Bad Habits by The Monks

Bad Habits, the 1979 album from the Monks on EMI, is a punk rock send-up cooked up by old hands from trad rockers Strawbs, and it's funnier and catchier than it had any right to be. Richard Hudson, John Ford and Terry Cassidy wrote the songs, and the gags come thick and fast over buzzing guitars and cheap-sounding synths.

At home it barely registered beyond one single, "Nice Legs Shame About Her Face", which reached number 19 in the UK, and America ignored it. Canada, though, went nuts. "Drugs in My Pocket" was a Top 20 single there in the fall of 1980, and the album went double platinum in 1982. Canadians never forgot it: in 2012 Thomas D'Arcy staged a tribute show at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern, with members of Sloan and the New Pornographers among the players, and EMI handed Ford a double-platinum award on the night. Suspended Animation came next.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.