Famous Bands That Originally Had Horrible Names

Cans of Piss - lovely image, isn't it? R.E.M actually went without a name when they first hit the scene in 1980, and they might have been better off going nameless than going with any of their first band-name choices. The Athens, Georgia, group considered names like Twisted Kites, Negro Eyes, and Cans of Piss before settling on R.E.M., an acronym for rapid eye movement, the dream stage of sleep.

Before Creed became Creed, guitarist Mark Tremonti showed his bandmates a newspaper clipping of a story about a naked toddler who had been abducted. Tremonti was convinced that it would make a perfect band name. With no other ideas, the group ended up using Naked Toddler for their first gig, but there was pushback right away. 

"The name didn't go over well," singer Scott Stapp wrote in his autobiography. "Girls hated it and said it made them think of pedophilia."

Nirvana had more than a couple of bad names before settling on what would become a legendary name for a legendary band. The group went by Fecal Matter, Brown Towel, Throat Oysters, Ted Ed Fred, and Pen Cap Chew (which was also a song title) before settling on Nirvana.

“I wanted a name that was kind of beautiful or nice and pretty instead of a mean, raunchy punk name like the Angry Samoans,” Kurt Cobain told Rolling Stone  in 1992.

The Polka Tulk Blues Band. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? The band that would become Black Sabbath in 1969 began life under this unfortunate moniker a year earlier. The name apparently came from a brand of talcum powder used by band member Ozzy Osbourne's mother. But they knew early on the name wasn't for them.

"Every time I hear it, all I can picture is you, with your trousers ’round your ankles, taking a f*cking dump," guitarist Tony Iommi told Ozzy. "It's crap."

Why the band that become the Goo Goo Dolls originally chose the uber-cringey name of The Sex Maggots is a mystery, but from the get-go, the name was a problem. The band was forced to find a new moniker when a club owner refused to put the original name on his marquee. The group then thumbed through a copy of True Detective magazine and settled on a change after finding an advertisement for something called a “Goo Goo Doll.”

"[The name] doesn’t really mean anything," bassist Robby Takac explained. "The first name was bad, so we moved on to another bad name, got 15,000 fans, and were afraid to change it."

"I called us Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayem - that was how we wanted to play, majestic and chaotic," singer Anthony Kiedis explained in his autobiography, Scar Tissue.

The band was originally formed in Los Angeles by singer Kiedis, guitarist Hillel Slovak, bassist Flea, and drummer Jack Irons, all of whom were classmates from Fairfax High School. But as soon as they realized they could actually be successful, they knew their clunky name had to go. They chose Red Hot Chili Peppers as a throwback to classic Americana- and blues-influenced band names.