Long Tall Shorty
Long Tall Shorty are a London mod revival band that started in 1978. They began as The Indicators, made up of members from a punk group, and were renamed after Sham 69’s singer Jimmy Pursey heard them. They quickly began recording demos and released their first single, 1970’s Boy, in 1979. The band grew with a second guitarist, played many gigs, and released more songs, but label problems and line-up changes led to their split in 1982 when lead singer Tony Perfect left to join Angelic Upstarts.
The group reformed in 1983 with a new lineup and continued making music through the 1980s. They released the 1984 single On the Streets Again and stayed active in the scene, with members also briefly linking with other punk and mod bands. In the late 1990s, interest in their early work grew again, and they played at Mods May Day in London. New material followed in the early 2000s, including Shine On Me (2002) and A Bird in the Hand (also 2002), as well as collaborations with Tony Perfect and Ian Jones.
From 2005 onward, Long Tall Shorty kept evolving their sound, moving beyond their early mod roots toward a style they called “Giffer Punk.” They released a rhythm-and-blues set No Good Women and a later batch of releases, including The Sound of Giffer City (2009) and Kick Out The Shams (2010), and they contributed to the Mod Mania compilation in 2010. They toured Europe in 2009–2010 and stayed active in various projects.
In 2021, Tony Perfect (also known as Tony Morrison) died from COVID-19. A memorial concert was held, and longtime members returned to perform Long Tall Shorty songs. That same year, the LP A Bird in the Hand was released in July on Countdown Records.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 02:29 (CET).