Fun fact: their first single came out under the name “Jethro Toe”. Someone at the record label either misread or misheard the name.
I’m glad I checked before posting since I wasn’t aware/forgotten that Madonna, the entertainer, was actually named that as a baby.
For years, I played in a local band named, “Frank Burns”. My brother-in-law played in a band called, “Haven Moses”.
I would have sworn that her name was Mary something. What shocked me was seeing her with a guitar on her wiki page. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her play. Of course, it could just be a prop ala George Strait et al.
Heh, I wrote out a post about whether The Madonna refers to the Biblical Mary/Maria exclusively or if it will be a title for any future Mother of Christ. Should we be so Blessed.
Like a Smokin’ Pope could mean any of a bunch of old guys.
Yeah, if solo artists count (or even if they don’t), you can find quite a few examples in the early music genre.
- Hildegard von Blingin’ (neomedieval parody named after the medieval composer/poet/artist Hildegard von Bingen)
- Ensemble Claude-Gervais (named after the French Renaissance composer Claude Gervais)
- Ensemble Clément Janequin (take a wild guess)
- Johann Rosenmüller Ensemble (I think you see how this works)
- Egidius Kwartet (I maintain that this counts because the namesake medieval minstrel Aegidius only had one name. I am conscientiously ignoring all the myriad “Bach This” and “Handel That” and “Tallis the Other” etc. etc. etc. early music groups that use only surnames of composers whose given names are known)
And mind you, these groups/artists aren’t performing exclusively the compositions of the composers they named themselves after. For some reason, early musicians have a bit of a tendency to adopt some beloved composer almost as a team mascot, even if they perform a much wider repertoire.
Nitpick: they were blues musicians.
On the more contemporary side, there’s the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester.
REO Speedwagon has the initials of Ransom Eli Olds.
Country band Sawyer Brown is named after a road in Nashville. Presumably the road is named for a real person or people.
Camper van Beethoven
Back when I learned they took their name from the infamous MH, i tried looking her up. Most all of the info about her came from stories from the band. I suspect that the band largely made her up. There is more info about her now but I’m not sure it’s historical.
Similarly there was an Australian singer that called himself William Shakespeare.
There used to be a local band named Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. They ended up changing it eventually.
Prior to settling on the name they became famous under, the Butthole Surfers were known at various points as “Ed Asner Is Gay”, “Fred Astaire’s Asshole”, “The Right To Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole”, and “The Inalienable Right To Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole”.
We have a local 1980’s cover band called the Molly Ringwald Project.
Molly Ringworm would be clever.
In the holding pen until the rock jury determines whether he was a historically real person, but you could potentially include:
- Jesus Jones
- Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
- The Superjesus
- Jesus and Mary Chain
- The Jesus Lizard
The Doug Anthony Allstars, mainly a comedy group but who did lots of music, were named after a then-prominent Australian politician.
Australian group, the Whitlams are named after our former prime minister.
Years ago I also saw the one and only (thank God), shambolic bin-fire performance of the band Bumphrey Go-cart, named of course after the star of Casablanca.
The Beau Brummells
I seem to remember the road was named after two people. There was the Sawyer farm and the Brown farm on the road. But, I could be wrong.