The Naked and Famous

The Naked and Famous are an indie electronic band from Auckland, New Zealand. They formed in 2007 when Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith were working on what became the EPs This Machine and No Light that they recorded with engineer Aaron Short, a fellow student at Auckland's MAINZ music college. The band took their name from the English artist Tricky's song "Tricky Kid", which is ambivalent about the notion of celebrity. In the song, Tricky quotes the line "everybody wants to be naked and famous", from The Presidents of the United States of America's song "Naked and Famous".

The EPs were subsequently released on local independent label Round Trip Mars and Powers and Xayalith began performing live with Ben Knapp and Jordan Clark on bass and drums respectively. Aaron Short became a performing member of the group. Knapp and Clark left the group and Jesse Wood (drums) and David Beadle (bass) joined the band as full-time members in 2009. The group have released two studio albums Passive Me, Aggressive You (2010) and In Rolling Waves (2013). Since 2012, the band has been based in Los Angeles, California, US.

Naked and Famous

"Naked and Famous" is the name of the second single by the post-grunge band The Presidents of the United States of America. This single was the follow-up to their debut recording, "Fuck California". "Naked and Famous" was later released on the President's debut album which features Soundgarden's Kim Thayil on guitar. A version of Puffy Little Shoes appeared on their second album II.

There were 2 different versions of the cover both were limited to only 1000 numbered by hand the first was pulled from shelves due to possible legal action. Both variants were made by Che Orrie under special license from PopLlama Records. The original cover featured Vanna White's upper body (front cover) and C-3PO's legs (back cover). Numbers for the first versions are unknown. One thousand were made, but due to the recall, the total number sold remains a mystery. Due to this, the single tends to be highly sought after by collectors.

Even though it was first released in 1994, the song itself dates back to at least 1987: a version was recorded in New York by Chris Ballew in that year and another version was recorded with Egg, Ballew's band at the time, in 1989. Both versions appear on the expanded 10th anniversary issue of their debut album.

The Naked (band)

The Naked was a Danish indie-rock band that existed from the end of the 1980s and disbanded in 1999. The band started out under the name Naked Lunch, later shortening the name to Naked, and finally to The Naked.

The band was formed by Kasper Andersen (vocal, guitar) and Jacob Als Thomsen (guitar), who met in high school in the mid-eighties. Andersen started out as drummer, but switched to guitar after Thomsen left temporarily to study abroad. At this time guitarist Anders Reuss and bass player Søren Rohde had joined. The band rehearsed with a drum machine until Emil Landgreen joined the band as a drummer in the summer of 1990, coinciding with the return of Thomsen. This line-up started playing regularly on the Copenhagen underground scene from late 1990. At the time of the band's first album, Søren Rohde had left to be replaced by Andreas Koch on bass. During the recording Landgreen left to join Speaker Bite Me and was replaced by Rene Thorny. Astrid Bruun Johansen joined on viola after the second album.