...today’s bands are naught but pale imitations of much better acts that existed decades before you were born and whose records you are not cool enough to own. Take, for example:

The Venous Undergrowth (The Velvet Underground)

Not a band per-se, but a series of songs penned by various luminaries of the Company of Barber-Surgeons from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, each detailing either a function of the human anatomy, or some early surgical procedure.

The songs were intended to be educational and were often performed a capella during operations. Initially their content was a zealously-guarded secret, with apprentice surgeons forced to swear an oath of confidentiality. However, in what must surely be one of the earliest instances of music piracy, copies eventually leaked into the public domain where they circulated as sheet music, with some of the more gory titles being reinvented as bawdy pub sing-alongs.

The lyrical content of the songs was detailed enough for someone who possessed a modicum of knowledge of the human anatomy to perform complex medical procedures of which they had no previous experience. As a result the music gained in popularity among ships' surgeons and forms the basis of many sea-shanties. There is also circumstantial evidence to suggest that Jack the Ripper may have been familiar with the canon and put its lessons to practical use in the meticulous butchery that he performed upon his unfortunate victims.

In 1802, two years after the formation of the Royal College of Surgeons, a selection of the better known songs were compiled in a volume titled The Venous Undergrowth, named after a poem by Lord Byron, which was included in the book as a foreword.

...but there is a tribute band around my neck of the woods, covering a certain (recently resurfaced) Bristol outfit. This lot, however, go by the somewhat indelicate name of 'Tortoisehead'

Radioheath (Radiohead)

A ten-piece swing band named after a desolate acreage of Dartmoor, colonised by radio towers during World War II after it was discovered that the underlying geology added a natural encryption to outgoing signals. The transmissions could be decoded in the field using quarried samples of the bedrock; this happy accident giving birth to the mineral encryption devices still in common usage in today's warzones.

Band leader Sam Redlark’s enthusiastic consumption of amphetamines during his time as a soldier had rendered him unable to play the sedate waltzes which had earned him a living in the pre-war era. Upon his return to civilian life he began to compose music based on what were described by one commentator at the BBC as “disconcerting time signatures and shifting melodies”. Radioheath soon found themselves shunned from playing dances and experienced decades of obscurity before their slender body of work found favour with a fresh generation of jazz improvisers in the 1990s.

Variety Entertainer Percy Steam once boasted that there wasn’t a pier in England that he hadn’t played at the end of. He is best remembered for a string of novelty hits in the 1960s and 70s, that included the singles Movin' on Up (to Doncaster) and The Führer’s Making Swastika Eyes (at me), and for albums such as Vanishing Pint and Ripon City Blues.

Steam died of brain cancer in 1972. He has since become the subject of a bizarre tribute act called Primal Scream, who have expressed their intention to cover the entertainer’s albums in chronological order, with updated lyrics and music.

Frequent graffito seen around West Midlands traintracks.