Ted Dancin’ Machine.
Wreckless Eric. Also, difficult to argue that he was wreckless, given the state he got into on stage.
j
Irish boy band Boyzone is likely a pun off of:
English-Irish pop girl group Girls Aloud is probably a play on “girls allowed”.
There is a female cover band from Seattle called Hells Belles. I saw them about 15 years ago, a rumor floated around the theater that Brian Johnson from AC/DC was in the audience.
You missed a whole part of their schtick. Their lead singer is a 300-lb Elvis impersonater; calls himself Tortelvis. A lot of their numbers are Zeplin / Elvis mashups. Robert Plant is a big fan.
Let’s see… others:
Gnarls Barkley (a play on basketball HOFer Charles Barkley)
Dire Straits
Jimmy Buffet and the Coral Reefer Band
Little Feat (actually named after Lowel George’s small feet)
I’ve heard that Steve Winwood was a mama’s boy, because she told him to go out and play in traffic, so he did.
Actually, should Abba count? The name was simultaneously derived from the band members’ given names (Agnetha, Björn, Benny, and Anni-Frid) and a fish related joke:
In 1973, Stig Anderson, tired of unwieldy names, started to refer to the group privately and publicly as ABBA (a palindrome). At first, this was a play on words, as Abba is also the name of a well-known fish-canning company in Sweden, and itself an abbreviation. However, since the fish-canners were unknown outside Sweden, Anderson came to believe the name would work in international markets.
j
Led Zeppelin is a clever pun, because a dirigible is literally a led zeppelin.
Then there’s the all-female cover band Lez Zeppelin.
I always thought of it like “lead zeppelin”, as in, a lead balloon.
Does Siouxsie and the Banshees count?
Band of Oz (North Carolina Beach Music Group)
I remember reading somewhere that Jimmy Page was describing his ideas for the band before it formed to Keith Moon from The Who, who said to him “that’ll go over like a lead Zeppelin”, and the name stuck (with irony, of course).
Is this supposed to be a pun on ‘Ted Kennedy’? I thought it was just a tasteless, punky reference to how many members of the Kennedy family have died young.
This is the story I always heard. They spelled it ‘Led’ so it wouldn’t get mistakenly pronounced ‘leed’ as in ‘lead singer’. Which still counts as a pun, I suppose.
ETA: Ninja’d!
The Skatalites (I think a pun on stalactites, maybe?)
Thin Lizzy
I thought it was ska + satellites
Fairly obscure, but The Wynona Riders.
I’m afraid so. But we call the Indian nation “Lakota” now. Nobody says “Sioux” any more. So she can have it.
Steve ‘n’ Seagulls - I’d say they’re more indie than novelty.
Harmonica Lewinski - Blues band
I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t realize this incredibly obvious thing until maybe my late teens. Maybe because it’s so familiar that when I learned it as a kid (they were always around for me) I just didn’t think about it as an invention, I just added it to my vocabulary as the name for those guys, like a person’s given name?
The Wailin’ Jennys (I assume a pun on Waylon Jennings)
There’s a story behind this, possibly apocryphal, that (as you say) they were originally going to call it Lead Zeppellin, as in lead balloon - where lead is the metal. But they realized that it might often me misinterpreted as lead (foremost) and thus also mispronounced. So they deliberately went with the wrong spelling to ensure the pronunciation that they wanted without having to constantly say “well actually…”
ETA: here’s the version of the story now on Wikipedia:
One account of how the new band’s name was chosen held that Moon and Entwistle had suggested that a supergroup with Page and Beck would go down like a “lead balloon”, an idiom for being very unsuccessful or unpopular.[21] The group dropped the ‘a’ in lead at the suggestion of Peter Grant, so that those unfamiliar with the term would not pronounce it “leed”.[22] The word “balloon” was replaced by “zeppelin”, a word which, according to music journalist Keith Shadwick, brought “the perfect combination of heavy and light, combustibility and grace” to Page’s mind