Ongoing History Daily: The Zwan oops
When Smashing Pumpkins found out that Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin were reuniting in a new band called Zwan, they were excited. But they also started asking “What’s a “Zwan?”
Selecting this name turned out to be an error.
Western European Pumpkins fans knew that Zwan is a brand of canned luncheon meat that’s made in the Netherlands. It’s sort of like Spam and comes in three flavours: classic, low-fat and aromatic herbs. Billy should have done a little checking to see if there were any international language embarrassments lurking for him. That’s the problem with globalization, I guess.
The company that makes Zwan–Elais Meats of Holland–didn’t sue Billy for any kind of copyright infringement–but a properly stored tin of Zwan sure lasted a lot longer than the band did.
