Bad News (band)

Bad News
Origin	United Kingdom
Genres	Heavy metal, parody music, comedy rock
Years active	1983–1988
Labels	EMI
Past members	Vim Fuego Den Dennis Colin Grigson Spider Webb

Bad News were an English spoof heavy metal band, created for the Channel 4 television series The Comic Strip Presents.... Its members were Vim Fuego (aka Alan Metcalfe), vocals and lead guitar (played by Ade Edmondson); Den Dennis, rhythm guitar (Nigel Planer); Colin Grigson, bass (Rik Mayall); and Spider Webb, drums (Peter Richardson).

Bad News made their television debut during 1983, in the first series of The Comic Strip Presents... (written by Edmondson, and produced by Michael White/Comic Strip Productions). The episode, "Bad News Tour", took the form of a satirical fly-on-the-wall rockumentary, in which the incompetent band is followed travelling to a gig in Grantham, by an almost equally inept documentary film crew: It seemed to take much inspiration from Mark Kidel's 1976 BBC documentary So You Wanna Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star? that followed the Kursaal Flyers around Scotland and northeast England. The episode was also coincidentally in production at the same time as This Is Spinal Tap, which was released the following year to a much wider audience and subsequently greater acclaim.

The "Bad News Tour" episode is notable for featuring songs (written by Edmondson and Simon Brint) that do not appear on either of the Bad News albums or in the later TV episode. These rare tunes are "Bad News" (Version 1), "The Motorbike Song" (aka "Doing A Ton Down The Highway"), a brief snippet of a song whose title is unknown, and an almost complete live version of "Mr Rock N Roll". These tunes represent the only released Bad News material not co-produced by the Queen guitarist, Brian May.

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