Tribute acts: An athenaeum of puns

The most important part of a cover band? Their name

When did the phenomenon begin? Elvis impersonators have been around for decades. But the tribute act is more recent. Sometimes the finger is pointed at Australia and the ABBA parody Björn Again.

But why do we care? Because of the puns, of course.

Time and time again we find that a good name goes a long way. For tribute acts it’s no different. We would rather see Earth, Wind, for Hire than the Ultimate Beatles Tribute Band. Creative names separate what would otherwise be substandard imitations into something different – almost like they are trying to cultivate a sense of naff.

The winning names tend to be succinct and as close to the original as possible but there are bizarre outliers – The Björn Identity combines ABBA with Noughties spy thriller. In our research, there were a fair few you couldn’t verify actually exist – a Yes cover band named No, for example.

Without marketing budgets, tribute acts use posters to get the word out. There is danger in straying too far from the original band’s naming, otherwise you will not get a ‘The Smiths are back together and playing Bournemouth?’ moment. That is, until you notice the I in Smiths is a Y. A single letter change to convey the meaning is close to genius.

With that in mind, here are some of our favourite tribute act names, real or imagined: