Flying Lizards

The Flying Lizards were an experimental new wave outfit from London whose big moment was a gloriously wrong-headed cover of Barrett Strong's "Money". Deborah Evans-Stickland handled the lead vocal, delivered with all the warmth of a bank clerk reading out your overdraft, over a clattering, junk-shop backing that sounds like the song was being dismantled while it played. In 1979 it got onto the charts in Britain and North America, which tells you something about how strange and wonderful that year was.

Virgin put out the self-titled album the same year, and it climbed to number 60 on the UK chart. The cast around the project shifted: MusicBrainz names David Cunningham, Julian Marshall and Patti Palladin alongside Evans-Stickland, while David Toop and Steve Beresford also turn up among the members. There was a 7-inch of "Summertime Blues" too.

This was punk's do-it-yourself nerve pointed at pop's sacred cows, and the Flying Lizards kept at it until 1995. Rock radio's countdowns have held on to "Money" ever since, a novelty that never quite stopped sounding like the future.

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