Foragin' for the Origin

G Gilgz - and his presumably brilliant blog (That is if I could access it) - quite rightly asked in the comments section a few days ago

I was just wondering, does "Bandwagon" have a proper meaning or is it purely metaphorical?

Well, Double G, I don't actually own a bandwagon, if that's what you mean. My space name comes from the popular phrase "to jump on a bandwagon", which itself reffers to people following a crowd with something that is popular at the time. I chose the phrase because when I started the blog up, lots of other people were making blogs at the same time, thus I was jumping on the Bandwagon. Of course that, and my blog itself, is all just an elaborate satire of popular culture. Well at least that's the idea.

If you want to know more on the word, here's something I just copied and pasted from Google...

The first known use of the term bandwagon is from 1855 in P.T. Barnum's Life:

At Vicksburg we sold all our land conveyances excepting four horses and the "band wagon."

Use of a bandwagon as a metaphor for a political campaign dates to at least 1884, when the magazine Puck published a cartoon depicting Chester A. Arthur driving a bandwagon full of presidential hopefuls.

The familiar phrase first appears in an 1899 letter by Theodore Roosevelt:

When I once became sure of one majority they rumbled over each other to get aboard the band wagon.

Of course Google isn't always correct, here is a more hilarious and perhaps more dubious origin of the word...

Old time political campaigns would attempt to gain supporters with what amounted to a small parade including a band for a candidate with sufficient support. Jumping on the bandwagon was akin to providing your support for this popular candidate.

So this isn't a total washout of a post, I'll just say - Uzbekistan. Dontcha just hate it???!!!???