If you're keeping track...

Here's what Bucks Fizz (or the remnants thereof) are legally trading as these days:

"Cheryl, Mike & Jay Formerly of Bucks Fizz". Not be confused with Bucks Fizz Style Band With Bucks Fizz Flavouring, or The Rump Of The Rump Of The Eurovision Winners 1981.

Mumford And Sons hate "Mumford And Sons"

There are many things that annoy people about Mumford And Sons. The name which makes them sound like a faux-artisan cheesemakers that's really owned by Tesco is one of them.

The band hate that, too:

[Marcus Mumford] said: ''I definitely regret the band name. If I'd known it was going to go this way I would have wanted to call it anything other than my last name.

''It's a ball-ache. We thought about changing it but it's a bit late now.''

It's not, you know.

It's possible that changing your name would cause your band to sink without trace, but let's not just focus on the upside.

5 Seconds Of Summer's name isn't even as clever as it seemed

5 Seconds Of Summer - it's not a great band name, but there's at least something there; the idea of a short burst of joy in an otherwise grim exi... oh hang on, I'm just being handed a piece of paper:

When asked how they came up with the name for the band, Michael said: ''We just... it doesn't mean anything. I wish it did, it's just a stupid name. I thought of it...''

However, drummer Ashton quickly corrected him, saying: ''He was nude in bed''

Michael then shared: ''I was in bed nude. Milk, chocolate, nude and watching Scrubs. That actually is the story. That's actually really embarrassing. Nude, eating milk, and chocolate and watching Scrubs.''

Oh. It turns out we've assumed there was more thought behind the name than there actually was.

Dears off the Deers; Deers resigned; now Hinds

Canadian band The Dears have been sending legal threats to Spanish band The Deers. Apparently it's not on to have a homonymic name.

The Deers have, therefore, become Hinds:

this is sadly the most official post we've ever made: we have to change our name.
we mean... they forced us to. we received an email from a canadian lawyer saying that our name created confusion with his band's name. and that name is not even deers (LOL). We tried our best, really, but we have no choice. so..
OKAY!!!! LET'S TAKE THIS WITH A SMILE :):)!!
deers are now...HINDS!! (charannn!!)
And we are still the same people, we are even the same animal!! UNBELIEVABLE! !!
We don't usually ask you guys for anything but PLEASE you'd really make this easier for us if you could share this amazing info.
LET'S HAVE AN AMAZING 2015!
sorry and thank you, HINDS 8)
PS: pppppfff... we screwed it up with the FB page two weeks ago.. sorry for the confusion haha
see you on tour ☮!!

We like The Dears - but, frankly, sending legal letters to try and protect a name which is just a single dictionary word? There's a new rule of band naming, guys, and it's 'if it would make a bad password, it's going to be a lousy band name'.

Twittergem: Metal

The downside of picking up a thrash metal band from the airport. pic.twitter.com/SlOQrEvV68

— Daniel Holland (@DannyDutch) March 23, 2014

Gordon in the morning: Naming rights

Come with us for a quick peek over the Sun's paywall, to see what fresh meat Gordon is laying out to tempt you in the new marketplace.

Today, he's got a story about MKS, in which Keisha Buchanan reveals they could have grabbed the Sugababes name had they wanted to [don't bother following the link, there's a paywall].

That's worth the price of entry, right?

Although you could have read pretty much the same story on the NME a week ago. And they'd lifted it from BBC News the day before.

Still, who wouldn't want to pay Rupert Murdoch to read stuff the BBC had so long ago they might have forgotten reading it in the first place?

Gordon in the morning: Who saw this coming?

Pete Samson is, as we know, the grandly titled "US editor" of The Sun, although it's not entirely clear what that means. Especially since his contribution this morning is to report on death threats being made against One Direction.

That's the One Direction who had the name first, not the One Direction who Simon Cowell gifted a stolen name to. Just to make that clear.

Yes, the Cowell variant's fanbase have decided to "help" the delicate legal process involved in deciding who owns a trademark:

The US band’s frontman Sean O’Leary said the worst had been aimed at his dad Dan, who manages them.

Sean, 18, said: “There has been so much hate mail, like people threatening to cut our b***s off.

“The one that stands out for me is a girl saying she wanted to kill my father.”

Surely if cut the bollocks off the American band, it'd be even harder to tell the difference between them and the British version?

Gordon in the morning: Two directions

Given how Cowell attempted to bully a charity - a charity - into handing their name over, it's probably not surprising that it turns out there's another One Direction.

And the other One Direction aren't happy:

Manager Dan O’Leary told The Sun: “I don’t care how powerful Simon Cowell is. He’s mad if he thinks we’re going to lie down, sit down or back down over this — whatever power and money he has behind him. We’re not going to be pushed around by some music mogul.

“The British One Direction have Mr Cowell’s enormous resources behind them. We on the other hand do not. In our view, we were here first. We have rights, we have talent, and we have heart.”

O’Leary, who is the dad of his group’s lead singer Sean, added: “My boy’s dreams and the dreams of the band are just as important as the dreams of Cowell’s group.”

The Sun's Aaron Tinney reports that the US One Direction have been going since 2009, have filed trademark papers before Cowell, and that Cowell appears to have been aware of their existence.

You'd think that this would make it a pretty clear win for the original, US One Direction. Only Tinney seems to imply that it is they who should roll over. Why? Because they're ickle:

[The US One Direction's] sales are tiny in comparison to their UK namesakes
[...]
The UK One Direction have stormed America this year, sparking frenzied fan stampedes not seen since the Beatlemania days.

But the US group that shares their name have had only pitiful sales on iTunes and play charity gigs and bars in the States.

It's The Sun. Of course they're going to side with the big, money-making business over the small guy. That's what they do.

More misery from Cowell world, as Colin Robertson reports how Britain's Got Talent contestant Analiza Ching is in pieces:

BRITAIN’S Got Talent sensation Analiza Ching was in tears last night after naked pictures of her spread like wildfire in her native China — and brought shame on her family.

The violinist told how her dad now faces losing his job as a music teacher after angry parents spotted the snaps and pulled their kids out of class.

Nasty. And where might they have seen the pictures?

Er... all over the Sun website on Monday:

STUNNING violinist Analiza Ching shows she’s as fit as a fiddle — as she poses naked with her instrument.

Josh Homme starts a fight over a bad name

Josh Homme has launched a lawsuit to try and stop the members of a band he no longer wishes to be in trading under that band's name.

NME.com explains:

Homme was the original guitarist in Kyuss until their split in 1995, but did not take part in the band's reunion tour last year. Garcia had previously claimed that he and Bjork were planning on making another studio album under the Kyuss Lives! moniker, but Antiquiet now reports that they face legal action from Home and Reeder.

It's not entirely clear why Homme is making such a fuss - presumably any fan of Kyuss would know that they're a band with a different line-up; anyone who isn't a fan is, frankly, unlikely to give a hoot in either direction.

You can't choose your fDeluxe

The Family - one of those strange creatures flung together by Prince when he was at the height of his powers - are back, back, back. Only, erm, they're now trading as fDeluxe.

Sure, The Family was a better name for a cult than a band. But fDeluxe? It sounds like a probiotic product.

To give the band their due, they're under no starry-eyed confuison about their creation myth:

Paul Peterson: [Prince] wanted to create something that would be funky but get into some of that Duran Duran money at the same time.

To be fair, the same motivation covered most of Tony Hadley's career, too.

The artist formerly a Sugababe makes the artists formerly known as The Sugababes

I'm using "artists" in a sarcastic sense, obviously, but you'd expect that, right?

Yes, Mutya Buena has gone to court and won the rights to the Sugababes name, stripping the title from the band that, up until today, had been known as the Sugababes despite not containing any original members of the act.

It's arguable that Mutya doesn't really have any rights to the name, either - it's a bit like a sausage claiming that it owns the trademark Walls, but the court has made its decision.

The band-that-we-cannot-call-the-Sugababes-anymore will have to come up with a new name for their ongoing activities. Which, to be fair, seem to be less about music and more about this sort of thing:

If I were that scummy bloke who stole the Amy Winehouse Foundation name, I'd be registering SugarBabez right now.

The English patient

Q has appeared to have sliced up parts of its big Take That interview and given them to various newspapers - presumably allowing Fleet Street to read the scoop so you don't have to, not that you would anyway.

The Mail gets a bit which claims the band nearly changed their name when Williams came back. To The English.

The English.

I think that one nugget tells us just how much creativity there is left in this particular bucket - and if you're still in any doubt:

The album, out on November 22, is said to mark a radical change in style, with less emphasis on ballads and more experimentation with electronic pop.

Now, I could be wrong, and it might turn out to be like a latterday Kraftwerk, but this has all the hallmarks of someone bored with spaghetti bolognaise thinking that putting a splash of Worcestershire Sauce in might take it in a whole new direction.

Q, meanwhile, appears to have done such a good job of splitting the interview up that even as the Mail is happily regurgitating one part of it...

As well as new single The Flood, which is out next month, other tracks include Kidz, Pretty Things and Underground Machine, as well as an intensely personal song by Mark Owen called What Do You Want From Me?

... without apparently being told that another part explicitly says that the song isn't by Mark Owen at all.

Why Noel didn't let Liam Gallagher come up with the ideas

Liam Gallagher has announced the name for Oasis Without Noel. And it's not going to be called Oasis Without Noel. Oh no. He's gone with Beady Eye.

Beady Eye. As 'third on the bill at a High School battle of the bands' names go, it's perfectly serviceable - coming on straight after Brown Bag Lunch and just before Jimmy's Shoes. But for a grown-up man?

Liam dumps Oasis brand

Although Liam Gallagher's new band will feature most of Oasis, and is almost certain to sound like Oasis, and is about as eagerly-awaited as a late-period Oasis album, it won't be called Oasis.

That's for certain:

"No, it's not Oasis, that was a shit name anyway," Gallagher told radio station XFM. "I'm glad to see the back of it."

"There's a name that we're digging at the moment, but we're going to get on with the music and see how it goes."

You're digging a name, are you, you crazy hepcat you?

Courtney: Hands off, it's my Hole

Courtney Love isn't bothered that the rest of Hole are objecting to her using the band name on her new project:

"It is Hole, yes of course," she said. "How do I do this? It is just because it is, and it is because we just negotiated our thing and it'll be fine. Everyone has good lawyers."

Let's hope those aren't the same good lawyers who dealt with licensing Kurt Cobain to Activision. Or have been in any way associated with Courtney's finances over the years. Or taking care of the issues over who has custody of Frances Bean.

ContactMusic nods and types what it's told

Admittedly, they're right about Biffy Clyro having a stupid name, but:

The Scottish band, who are named after a Welsh astronaut who attempted to become one of the first men on the moon, believe their "stupid" moniker has made them try harder to do well.

At no point, Contact Music, when you were entering that into the content management system, did you think how unlikely that might sound?

The end of the Final Fantasy

Yes, yes, it's era-end days for your Wogan and your O'Grady and your More4News. (Don't you hope Catherine Tate will pop in to the More4News studios to run through a best-of bits as she did for O'Grady?)

But another era is also being wound up, as Owen Pallett is no longer going to be trading as Final Fantasy. At legal gunpoint:

riends,

I began playing solo violin shows in 2004. Although it was essentially a solo project, I named the band Final Fantasy, as the experience-- and the tone of the material-- was reminiscent of the hours and hours I had spent as an adolescent playing those epic JRPGs.

But the laws of trademark infringement exist for good reason, and so I am voluntarily retiring my band name. In the new year, my record Heartland is coming out, and it is my first to be released in many territories, including Japan. With this in mind, I feel it is in my own best interests to definitively distinguish my music from Square/Enix's games.

So, I am no longer playing shows as Final Fantasy. Subsequent releases, including Heartland, will be issued under my own name, Owen Pallett. Prior releases will sometime soon be re-packaged and re-issued.

I thank Square/Enix their kindness and support, and I thank you all for your understanding.

Salud!

Owen

Yes. We can see how people might get confused between a one-man band and a slightly sexy computer game. Well, I say "people", I mean "lawyers". And I say "get confused", but I mean "try to make some sort of case that people get confused".

Wells Fargo crush Essex swing band

"You would think they would have something better to do" observes Dave Bronze, bassist with the band that used to be called Wells Fargo until the bank of the same name got in touch.

Yes, apparently, Wells Fargo thought there might be people getting confused by a swing band playing in East Anglia and a US bank.

There's the usual old cant from Wells Fargo about "protecting the brand" - although it's perhaps a bit insulting to the customers of the bank to suggest that they're so dense that, if by some chance they found themselves outside a pub on the Colchester bypass on a Saturday night promising "Wells Fargo tonight", they'd be rushing inside to sort out their direct debits.

Wells Fargo are now simply Fargo. Let's hope the ID card company of the same name doesn't find out.

Having a sweary name is all fun and games until it costs you money

Starfucker are no longer going to call themselves Starfucker. It turns out the 'fuck' bit was a bit of a stumbling block when it came to getting slots on kids TV programmes, tours, and radio.

Whoever would have guessed that, eh?

[Lead fucker Josh] Hodges: “[We've talked about a name change] for at least over a year. [Our tour manager] was really encouraging us to change our name because we lost out on all these tours like the L.A. tour that Passion Pit got on—they got big after that tour. Nobody wants to tour with us, basically. That’s why we’ve never done an opening slot, we’ve always done headlining tours…it’s weird. It’s [the bands'] managers and their people that are like ‘oh, they’re gonna chase away the little tweener fans’ or whatever. Their parents aren’t going to fund them to go to the show. Which I guess I can understand. But no one really cares, it’s just they’re afraid that people will care. Most people don’t care but the fear of people caring has hurt us (laughs).”

Josh concludes that he'd rather be able to pay the rent than be "cool" . But is having a name with fuck in - like nine thousand other bands - actually cool, though? Isn't it the a band name with a swearage the equivalent of pretending to be called Seymour Butts?

JLS discover how cruel showbiz can be

... or whatever their name is.