The Weakerthans

Canadian indie rockers, currently (2016) “cryogenically frozen”, formed in 1997 by members of Propagandhi and Red Fisher. The name?  “It comes from a movie adaptation of a novel by Marguerite Duras called The Lover. The scene is, this man’s in a restaurant and someone challenges him to a fight. He says: ‘Go ahead, I’m weaker than you can possibly imagine.’ I always thought that if I was looking for a band name I would use that. Band names in general are pretty dumb. So that’s the least dumb we could come up with at the time.” This is Left & Leaving.

Wet Wet Wet

Initially Vortex Motion, they took their new name from the line “wet, wet with tears” in Scritti Politti‘s oddly compelling Gettin’ Havin’ & Holdin’: “At the time it was Duran Duran, Talk Talk – double-barrelled names. We just added on another to confuse people. And we would look outside and see the rain coming down – it did seem quite relevant to Glasgow.”

The Whirlwinds

Schoolboy Robert Wass, later to become the comedian Bobby Knutt, played guitar and sang with this early 1970s Sheffield outfit.

The Wonder Who?

Pseudonym used by The Four Seasons, for contractual reasons, when they released a version of Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice in 1965; described as one of the most camp of all Dylan covers, it nonetheless reached No 12 in the US charts. Three more singles under this nom de disque followed, for one of which they dropped the question mark.