You will find below a selection of what I believe to be the very worst of British regional rock. The list is heavy with Scottish rogues, mainly because as a nation, Scotland has consistently failed to produce any home grown talent unless you include David Byrne, who was born in Dumbarton, but wisely his parents whisked him off on a plane to America moments after his birth. Nevertheless, even he has lost his way also after a promising start.
JIM KERR - [SIMPLE MINDS]
Could have been Bono, but his goggly eyes and bad hair saved us. Started out as a Kraut-rock influenced avant garde-ists and ended up as po-faced stadium rocker. This pseudo intellectual muppet is rumoured to have swanned around Glasgow in his pre-famous years in a long black trench coat with a swastika emblazoned on the back carrying [no doubt unread] works of Uris and Solzhenitsyn under his arm whilst proclaiming his desire to have a golden bus as his mirror on the world.
LOWEST EBB - With so much to choose from it is difficult, but the sick bag inducing false empathy of 'Mandela Day' wins hands down. Prisoner exchange between Nelson and Kerr would have ensured heightened global rejoiced.
MITIGATING FACTOR - Failed spectacularly in his bid to buy Glasgow Celtic Football Club
JUSTIN CURRIE - [DEL AMITRI]
The Facially hirsute Jock rocker who fancied himself as Jim Morrison meets Morrissey enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame with 'Nothing Ever Happens' and 'Always The Last To Know' [probably less if one takes in the respective running times]. Faded into deserved obscurity after the well meaning but incredibly lame 1998 Scottish World Cup anthem 'Don't Come Home Too Soon'. Last observed being rejected by a fat Goth girl in a Glasgow nightclub.
LOWEST EBB - Getting political on a children's music show with his completely ill-informed economic spoutings, witness: - 'There's so much poverty in the world. Why don't they just print more money?' The words 'hyper' and 'inflation' spring to mind Justin. Proof positive that Rock Stars should be seen and not heard.
MITIGATING FACTOR - Always a source of great amusement watching him ride around town on his bright green push bike whilst wearing matching leather Gestapo trench coat and trousers.
CHUMBAWAMBA
Pretentious bunch of Yorkshire Agit-Prop neer-do-wells who made a career of alleged satirical pastiches of their more talented pop rivals. An imagined Anarcho-Socialist cutting edge disguised its utter banality. A career spanning twenty plus years spawned only one hit, the nauseatingly popular student anthem 'Tub-thumping. With a dozen odd non-entities in the ensemble, the royalties didn't stretch enough to record a follow up. This was a godsend for those blessed with hearing.
LOWEST EBB- Drenching Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at the uncool Brit Awards 1998 in a protest cum publicity stunt.
MITIGATING FACTOR- The stunt failed to capture the 'kids' imaginations and they faded back into the well deserved obscurity from whence they came.
MIKE PETERS - THE ALARM
Over mulleted driving force of Welsh post punk flash in the pan's The Alarm. Enjoyed a minor hit in 1983 with 68 Guns. Despite a lack of follow up success, Mikey [as he was then know] refused to give up the ghost and churned out a few more albums of sub-Clash, Welsh orientated political dirges. He is directly responsible for the emergence of the Manic Street Preachers due to the power vacuum for a pious self righteous bunch of tossers created in Welsh music by the demise of The Alarm.
LOWEST EBB - Having to play 68 Guns three times during a solo gig to keep the audience vaguely interested and to be heard above the chatter of gossiping barmaids and hairdressers.
MITIGATING FACTOR - Easily beaten up or so I am reliably informed.
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN
Like Chumbawamba, this overcrowded twee Glasgow band named after some French Paedophile cartoon target students and intellectuals with their lofty, often smutty ballads. Actually they are one trick ponies whose songs all sound like 'Duchess' by The Stranglers. By employing a cynical reclusive attitude to touring in Britain they are yet to be found out. Nevertheless they continue to make a fortune touring South America and Japan and playing to huge crowds who mistakenly believe anything British equals Talented. And Money equals Old Rope. The pioneering missionary spirit of the British Empire lives on in this bunch of charlatans.
LOWEST EBB - Winning the best newcomers at the Brit awards in 1999 via a dodgy e-mail voting scam. Their debut album had been out for three years at this juncture.
MITIGATING FACTOR - In doing so, they trounced bookie's favourite 'Stepps'. The producer of this truly awful bunch, cheese-meister Pete Waterman, was truly outraged. 'We wuz robbed, we shoulda stood in bed', the old curmudgeon was heard to rant.
TOM JONES
Once upon a time the Welsh Elvis was a bit of rough the ladies loved to shower with underwear. Nowadays after too much cosmetic surgery and a pie too far, the boy from the valleys has transformed into an overweight hernia faced day-glo golliwog. Having had the misfortune not to go bum up like many of his contemporaries or retired to the holiday camp circuit where he belongs, we are instead tortured by overly loud bombastic renditions of modern pop ditties, wholly inappropriate for a man of his age or indeed girth. He should know better, but he is either senile or permanently drunk.
LOWEST EBB - Getting the nose job that made him look like the 'Boy David' before facial reconstruction. [Note: David Lopez was discovered in Peru in the 1970's with his nose eaten away by disease, leaving a gaping hole.]
MITIGATING FACTOR- He has some amusing Elvis anecdotes.
MARTI PELLOW - [WET, WET, WET]
Born Mark McLaughlin in Clydebank, Pellow further cemented Scotland's reputation for being unable to produce a band of any sustained substance. The Wet's, as the liked to be known, churned out a succession of charmless white boy soul tracks in the 80's and 90's culminating in the witless monster hit 'Love Is All Around'. A bad cover of a bad original. His trademark smug perpetual grinning is made all the more remarkable by the revelation that he was off his head on heroin most of the time. If this was him on downers, how irritatingly ecstatic was he ordinarily? It doesn't bear thinking about.
LOWEST EBB - The seemingly endless mutli-genre hit 'Sweet Little Mystery'
MITIGATING FACTOR - He restricts himself to rehab and stage productions these days.
BOBBY GILLESPIE - [PRIMAL SCREAM]
Skinny rat faced junkie frontman of the Scream. Once the drummer of Velvet Underground copyists, 'The Jesus and Mary Chain' until Bobby branched out on his own. Primal Scream jumped on every bandwagon available;- politico pop, rock/dance crossover, house, before settling on the time honoured escape route for uncreative British bands of the 1990's, they pretended to be the Rolling Stones. In a remarkably un-ironic fashion, largely thanks to his half-witted fans, he almost got away with it.
LOWEST EBB - Trying to convince rock journo's in the early 90's that he was the saviour of rock.
MITIGATING FACTOR - The star jumps he often performs in videos are Chaplin-esque in their pathetic-ness.
ROD STEWART
The once cool front man of ultimate lads band The Faces lost the plot when he thought male spandex and disco mixed. It all went rapidly downhill from then on. A mullet pioneer and surely the alter-ego of raspy voiced Bonnie Tyler [to rubbish to even include in this list] Rod became a hero of the tabloid press for his string of identikit blonde girlfriends. He considers himself a Scot, but we all know he is really a Cockney from deepest darkest London. The sight of Rod dressed in his frightening spandex gear in the late 1970's and early 80's caused many children to have nightmares. The godfather of cock-rock shows no sign of slowing down or growing up.
LOWEST EBB - The serial killing of Tom Waits' Downtown Train and Tom Traubert's Blues.
MITIGATING FACTOR - He once bought my aunt a drink.
