The Tansads

Though the Tansads possess one of England’s most aggressively intense sounds, the group has never attained commercial success. In his autobiography This Is Pop: The Life and Times of a Failed Rock Star, former bass player Ed Jones, now a sports correspondent for The Wigan Reporter, recounted the shared disappointments he and the band experienced. Emerging on the British punk folk scene in the early ’90s, the Tansads issued four albums that sold poorly—Shandyland, Up the Shirkers, Flock, and Drag Down the Moon—before beginning a three-year hiatus in 1995. When they regrouped and returned in 1998, Janet Anderson had joined as the new lead singer. Her arrival failed to improve the band’s prospects, as sales of their fifth album, Reason to Be, proved equally disappointing. In 2001 Anderson was succeeded by Laura Follin, a teenaged vocalist from St. Helens.