Bands Named After Sexual Organs/Functions
Dickies logo...they were the days.
A Christian website complained recently that a lot of bands name themselves after reproductive organs or functions. So I got to wondering, how many can I personally rhyme off myself without consulting the Bands Named After Genitals Guide? Here are the ones that sprung to mind (some of them are named after sex toys which themselves are prosthetic sexual organs/functions). Of course the main reason for doing this is the fact I’m an attention-seeking fuckwad with the sense of humor one would expect in a 13 year old boy. (Which isn’t bad seeing as I’m actually 11) Turns out there are quite a few but the Buzzcocks and Magazine aren’t among them…though the latter should be, in my opinion.
12. I’ll begin with a bonus one; the Pet Shop Boys will forever be hounded by the famous “true or false?” question regarding the inspiration for their name. The reality appears to be a quite boring explanation – they had friends who worked in a pet shop and took it from there. The cheap thrill version says that they were making fun of the homosexual practice known as “gerbiling” in which men insert gerbils or hamsters into their anuses and derive great pleasure from the sensation of the (presumably declawed) little rodent burrowing its way up their assholes. This practice belongs on the Bonus Section shelf next to the “Marc Almond had a gallon of semen pumped out of his stomach“, etc.
11. The Dickies: Humorous, humongous California punk pioneers who unleashed their “Banana Splits (Tra La La Song)” in 1979, the Dickies’ logo was a cock and balls and their Incredible Shrinking Dickies album contained a high-speed punked up version of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”. The Dickies had a habit of pressing their records in colored vinyl and unfortunately a couple of them are no longer dicking around, but they will be remembered forever by anyone who loves late-70s no-holds-barred rock ‘n’ roll.
10. Celibate Rifles: This Australian Sex Pistols antithesis were associated with the Lipstick Killers – wait, isn’t “lipstick” slang for a dog’s erection? Perhaps we’ve uncovered a bonus dog sex-part reference band here! – and played gigs in Sydney to adoring crowds before conquering the US and Europe. Anyone who’s heard their classic, “Johnny”, with Crocodile Dundee-esque singer Damien Lovelock’s grinding vocals and a driving guitar, will know that the rifles were not to be taken lightly. They may have been celibate but they proved they could deliver the goods when and as needed.
9. Scissor Sisters/Scissorfight/Tribe 8: Their name is taken from a sexual position between women called tribadism, also known by the slang term scissoring. It is a sexual position entailing a woman rubbing her vulva against her partner’s body for non-penetrative sexual stimulation. “Rubbin’ pussies” as a friend of mine refers to it. Couldn’t help myself, I just had to include it, so I could write “rubbing pussies”…oops, done it again. Oh well…and I can’t even be bothered telling you anything about them. Alright, I will; they have a male man who wears very tight lycra trousers and a tattooed woman with red hair…need I continue?
8. Hole: Utterly filthy-looking singer Courtney Love is every waster’s dream girl and who wouldn’t want to, really? The aptly named Hole – named after a lady’s love tunnel I should hope – have recorded numerous top records, including “Retard Girl” and “Dicknail” and Love herself has even been accused of murdering Curt Cobain by the more hysterical segment of the grunge fanbase. In the parlance of Monty Python, she looks like a right goer…nudge, nudge, wink, wink…say no more.
7. The Slits: Formed from, among others, a band called The Castrators (beat that for a tangential ball-sack hacking silly band name, eh?), the Slits were a mainly female British punk band that went on to play with the esteemed likes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash and A Certain Ratio. One of the Slits split (if you’ll pardon the expression) to form another band, The Raincoats – British slang for condoms – but not before they’d mesmerized the public with their rolling drums, reggae beat and cocky attitude. With names like Ari Up (Arianna Forster), Palmolive (Paloma Romero of Raincoats fame) and Budgie, the Slits were a band that filled a gaping crack in the musical mural of the time, and filled it well, I might add.
6. We’re getting into the real prosthetic realm now: Legendary punk band The Vibrators – does it get any better than that, ladies, really? – inspired a million little black and white badges bearing a letter “V” after their hit “Automatic Lover” earned them a spot on Top of the Pops. One Vibrator, bassist Pat Collier, went on to work with post-punk outfit The Soft Boys (hmmm..) and produced what many consider their best ever album, Underwater Moonlight. And yes, it is a fucking awesome album.
5. Steely Dan: Continuing with the prosthetic-inspired, this perfectionist duo named themselves after Beat Generation writer William Burroughs’ depiction of “Steely Dan III from Yokohama,” a strap-on dick mentioned in smackhead Burroughs’ novel “The Naked Lunch”. Steely Dan’s brilliant “Do It Again” is by far their most famous tune but there are plenty more where that came from, as they say. The two musicians behind Steely Dan, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, were hippie-hating recluses known to go through session musicians like Marc Almond goes through, er, spunk donors (it’s OK, it’s a myth), and appear to be a relatively friendless, fucked up pair of freaks. Perfect!
4. Thin White Rope: Continuing with bands whose names were inspired by Burroughs, these buzz-saw demons from Davis, California named themselves after the skag writer’s description of ejaculation. As if to emphasise this, they released an album entitled Sackful of Silver (but that could just be me) and have been referred to as “the Demon Seed”. Their fan club is called The Swingin’ Danglers…very apt for a sexually named dark psychedelic rock band…or is it? Needless to say, buy “Exploring the Axis”, “Moonhead”, or the scintillating “The One That Got Away” and you’ll not be disappointed. These guys could dish out some serious guitar and their lyrics were strange as fuck. Well worth a place in this list. It’s about the music, stupid!
3. Continuing with the ejaculation theme we have 10CC: Famous for their massive hit, “I’m Not in Love”, 10CC named themselves for a greater than average volume of semen ejaculated during an orgasm. As a kid I used to play football outside vocalist-guitarist Graham Gouldman’s house, but never actually saw him wanking into a volumetric flask in order to accurately determine his massive output. Not that I was a peeping Tom or anything like that. 10CC was a band half commercial and half artistic, a bit like a human brain. The commercial half allegedly wrote shit songs and the artistic side were supposedly brilliant. Their hit single, “Rubber Bullets” had audiences rocking, and when you think about it, the title really seems to kill two birds with one stone…but I’ll stop there.
2. Sex Pistols: Do these guys – or their moniker – need any introduction? We thought not, except to say that one of the most famous albums of all time was Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols – yet another triumph for sticky-out dangly bits in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. Johnny Rotten (a “Johnny” being slang for a condom in England) and Co. changed the face of pop music forever when they exploded on the scene with their goggle eyes and foul mouths. Their slogans included such gems as “Crime pays us”, “Cash from chaos” and “Never trust a hippie” and they hated everything and everyone. Kids today don’t know they’re born because of the Pistols, and that’s a fact. I hear the Queen herself secretly fucking loved them. Loved the bastards. What more can you say? Those twats were top fucking notch. And other naughty words.
1. Anal Cunt (WINNER): I don’t know what they sound like. I don’t know what type of music they play, or the name of a single song. I just know they exist and that is a beautiful thing…it makes me laugh, anyway. Anal Cunt, ladies and gentlemen, yes Anal Cunt, are the Number One band named after a sexual organ/function. Anal Cunt!
Anal Cunt go disco!