The Higsons- "I Don't Want To Live With Monkeys"
The Higson's came together at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Their first single, "I Don't Want To Live With Monkeys" was released in 1981 on the Romans in Britain label. The band was fronted by Charlie Higson who called himself "Switch" and featured Terry Edwards on guitar and brass. The band "tried to put some funk in the punk" and according to Charlie, "We were often accused of trying to be the English Talking Heads, which we always strenuously denied, but let's face it, that's what we were trying to be." The label on the B-side states: "Anyone caught doing anything illegal with this fine record will have their backs broken, and they will end up mad like Charlie", so please don't download this track! The Higsons did a cover of "Music to Watch Girls By" which earned raves and chart success with the title changed to "Music to Watch Boys By". The band called it quits in 1986. In 1985 Robyn Hitchcock released an album entitled "Gotta Let This Hen Out!" named after a Higson's song. The live album included a song called "Listening to the Higsons". The Higson's were: Charlie Higson (lead vocals, harmonica, piano) who later found fame as a comedy writer and actor on the BBC's "The Fast Show", Terry Edwards (guitar, trumpet, sax ,piano ,vocals) fronted his own band and is a prolific session player, Simon Charterton (drums, vocals) played in Camden based "The Aftershave". Stuart McGeachin (guitar,vocals) and Colin Williams (bass, vocals) left the music business.
Get The Higsons "It's a Wonderful Life"
Go to the download page to get The Higsons- "I Don't Want To Live With Monkeys" mp3 here
"The B-side '14 Steps' is about much the same thing (as 'Crimson') only it's just saying you only get one life so don't waste it or poison it with guilt, hate and other fun emotions..the title came out of us wondering (probably drunkenly!!) why there are always the same number of steps in a staircase...(14... ulp! what were we on!) That's it in a nutshell.. Both were recorded in a few hours in Konk Studios in London and produced by Dave Woolley who engineered some Jam stuff but had never produced a record in his life before! We had wanted Mike Robinson who did the BBC session which we loved to produce the record but Jamming! couldn't afford the £200 he wanted paid to do it. Dave did O.K. though. Robin Richards who did so many of the old punk t-shirts did the sleeve for free - it was his wife on the front of it.....so we thought the finished article coulda been produced better but it did real well for us...in fact one of the best memories I have of the time I was in RUDI was the last night of our stint as support to the Jam on the Transglobal unity express Tour when we played the Queens Hall Leeds which was the biggest venue we ever played to a packed house and Dave Liddle (Paul Weller's guitar roadie) introduced us with the news that Sounds had made 'Crimson' 'Single Of The Week'..and we went down a storm.... We always said it was up to the listener to decide what the songs were about and whatever it meant to them was what it was about...(just remembered one guy thunk it was a song advocating suicide...aw well!) ya can't win em all!"
"Ronnie, Grimmy and I wrote it when we were still a 3 piece and the riff and intro were originally part of a song called 'Murder on The Second Floor' which never quite came off.. A few months later as if by magic we'd kicked it into shape and Crimson was born..! Unlike most bands we did write our songs together..words and music..it just worked better that way.. We used to get slagged for writing 'obscure' lyrics - well they weren't obscure to us - but we hated the dumb sloganeering that was so prevalent at the time (and we'd done some ourselves when we were starting out..!)..so we let people figger it our for themselves..Crimson, like a lot of our later songs was political - but with a small 'p'...not silly party political crap but I s'pose what people would call personal politics..though we never sat down and figgered that out!
Manchester, England's Keith Whittaker named his London, Ontario, Canada's band Demics after a Manchester, slang insult meaning "wanker". The band started playing in the small clubs of London after meeting in the downtown loft scene. They released an E.P. called "Talk's Cheap" which garnered some airplay on cutting edge Toronto radio station CFNY-FM with this version of "New York City". They played the Toronto club circuit and opened for The Dead Boys and Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. The band split up in 1979 but reformed with new guitarist Steve Koch in early 1980. They recorded a self-titled album with a new version of "New York City" produced by English guitarist/producer 
