Television Personalities |
 1999 - Cherry Red - CDMRED152 - CD Songs: 14th Floor Part Time Punks Where's Bill Grundy Now Smashing Time King & Country I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives Silly Girl A Picture Of Dorian Gray Look Back In Anger La Grande Illusion If I Could Write Poetry Magnificent Dreams Painting By Numbers Where The Rainbow Ends Three Wishes Mysterious Ways Stop And Smell The Roses Someone To Share My Life With The Painted Word How I Learned To Love The Bomb Salvador Dali's Garden Party Sad Mona Lisa All songs written by Dan Treacy and published by Twist and Shout music. All tracks licensed from Fire Records. Compiled by Dan Treacy with special thanks to Pete Gardiner and Alan McGee. Television Personalities to an undiscerning ear is low fi noise pollution. Formed in 1977 by Daniel Treacy and Edward Ball, they quickly forced their way on to the John Peel Show and I soon became aware of them. Their 1st LP "And Don't The Kids Just Love It" is a classic of its time. Dan Treacy emerged to me in my Glasgow bedsit as a formidable songwriter. To say Television Personalities changed my life is an understatement. Creation Records in 1983, for a start, lock stock and barrel hi-jacked their idea of punk merged with psychedelia. After a couple of years, I had taken it in my own direction but the initial idea was me implementing the TVP vision via my own label, Creation Records. I also met my best mate when I used to put the TVP's on in 1982, Edward Ball. He had by now formed his own band, The Times, and used to come and watch them: Dan, Joe Foster, Dave Musker, Empire and Mark Flunder do their TVP thing circa 82-84 in my club, The Living Room. I also met Joe Foster, who was to musically inspire me as much as anyone over the next few years with his encyclopaedic vision of the 60's. Joe became an integral part of Creation and, like Ed, still to this day works with me, running his own madcap vision of pop music, Revola Records. Dan Treacy I will always love but to this day never understood. He had a different take on life from anyone I had ever met at the time. As I got older and smarter, I realised a lot of this was shyness but he will remain as much a mystery as he is one of my favourite ever songwriters. A truly great songwriter - I will always remember him with great fondness. To me, the great TVP LP is undoubtedly "The Painted Word". I think it was the LP that told the story of Dan better than any other. "Someone To Share My Life With" is such a beautiful song, it still makes my eyes water. I loved them, I still love them. They changed my life, I hope they change yours. (and they should have been bigger than The Beatles!!).
[Alan McGee- 1988] |