JohnL wrote:
"Mott the Hoople"
That was a strange one. It was never clear to me whether this was an imperative, in which the listener is instructed to perform some act on the Hoople. (Hopefully the Hoople had been consulted in advance, and was OK with being motted.) More likely, "the Hoople" is a titular designation, to distinguish our Mott from other Motts. Spurred by JOHNL, I did a little digging.
The latter seems to be the case. Before selecting the band's name, one of the members read a novel called "Mott the Hoople," by an author named Manus, in which Mott, a scam artist, speculates whether he should become a hoople, his term for a law abiding square. More generally, Wiktionary defines a hoople as "a mound of dirt." It would appear that the central character, Norman Mott, does not hold honest citizens in particularly high esteem.