage.
Vanity Fare
They had a hit with “Hitching A Ride” in 1970 or 71.
Just for the record, “Hitching A Ride” is a cowbell song, but it’s on the list at http://www.cowbellsongs.com.
I was holdin’ that one in reserve!
Wind in the Willows
Richard and the Young Lions.
1948 novel by Irwin Shaw
actually…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Golightly_%28singer%29
Funny!