Top 5 on Friday - Week 208

The meme mistress this week gives us:

Top 5 unique band/artist names

Aquarium Rescue Unit

A really great band fronted by Col. Bruce Hampton and featuring the outstanding Jimmy Herring on guitar and Oteil Burbridge (of Allman Brothers Band) on bass.

Box of Frogs

Formed in early 80s by former Yardbirds members, Box of Frogs put out a stellar debut followed by a not quite as good but still enjoyable follow up. Both albums feature an amazing cast of guest musicians including Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Rory Gallagher and Steve Hackett. Back Where I Started got some airplay if I recall.

Grand Funk Railroad

Although pretty much always critically panned, I've always been a fan of GFR. You can keep "American Band" though.

Liquid Tension Experiment

Never been much of a Dream Theater fan but for some reason I like LTE - perhaps it is the inclusion of bassist extraordinaire Tony Levin. It's very prog metal like and the musicianship is astounding.

Toad The Wet Sprocket

Love this band. The name comes from a Monty Python thing. Check out Dulcinea if you need a place to start with them.

Comments

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Box of Frogs! I've not seen that name in print in a very, very long time! Never heard that song, though.

And I'll keep We're An American Band, although it's not my favorite GFR song (Probably a tie of TNUC and Closer To Home.) I had the yellow vinyl of We're An... and it was COOL!

#1 nat (Homepage) on 2009-01-23 20:32 (Reply)

That debut Box of Frogs album got very heavy play back in the day - need to see if it ever made it out on CD.

I've got the yellow vinyl as well - one of the many vinyl treasures hidden in my collection. Did you say had?

SB

#1.1 Scott (Homepage) on 2009-01-26 09:27 (Reply)

Oh yes. My first hubby took most of the good vinyl collection when we divorced in 1982. We had quite an extensive collection, but I got only about 150 - 200 records out of it. We even split the stereo up, and he got the Bose 901's we got overseas.

#2 nat (Homepage) on 2009-01-26 14:54 (Reply)

I love clever band names. Canterbury (England)produced some of the most weird and wonderful band names and song and album titles. Theme for the band seemed to be along the old "star and backing guys" format; as in Dion and the Belmonts, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Cliff Richard and the Shadows. It was almost if they were saying..."Look! what it's called doesn't matter, just listen to the bl**dy music".

Top of the list: Kevin Ayers and the Whole World
No 2: Hatfield and the North - Doesn't mean anything to anyone unless they have sometime driven up the A1 Great North Road from Central London.
No 3: Gong - not so much a band as a way of life
No 4: Matching Mole - Actually the pig french translation of Soft Machine (Machine Molle)which leads back to...
No 5: Soft Machine - and what do know, everyone of the above bands had a hand in this one at sometime.

Cheers... That was fun.

Oh! and that Toad the Wet Sprocket thing on Eric Idle's show was just brilliant.

#3 naryaxword (Homepage) on 2009-01-26 17:36 (Reply)

Nice list - all bands I've heard of but know very little about. I do have a few Gong LPs in the collection but I understand that they are a hard band to nail down to a particular sound.

Thanks as always,
SB

#3.1 Scott (Homepage) on 2009-01-29 20:11 (Reply)

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