Back in 1984 the Sheep Worrying organisation had run up a £1,000 debt trying to keep it's alternative listings magazine going. To save the project the editorial team formed a band. The idea was to do cabaret songs for money and give all the money to Sheep Worrying to pay off the debt and thereby keep the magazine going.
The Sedgemorons played a few cabaret gigs , quickly got bored of that and then started writing their own songs sending up bands that were playing cabaret gigs - especially themselves, brought out an album "
We're Bonkers" (September 84) and a single "
Drop Dead Darling"b/w "I Need a Girlfriend" (april 85) and while they were at it wrote a stage musical "
Rock n Roll is Pretty Exciting".
The premise of the Musical was that Rockin Brian, an intensely tedious brummie car park attendant (Brian Smedley) was going to have his car park re-developed into a 'disco' and so needed, in true Cliff Richard fashion, to get 'the kids' led by the sickly sweet and naively hopeless Bobbie Bland (Lianne Bruce) on board to help him save it. In true Yul Brynner style they rounded up a possee of gunmen to help them save the car park. Ghenghiz 2-Stroke (Stuart Croskell) a pretentiously abstract poet with a penchant for Johnny Cash songs, Bing Beasley (Gareth Beasley) an over exuberantly anarchic nutjob and Betty Bonkers (Anne Dixey) a rebellious feminist housewife .
The single -Drop Dead Darling (Kane/Smedley) was backed up by 'I
Need A Girlfriend'(Beasley/Smedley) and featured Bing on lead vocals and improvised scat singing with Bobbie and Betty on backing vocals, Ghenghiz on bass and Smed on twangy lead guitar.
Also featured were Nervo on drums and Barry 'Bazza' Thompson on whistled intro and outro and sax solo.
The record was played on John Peel and reviewed in Sounds by punk poet Seething Wells and the band went on to tour extensively before knocking it firmly on the head in January 1986.
A freshly unearthed video forms the backing for the remastered (not really) song and is taken from a BBC2 documentary about the Bridgwater Arts Centre which featured the Morons rehearsing in an upstairs room.
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