February's band name winners

Of course, we couldn't match the bumper crop of entries in the launch month of our silly little possible band names competition, but the quality of suggestions in February was again very high. Indeed, I think I've had even more difficulty picking the winners this time...... but here goes.

A special commendation once again to Gary, who produced a list of absolute corkers; I loved Swimming Pool Pirates, Imaginary Fiends, Armed Bears, Fear Of All Sums, and the marvellously warped China reference, Y-Front Rebellion; and best of them all, I think, was Idiot Synchrony (yes, we get a lot of that in China.....) - in any other month that probably would have been a winner. I hope Gary won't take his disappointment too hard, but will rather be goaded into returning with another set of suggestions this month. If he keeps on coming up with ideas as good as this, he's bound to win sometime soon.

However, this month I'm going to award the top prize to my old friend Snopes (accuse me of nepotism, if you will!), who submitted a shorter but equally brilliant list, including such gems as the delightfully Dada-ist Bed of Noses, the China-friendly Dazed From The Red, and the surprisingly plausible Penny Arcane. However, my absolute favourite (cue: portentous drumroll) was........ Grouper Soup. We've had many varieties of wordplay in our band name suggestions, but this was our first instance of a spoonerism and it was sheer genius.

Further honourable mentions to my old Oxford pal, The Swordsman for The Screaming Victorias and Just Sevateem (Englishmen of a certain age will get the reference!), and to The Lunch for the superbly stupid Cancelled Due To Illness (they wonder why they play to empty houses!!).

There was only one 'Cover Band Name' entry this month, but it was a worthy winner - again from The Lunch: female AC/DC tribute band, Venus With Arms.

And I'm going to award the prize for 'Best Foreign Band Name' this month to my friend The Chairman for Der Traurigen Vetteren (German Country & Western group - "The Doleful Cousins"), although it should, I suppose more properly be credited to whoever wrote the antique German grammar book he is trying to teach himself from.

Special thanks also to Brendan for contributing our first entries in Chinese. I hope we'll see some more. 黑户 (hei hu - which means something like 'black clan': I'm not sure if it is a phrase with particular associations, gangster slang perhaps [Brendan? Help!]; but Brendan proposed the Spanish alternative, Los Illegales) was a close runner-up for 'Foreign Band Name'.

Do keep your suggestions coming..... in the comment-thread to the original post, please (not here). This is proving to be great fun.

And don't forget the new supplementary COMPETITION here!!