4 Early 2000s Bands With Weird Names and the Stories Behind Them

It wouldn’t be the early 2000s if the band names weren’t a little bit eyebrow-raising. Here are a few especially quirky band names from this time and the stories behind their strange fate.

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Smash Mouth

If you don’t know them for “All Star” or “I’m A Believer”, the name of this quirky indie rock group has definitely captured your attention a time or two.

According to Songfacts, Smash Mouth is named after a football term coined by NFL legend Mike Ditka. In “smash mouth football,” the offense relies on running the ball heavily. In the Merriam-Webster definition for “smash mouth,” it describes the term as “characterized by brute force without finesse.”

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Although it was inspired by the Russian leader who took office at the end of the Cold War, this band name, as bandleader Phil Dickey shares, was actually not meant to be political at all.

“We were always worried about that because the band name was not political at all. We’ve never endorsed [Yeltsin’s] policies. He did seem like a good and decent man,” Dickey explained. “The band name is more of a commentary on that, not about anything political. But we were worried about that. There were a lot of things going on, they have some tension over [in Russia].”

Hoobastank

If you’ve ever heard the song “The Reason”, which you definitely have, then you are familiar with the band Hoobastank.

“Hoobastank is a Californian, or, in the area that I grew up, it’s a slang term for someone who has a shoe fetish, such as Dan [Estrin, Hoobastank’s guitar player] and myself,” said vocalist Doug Robb in 2002. “We have lots of shoes.”

Modest Mouse

Known especially for the success of their album, Good News For People Who Love Bad News, Modest Mouse is a staple of early 2000s indie music. Apparently, this band derives its name from a 1917 passage by English writer Virginia Woolf. Part of the passage, titled “The Mark On The Wall”, reads as follows:

“I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest mouse-colored people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.”

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