No Use for a Name
American punk rock band

No Use for a Name (sometimes abbreviated NUFAN or No Use) was an American punk rock band from Sunnyvale, California, formed in 1986 by Chris Dodge (guitar), Steve Papoutsis (bass) and Rory Koff (drums). The band's sound evolved considerably through its career, starting off as a Bay Area-influenced punk band, moving on to a much heavier metallic-tinted sound to finally taking on a much lighter brand of melodic punk as the years passed. Following Tony Sly's death on July 31, 2012, the remaining members chose to disband the group out of respect for him.
History
No Use For a Name was formed in 1986 by longtime friends Dodge, Papoutsis and Koff. The early rehearsals of the band had taken place at the Koff family house in Sunnyvale, where they also came up with the name for the band. During this era, the band was fronted by Papoutsis' friend John Meyer. Initially a four piece, it later expanded to a six piece, adding as a co-vocalist Ramon Gras and a second guitarist Doug Judd. The band experienced many line up changes during this period. In 1987, Dodge left to play in another Bay Area punk band, Stikky, while in summer that year, both Meyer and Judd left the band with Tony Sly replacing Judd on guitar. This line-up first appeared on Maximum RocknRoll's 1987 Turn it Around compilation, with the song "Gang Way".
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q375364. VIAF identifies the subject as 155564584. The Library of Congress control number is no98104660. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986, 2012 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “No Use for a Name” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.