‘We were banging our heads against a wall – the wall won’: the genius pop and tragic demise of Boys Wonder

They swaggered into the late 1980s, a potent brew of punk, glam and classic rock. But they went nowhere, then had to watch as their recipe conquered the charts. Now they’ve returned – so are they looking back in anger?

The song begins with a barrage of power chords, brazenly stolen from the Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again. The opening lyrics are mewled out in an estuary accent: “I get bored so easily – that’s why I only say hello.” And the list of influences from here includes the Sex Pistols and Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie – before it ends with a brazen lift of the coda from the Beatles’ version of Twist and Shout. When it gets to the chorus, everything becomes clear: this is a ferocious, wonderfully camp blast against the stifling cultural dominance of classic Americana: “Goodbye Jimmy Dean, don’t tell me what to wear / See you later Monroe, if anybody cares.”

All this might suggest a lost classic from the mid-1990s, and the gaudy wonders of Britpop. But Goodbye Jimmy Dean was actually by Boys Wonder, a visionary band whose star rose and fell between 1986 and 1988. They were about eight years ahead of their time, and in retrospect, their chronically awkward fit with their era was probably always going to be their undoing. But while they lasted, they were great. In 1987, I saw them performing on the Channel 4 comedy show Saturday Live, swaggeringly delivering another three-minute manifesto titled Shine on Me. I was smitten, but given their large-scale blanking by the music press (and the fact that the world wide web had yet to be invented), I was left wondering what on earth had happened to them.