Worst Band Name Ever?

Photo by Andy Willsher

When The Libertines imploded and all the kids from the Whitechapel indie-rock scene got sick of paying Pete Doherty’s crack dealers to watch him busk sock-footed in his filthy apartment, they hit the internet message boards and found Arctic Monkeys. The band are all about 12 years old and come from a small shithole town near Sheffield where Pulp, Def Leppard, and Human League all grew up. Arctic Monkeys don’t smoke crack and heroin every night but they do sound a bit like the Libertines, albeit with a more acerbic Northern tone to their Smiths-y lil’ guitar jams. They also write funny Jarvis-ish lyrics about having your face smashed in with a pool cue (i.e., every Saturday night ever if you’re from a small shithole town in the North of England). Best of all, there’s ALWAYS people fucking like wild beasts in the toilets at their gigs. Seriously. The first time I saw them, people were totally going for it like beasts in the cubicles. Then our friends told us they’d seen the same thing happening the next night in a different town and we were like “OK, so this is what happens every time, then.” Vice: Are you animal lovers? Alex Turner (singer, guitarist): I know girls who’ve been rather ferocious. You might describe them as animals. Some of your fans are like wild animals, though… There’s gorilla-like tendencies amongst our audiences. We make them bounce off walls. And what about all the fucking in toilets at your gigs? It’s not a new thing. We were watching a bit of footage on video of our earlier gigs and the camera went into the toilets, peeped over a cubicle and… yeah, there were a couple of people mating. Is that because you’re a lyrical genius? A poet, right? Poet? Sounds a bit soft. My mates would take the piss out of me. I’m no wise man. I still don’t know about a lot of stuff. What’s with the terrible name? Obviously it’s a shit name. But we had these record company people saying things like “Oh, we like what you’re doing but you’ll have to change that name.’ So we had to keep it just to spite them. It’s actually named after an Inouk cult. Really? Umm. No. That’s bollocks actually. I dunno. TIM JONZE
Arctic Monkeys just signed to Domino in the UK. Their debut single, “5 Minutes With the Arctic Monkeys,” sold out in May in about two seconds.