Knockoff Band Names

Cafe Society
1

My wife and I passed a billboard advertising Creedence Clearwater Revisited, which is not quite the same as Creedence Clearwater Revival, having been formed by two members of the original band (but not John Fogerty). This is a knockoff band; they even have a CD consisting of covers of Creedence Clearwater Revival songs.

We got to thinking - what if other bands had knockoff versions with former minor menbers? What would they be called?

We thought of:

Aerosmith > Aerojones
The Beach Boys > The Beach Erosion Boys
Red Hot Chili Peppers > Mild Chili Peppers
The Rolling Stones > The Stationary Stones

What else do you guys have? No points for the obvious Beatles > Monkees joke.

2

Toad the Damp Sprocket
Hypothermic Ladies
Micro Vanilli

3

Grey Sabbath
Smooch
The Tumbling Stones
Milk Fat
Myopic Belief

4

When Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, & Howe reunited in the late '80s, they toyed with the name “The Affirmative” before deciding on using their last names.

Dream Theater has been known to switch up their instruments on stage, calling themselves Nightmare Cinema.

Anyway, a couple of ideas…

Prince Crimson
Spock’s Stubble
Gentle Ogre
Fuchsia Floyd
Hedgehog Tree
Return to a Few Thousand Years from Now
The Security Guards

5

A real-life example is Todd Rundgren touring and recording with Cars members Elliot Easton and Greg Hawkes and calling themselves the New Cars.

6

King Zirconia

7

Another real life example is ELO Part II which did not include Jeff Lynne.

8

The Who Dat?

The Faux Fighters

The Grateful Zombies

Blink 182.1

The Red Not Chili Peppers

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Jung

Jefferson Starship :smiley:
mmm

9

The Windows
The Suede Mainstream
The Abstinent Stamens
Clueless and the Unrelated People Rock

10

Deep Lavender
Mumbling Heads
Humble Crumbs
50 Years After
Great Grandmammas and Grandpappies

11

There is a local Doors cover band called The Next Doors.

12

There is an excellent female AC-DC cover band called Hell’s Belles.

13

Foo Huggers

14

Another real-life example: The Kast Off Kinks

15

Wham! → The Other Guy From Wham!

I always thought the New Yardbirds was a lousy name and was glad to see Spinal Tap thought so too:

David: And we had to change our name actually…
Nigel: Well there was, there was another group in the east end called The Originals and we had to rename ourselves.
David: The New Originals.
Nigel: The New Originals and then, uh, they became…
David: The Regulars, they changed their name back to The Regulars and we thought well, we could go back to The Originals but what’s the point?

16

There’s also a band which covers AC/DC tunes as country songs called Hayseed Dixie. No former members of the tributed band are involved, so it doesn’t quite fit the OP’s requirements, but that’s hard to beat as a knockoff name.

17

We’re Certainly Dwarfs
The Surreptitious Fabric
The Whom
The Blots
Steel Balloon
Lead Moth
Dwarfs With Altitude
&U

18

That one presumably would be made up of Garcia, Pigpen, Keith Godchaux, and Brent Myland.

IRL, some of the surviving members performed for a while as The Other Ones

19

Celebrity spouse Mrs. Stephen Fry has gone on record as affirming that some of her husband’s favorite bands are Earth, Wind and Frank, Nearvana, and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

20

…which brings to mind another real knockoff band: Keith Emerson and Greg Lake reformed ELP in the late 1980s and managed to retain the initials by substituting Cozy Powell for Carl Palmer.