I think everyone should own a Television Personalities album.
At first glance, there's no particular reason why the TVPs are essential listening. You can't really put your finger on anything that Mr. Treacy and co. did first, or did best. Their music is shambolic, eccentric and wildly inconsistent. So why do they inspire such feverish devotion among collectors and tape traders? It's a slippery sort of brilliance. Bear in mind that this is a band that has spawned no less than four overlapping "Best Of" compilations. As frontman Daniel Treacy once observed, every TVPs fan thinks he's the biggest TVPs fan in the world.
Choosing an essential Television Personalities album isn't easy, but ...and Don't the Kids Just Love It captures their early magic best. The other records in their early eighties four-album burst of energy -- Mummy Your (sic) Not Watching Me, They Could Have Been Bigger Than the Beatles and The Painted Word -- haven't aged quite as well. The band's late nineties output is something of an acquired taste. 1990's Privilege makes a strong showing, as do some of the better-known live records, but in the end it's ...and Don't the Kids Just Love It that stands the best chance of hooking today's pop fans. It's hard to believe that this album is twenty years old, because it could've been recorded yesterday.
The album cover hints at what you're going to find here. The team-up of John Steed and Twiggy hints at a wealth of late-sixties/early seventies pop cultural references couched in an accessibly garage-y psychedelia. Bear in mind that at the time, sixties nostalgia was a good deal more unusual than it is now.
"The Angry Silence" is far from the record's best tune, but it and "The Glittering Prizes" provide a solid introduction to the TVPs' style. The music is neat proletariat pop -- competently recorded played, but easily within the grasp of any sufficiently motivated punk rock kids, and with a healthy dose of reverb covering most of the iffy bits. Dan Treacy's working class vocals frequently miss their mark, and his falsetto leaves a bit to be desired, but he's clearly singing his heart out. It's not 'til "World of Pauline Lewis" that the band really shows what they can do when they're firing on all four cylinders. This is the first in a series of pop gems; the tune glitters, while Treacy's vocals are at their most breathily sincere. It's lovely stuff.
"Family Affair" offers a sample of the reverb-induced depression in which Dan Treacy will wallow off and on for the next twenty years, while "Silly Girl" crackles with the minor-key adolescent venom that charges the best DIY stuff. It's also a good example of Treacy's ability to get away with simplistic lyrical couplets that would earn most bands a heap of scorn.
"Geoffrey Ingram" is another Kinks-y pop gem, crackling with the quintessential, time-locked adolescent Britishness that the TVPs did so well. It's a world of anoraks and bicycles and parties, where nothing is more important than looking clever in front of pretty girls. Call it class commentary if you want, and pre-twee, if you will. It's indulged further on "Jackanory Stories", though the perspective is a little bit more jaded. (Jackanory was a British program that ran after school most days. On Jackanory, a person of relative celebrity status and good voice would read a serialized installment of a children's book, typically of the Enid Blyton/Roald Dahl variety. It doesn't sound like good television, but it was -- though the stories all tended to run together after a while.)
If you've heard one song on ...and Don't the Kids Just Love It, it's probably "I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives". This ode to the Pink Floyd vocalist turned psychedelic road accident is clever and catchy (hence its relative chart success) but it's also the TVPs at their silliest and most self-indulgent. Take the chorus as an example -- between "I know where he lives" and "I know where Syd Barrett lives", there's an "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah" so big you'll swear your own medication just kicked in.
For my money, one of the most striking tunes here is "La Grande Illusion". Ironically, this is a sort of embryonic version of the tune; 1985's live Chocolat Art provided the definitive version of the song, its tempo slowed and its lyrics fleshed out. Still, this is a strong and haunting song, driven by a mad energy and the type of churning, post-disco Nile Rogers-y bass/rhythm guitar line that would become a staple of UK pop (see Duran Duran's "Planet Earth").
The rest of the album, particularly "Look Back in Anger", tells you everything you need to know about early Television Personalities. It's skeletal yet satisfying, at once brash and sensitive, often more earnest than talented, and it teeters on the edge of a vast morass of gloom. It's everything that's wonderful about indie-rock, lovingly stuffed into a modest, working class package.
And best of all, it still sounds great when you turn it up loud.
-- George Zahora
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