My petty gripe: bands naming themselves as puns on other bands – will it never end?

‘Then came the Beatles, whose name was inspired by Buddy Holly and the Crickets. The Beatles begat the Byrds, and the Monkees, not to mention the Rutles – and on and on it goes.’ Illustration: Victoria Hart/Guardian Design

It’s a tradition almost as old as popular music itself: a band name that puns, plays on, or pays tribute to the name of another artist.

In the rock’n’roll era, you can trace it back at least to Chubby Checker. Known to his mum as Ernest Evans, the Chubber named himself in homage to Fats Domino and, in 1960, helped popularise a dance craze called “the twist”.