Adrian Edmondson and the Bad Shepherds were a slightly awkward fit for the Perth Comedy Festival.
Perhaps it's difficult to know where to place a band of old musicians who play (mostly) punk covers on folk instruments and have Vyvyan from the Young Ones as their frontman, but Adrian Edmondson and the Bad Shepherds were a slightly awkward fit for the Perth Comedy Festival. These musicians are deadly serious, even though they probably shouldn't be. Like the Ben Folds cover of Bitches Ain't Shit (seriously – look it up), the Bad Shepherds' covers of songs like Down in the Tube Station at Midnight by The Jam and Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols, reveal a side to punk music usually obscured behind heavy instruments and slurred, rapid vocals. But the two genres don't mesh together as the members had perhaps envisioned, and by taking themselves too seriously – and failing to go out of their way creatively – their set became pretty dull once the novelty wore off.