Lipps Inc. (Funkytown) is a pun on lip sync.
As my wife can attest (rolling her eyes), I’m our household, any time someone named William’s whereabouts are in doubt, I will sing this:
The only ones that are coming to mind for me (that haven’t been mentioned) are the little-known Moshed Potatoes and The Skatterbrains.
And here’s a sidebar: Musican magazine back in the day had a post-Smiths breakup cover headline of “Johnny Marr: Fed Up!” In French, “fed up” can be translated as “J’en ai marre.” Impressive wordplay, there.
That reminds me of Rose Royce (“Car Wash”).
For us thickheads, what’s the Dire Straits pun?
If you are in dire straits, you are in a dangerous situation.
Mark Knopfler is in Dire Straits - is he in a band or in trouble? Similar to my comment about Steve Winwood playing in Traffic, but I don’t know if that band was named because of the joke.
Yeah I think think that’s a pun. When I first read this I thought the saying (that means in trouble) was dire straights but, its not, its dire straits (as in a thin body of water between two bits of land) too. So there is no pun
Pansy Division - 90s “queercore” pop-punk band
It’s Flash and the Pan. Definitely punny, and one of the great underrated bands of its era.
I thought he was asking about “Sultans of Ping”, which is a pun on the Dire Straits song “Sultans of Swing”.
The acrimonious split of the Australian band, the Saints led to most of them touring without lead singer Chris Bailey as The Aints.
Reportedly when they were struggling early on, a roommate declared that they were in dire straits (as they weren’t earning any money). They then adopted that as their name. So even when they were no longer in dire straits, they would still be in Dire Straits.
Skapone is a ska band from Chicago, of course.
ISTR that the name “Concrete Blonde” is pretty much meaningless, but the singer was a friend of Michael Stipe, and it was he who made it up and she and the band liked it, so that became their name.
How about King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard?
Like “The Beatles” being so well-known that you don’t notice the wordplay, the name “The Rolling Stones” was a… what? An homage to old songs?
(Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Kingston Trio, Bob Dylan)
Or picked up from an ollllld proverb from at least a thousand years ago?
The Monkees’ name was definitely a play on the Beatles.
That may be, but a mere typographical allusion is not a pun.
There are a number of punny rapper names I can think of: Eminem, Ludacris, Ginuwine
Apparently Biz Markie isn’t a pun on Bismarck? You learn something new every day.
One of my favorites: Gringo Star
I thought it was well-known that they took the name from a Muddy Waters tune. But maybe that’s one of those well-known things that’s bullshit.