Quick, call Queer Eye For The Radiohead Guy

Hercules, Hercules!

Actually, Stiff Kitten refers to that thing on my upper lip

Angry & young, true

Goth Factory Employee #734

In my defence, Flavor Flav was originally Flavorful Flavius

Where Youpi at?

Disliked recess

Actually Panasonic was the brand of Hi-Fi on the Mothership

"Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew..."

A band called On A Friday has no business citing influences like Autechre, Can and Aphex Twin. A band called On A Friday has no business even hearing about bands like Autechre, Can and Aphex Twin. I don't know how anyone could take a band called On A Friday seriously. Got rid of this name early. Good move, boys.
Name Would've Been Better Suited For: One of the crappy bands on Jeepster.

Dropping the clunky real name was a wise move for the Rocket Man. Rock 'n' roll? More like yachting 'n' polo. Inventing a stage name like Elton Hercules John instead? Hot damn, that now-ignored Hercules in there is smooth.
NWBBSF: The marquee of the Lower Sommerset Community Action Centre: "Appearing all week! Reginald Dwight's Bongo Explosion!"

Joy Division had the foresight to drop the possibly Buzzcocks-suggested Stiff Kittens prior to their first gig. While I'm sure "Stiff Kittens" would be fun to write on your 8th grade binder, it sounds pretty faux-dangereux (think studded leather wrist cuffs) if you're older than, say, 14. Meanwhile, Joy Division avoids that blah bluntness (i.e. dead animals) while retaining the requisite edge (i.e. Nazi sex slaves).
NWBBSF: A minor splash '77 punk band that was never heard from again.

Actually calling themselves The Angry Young Teddy Bears was only considered briefly but the sit-on-the-sofa-with-me-mates-throwawayness can surely be seen as a portent of the laziness that grasped the band between their two LPs. English Rose and The Patrol sound like a band hitting their stride after they get up off of that sofa and pick up some instruments. Pick the right name and next stop, greatness.
NWBBSF: A Jam cover band (English Rose), a '70s cop show (The Patrol) and a nemesis in the Misfits mould should the Teletubbies ever do a Jem & The Holograms-type gig (The Angry Young Teddy Bears).

While going by The Easy Cure, Robert Smith and Co. discarded several other aliases that certainly lacked the succinct zing of their eventual moniker. With a name like The Cure, it's hard to look at everything else as anything but 110% pure clunkers generated in some proto-goth name factory.
NWBBSF: An instrumental surf guitar band (The Obelisks), a heavy metal trio from Sacramento that plays in bars with names like Cheaters (Goat Band), or a group of angsty, dress-in-black nu-metal poseurs (Malice).

It's hard to imagine the same guy who wrote "Miuzi Weighs a Ton," "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos" and "Fear of a Black Planet" started out as Chuckie D. Now, Chuck D might not be the hardest handle in the hip hop game but at least it doesn't make you giggle.
NWBBSF: Some kid name Charles Derwinkowsky in a Langley Schools Music Project type thing. He would have played the tambourine.

The blandness of The Triumphs and The Mascots were definitely of their time ('57 and '60, respectively). The O'Jays, on the other hand, has a jauntiness that embodies their music: self assured, fun, cooler than you. Okay, cribbing your name from a Cleveland radio jockey named Eddie O'Jay doesn't seem superfly cool, but let's not dwell on that.
NWBBSF: A '60s Beach Boys-style group that sang all about the hot rods (The Triumphs) and a jam band supergroup featuring the Philly Phanatic, Ronald MacDonald, that baseball-headed Mr. Met on drums and the A&W Root Bear on tuba (The Mascots).

One sure way to get your ass beaten to an Arabacus Pulp at recess is to give your band an overly brainy sobriquet. Jarvis Cocker purportedly nicked it from something he picked up in an economics class. Here's some economics, Jarvis: As band names go, Arabacus Pulp is worth about 10 cents.
NWBBSF: A rock band in the Grateful Dead mould. Hopefully fans would be so stoned they wouldn't notice the extreme lousiness of the band's name.

It's always funny to look back at some of the 'fresh' styles the early hip hoppers were rockin'. Granted, many of those old school monikers don't age well, but founding a hip hop group as the Stetson Brothers? Wack at any time. Stetsasonic, on the other hand, sounds like the brand of Hi-Fi on the Funkadelic Mothership.
NWBBSF: A brother-brother country duo from Austin, Texas.

Hard to believe that Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, two of the biggest kahunas in the '70s New York music scene, actually agreed on a craptastically lame name like The Neon Boys. Television = A hundred channel universe of COOL. The Neon Boys = The first draft of a John Henry given to a band that some dork starts after going to a gig and being blown away by a cool band like Television.
NWBBSF: The stage nickname of a lounge-singing pair of '50s-era Vegas hoods.