[QUOTE=Usram]
I wonder what was the first “abstract” band name? By abstract, I mean the sort of name that became popular in the sixties - Traffic, Jefferson Airplane, Cream. That is, names not starting with “the”, or of the form “Fred Jones and his Four Tones” etc.
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Them, with Van Morrison, formed in April 1964. They seem to be about the first of that era.
However, the group I mentioned earlier, Four Aces, had its first chart single in 1954 and didn’t have a “the” in its name. His Red Hot Peppers is much earlier.
I guess it depends on what you mean by abstract.
I suppose I mean that it is not immediately apparent what they are getting at with the name. With a name like “Four Aces”, I imagine there were four of them in the band. And everybody likes Aces, so it’s basically “four nice fellows”. No mystery there. “Them” is borderline, in that it could of course refer to, well, them, the guys in the band, but it does have a sixties vibe to it, as if “them” was somehow meant in more than its literal sense.
[QUOTE=denquixote]
the title was taken from gravestone of the father of one of the singers - Phil Spector - who had his only hit single as a singer with that song.
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I wonder whatever happened to that Phil Spector guy? 