What's Your Name?

Have you ever see the name of a band and wondered to yourself, "Where did they come up with that?"  (That is a rhetorical question, of course you have!)  I am not content with wondering, I must research it and find out the answer.  I have gathered a few of the more interesting ones here.  This is the first of what will hopefully this will become a regular feature.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets - There is a myth that Holly's backing band was named because the sound of a cricket in the studio could be heard one one of their first recordings, but this is not true.  The actual story isn't quite as romantic.  Holly's first record company, Decca, declined to release That'll Be The Day because his first two singles flopped.  Holly then went to producer Norman Petty and re-recorded the song.  Petty wanted to shop the new version to record companies, but Holly was contractually prohibited from re-recording any of the songs from his Decca sessions for 5 years.   Petty came up with the idea of releasing it under a group name instead of Buddy Holly.  Holly's band mates came up with The Crickets by flipping through a book of insect names.  Later, the Beatles would name themselves as an homage to The Crickets, since Buddy Holly was one of their heroes.  They changed the spelling from Beetles to Beatles as a play on words.

King Crimson - From the fanzine Elephant Talk, "The band's original lyricist, Peter Sinfield, created it as a synonym for Beelzebub, which is derived from the Arabic phrase "B'il Sabab", meaning "the man with an aim." (Another, more common etymology of "Beelzebub" is that it is Hebrew for "Lord of the Flies.")  Beelzebub is often seen as a red (crimson) figure and he is King of the underworld

Herman's Hermits - Lead singer Peter Noone was said to have resembled the character Sherman from The Bullwinkle Show (Mr. Peabody and his boy, Sherman!), but Noone misheard it as "Herman", thus they became Herman and the Hermits, and later, Herman's Hermits.

The Doors - Jim Morrison was a fan of the William Blake poem which included the line, "if the doors of perception are cleansed, everything would appear to man as it truly is, infinite."  Aldous Huxley also referred to part of that line for the title of his book on drug experimentation, The Doors Of Perception.

The Doobie Brothers -  'Nuff said.