Playing the name game
YOU ‘hip’ young trendies will know about the concert happening at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on December 18 featuring Tom Jones and the Stereophonics. Do big music acts like these toss a coin to decide who will top the bill? It’s not unusual . . .
The support band are Catfish and The Bottlemen, who I must confess, because I’m not a hip young trendy like you, I’ve never heard of.
But I found out they’re from Llandudno! And I thought the biggest thing to come out of that glorious Victorian town was the A55.
Catfish and The Bottlemen may be an odd name, but it’s a bit more colourful than some modern bands’ names that lack that ‘rock band’ vibe of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Clash, The Killers and Kings Of Leon.
In the 60s, ‘groups’, as they were referred to then, had exciting, slightly ‘dangerous’ names like The Tornados, The Shadows, Johnny and The Hurricanes, The Ventures, Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages and The Beverly Sisters . . . er . . . okay, maybe not them!
While I can’t comment on their music because I haven’t heard that much of it, whoever thought up bland names like ‘Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe’, The Script, The Cure and the particularly uninspired The The, weren’t trying hard enough.
Having said that, rock bands have been around for 60 years, so it must be incredibly hard to come up with new names.
Here’s a pop quiz for you. Out of the band names I’ve listed below, which were or still are actual bands and which are names I made up?
And no cheating by reading ahead! The Joy Strings Hedgehoppers Anonymous Dicky Hart & The Murmurs Hootie & The Blowfish
Cliff Rescue & The Helicopters Dogs Die In Hot Cars Houston Wells & The Marksmen Half-man Half-biscuit
Nero & The Gladiators
The 1910 Fruitgum Company How many were made-up? Three? Four? Actually they are all real names of bands past and present.
My Uncle Cledwyn didn’t get one right, which isn’t surprising because he thinks ELO is what people in the
North of England say when they meet each other … and is convinced Fleetwood
Mac is a raincoat made in a Lancashire coastal town…