[x] The Wombles?

What is this; bandtoband.wom??? I'm not sure what rule that falls foul of but surely it must? Did any human being really 'join the collective' of that group? Regardless of who wrote the music is that not by definition 'session' work? Even if (spuriously I think) they are allowed in, then all humans who have not got assigned Womble names must surely be excluded, otherwise you have the bizarre picture of some Womble/human hybrids playing alongside non-Wombling humans on an equal footing. Sorry, I just think the Wombles only exist as a genuine musical collective in a fictional parallel universe, not this one; although this does raise a question for me as to whether The Tap should also be here ...

I'm hoping that Matt can make a convincing argument here about The Wombles.

As for Spinal Tap, we confirmed that they did perform outside of the movie at least a few times (in both 1984 and 1992), and their 1992 album was independent of the movie. So that was enough to establish them as a real band. On a similar note, Lenny & The Squigtones also performed live in L.A. in 1979 (although their album was marketed as Lenny & Squiggy), which was sufficient for us to recognize them as a real band, separate from TV/Movie non-reality. And before you go there, the Blues Brothers and the Blues Brothers Band also have a significant existence outside of TV/Movie-land.

The Wombles gigged, sho'nuff. They played live on Top of the Pops, several times. If Tap are in, then so are The Wombles.

It was well-known at the time that Mike Batt was the principal perpetrator, but it was news to me till I found it by accident that Chris Spedding was one of the others.

If you disallow The Wombles, then my forthcoming attempt to get The Rubettes in is going to be dodgy as well, because it's a matter of record that they were only a bunch of session musicians dicking about.

Come on, can someone else with a particularly offensive sense of humour come on out and back me up?

"it's a matter of record that they were only a bunch of session musicians dicking about."

Hey, that's never stopped me from wanting a band's inclusion :D

That would include (or exclude?) Toto as well then. They were just a bunch of session musicians too. Although I suppose they did evolve into a band.

Matt, I thought you would have known about Chris Spedding being a Womble - I saw a TV interview with him years ago where he was moaning about how awful the suit was and how it was impossible to go for a pee with it on!

Which just goes to prove (unfortunately!) that they did dress up as Wombles on more than one occasion to play live.

*sigh*. In a perfect world, the Wombles would not exist!

Nobody played live on TOTP in the 70s! I just wonder where this Womble-inclusive policy ends; almost every children's programme ever has had spin-off albums of some kind. What makes The Wombles different from any of the rest of them? The fact that they had chart success or played live is actually not a criterion for inclusion here - a few bands I'm partial to in the dB never played live for various reasons. 'Kermit and Friends'; that's a 'band' that made an album - is that valid? And if so is every 'friend' a valid participant? And even thought ignoring Toto seems like a good idea :-), I didn't mean to say any session work must always be excluded regardless of what it evolves into, I guess I just thought that since Elizabeth Beresford was (not quite but almost literally) pulling the strings on the whole Womble thing, the musical collective doesn't really exist. But I can see a whole pile of Womblephiliacs are going to have their way; I can only hope for some bizarre redemption by linking minor Texan heavy metal band Rok Bergade into the dB and getting their bassist Russ Womble in...

The main reason The Wombles got in is because they got a link via Spedding.

If anyone wants to go and research the Kermit and Friends stuff, off ye go now ... but as The Muppets never actually toured as such, with the musicians in question on stage dressed up as Kermit, Piggy et al, I doubt they'd actually qualify.

As KateUK says, The Wombles *did* gig. And if you want to make distinctions against ensembles that were put together purely for the amusement of under-fives, then sorry, but you're gonna have to do a complete rethink on whatever other categories of band you want to arbitrarily exclude.

It is entirely coincidental that I finally modified The Wombles entry in the fashion that MrP recommended in the first post in this thread almost an entire year later. Too bad I didn't wait a little longer.