Band names and where they come from

"Steely Dan" is from a Burrough's "Naked Lunch" (I think it's referring to a dildo) but that's pretty common knowledge.

ZZ Top was chosen because they wanted to be the last entry in any alphabetical list (whyever on would want that I don't know).

I was sure that there's a website that lists band name origins ... and Google found it for me:

http://www.amiright.com/names/bandnameorigins.shtml

Here's another page that has more prog rock band names than the one I posted earlier:

http://www.heathenworld.com/bandname/

Here's some interesting excerpts:

CAN - This was a great German band from the 70's.  Keyboard player Irmin Schmidt once defined CAN as an acronym for "Communist, Anarchism, Nihilism" 

GENTLE GIANT - Pantagruel and Panurge were two "gentle giants" in the satiric writing of Francois Rabelais.  Many of the band's songs are loosely based on his writings.

MOTHERS OF INVENTION - originally just called the Mothers (polite for Motherf**kers) - their label asked them to add "of Invention".

THE NICE - Keith Emerson was in this band before Emerson Lake & Palmer.  The band name comes from a SMALL FACES song about amphetamines called "Here Comes the Nice"

PINK FLOYD - Named after Georgia blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. They almost named themselves "Anderson Council" and "Megadeath".

RADIOHEAD - Named after a TALKING HEADS song called Radio Head.

RUSH - Two stories:  1- They named themselves after a product called "Rush" that was popular in head shops in the 70's.  "Rush" was similar to "poppers" and gave a quick head rush.  2- They were rushing to think up a name before their first gig, and John Rusty's older brother yelled, "Why don't you call your band RUSH?".  -- A silly Christian rumor says the band name means "Ruled Under Satan's Hand".

STEELY DAN - A steel dildo in the 1964 William Burroughs novel NAKED LUNCH.  According to the book:  an evil German bulldyke prostitute crushed the first STEELY DAN using her pussy, and the second STEELY DAN is still in use.

And here's another idea on ZZ Top:

BaldFriede wrote: BleedingGum wrote: DURAN DURAN was taken from the movie Jane Fonda's Barbarella. I think it was the robot's name [?] DJAM KARET is taken from Indonesian word, means: Rubber Time GENESIS was taken from the Bible YES was taken from English Dictionary Genesis wanted to name themselves "Revelation" first, but another band had already taken that name (whatever became of them???). Hence their first album title. The mad scientist in Barbarella was named "Duran Duran"

It was the other way: the band wanted to be called "Genesis" (a name given by Jonathan King, their producer), but they discovered that there was a band from the U.S. called "Genesis", which released an album in Mercury Records in 1968 (they also had a female lead singer). So, they changed to "Revelation" for a short time, so the name of their first album was "From Genesis to Revelation". This is mentioned in the original inner sleeve notes of this album. See http://www.genesismuseum.com/ , click on the "Vynil" section link, then click on the "From Genesis to Revelation" link.

Lyzarrd wrote: Dream Theater was taken from a book by jackie collins based on a teenage girl who gets lost in the woods near her home and has to survive on her dreams alone by pretending that her hands are in fact puppets on a broadway stage. Actually no it wasn't. If you check DTFAQ.com it mentions that Mike's father told them to use the name after a recently torn down theater with the name that was a bit of an icon to them. Also, there original name was Majesty but was changed when another band requested them to stop using it since they had already beaten them to it.

sorry dude, you are totally wrong there, it was definitely taken from a jackie collins novel - Uncle Portnoy told me.