Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes has been played on NTS shows including A Scene In Between , with Splashing Along first played on 28 February 2025.

Formed from around, and within, the Edinburgh indie-pop scene of the mid 1980's, Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes had a distinctive guitar-jangle sound with male and female vocals. The band took their name from Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley.

This initial line-up recorded the first two singles, "Splashing Along" and "The Rain Fell Down", on Narodnik Records. With the departure of McMahon and Clarke, Bruce Hopkins and John Robb were drafted in for third single, the "Billy The Whizz EP", these being replaced on a more permanent basis by Michael Kerr (of Meat Whiplash).

Next release was a flexi-disc featuring the track "Hank Williams Is Dead" along with a track by The Fizzbombs, a side-project of Margarita and Angus, along with Ann Donald of The Shop Assistants.

Moving to Velocity Records, the band released two more well-received singles, "The Adam Faith Experience" and "You'll Never Be That Young Again", followed by first album, "A Cabinet Of Curiosities", which collected the tracks released to date.

n 1989, Kerr left to join The Darling Buds, and the band returned in 1990 with single "Grand Hotel", a reference to the IRA bombing of Brighton's Grand Hotel, the venue for the Conservative Party conference.

Tully described this as a 'fuck Thatcher and fuck the IRA for not killing her when they had the chance' song - the band never afraid to be controversial. The album "Nixon" followed, and in October 1990, they released their final single, the "Hold Me Now EP".