Audiopile Review: The people who create musical styles and movements rarely get the credit. Lawrence from Felt basically invented The Smiths and the godlike Peter Hammill basically invented David Bowie (Yes, he did! Stop looking at us like that!!) but neither reaped the rewards. Indeed, fewer musical geniuses seem to have suffered more for their art than Lawrence. Dan Treacy of the Television Personalities was similarly put through the ringer around the same time, and the injustice of that shit really stings. Along with Vic Godard & The Subway Sect, Treacy’s band basically invented the sound and style of British indie music. Godard and Treacy (and Alternative TV’s Mark Perry, for that matter) were first-wave London punks with omnivorous musical tastes and an iconoclastic vision. The TVPs are mostly known for their 1981 debut ‘…And Don’t the Kids Just Love It’, the pure spring from which all ‘twee’ pop has trickled. But Treacy and pals would be better remembered for their 1984 neo-psychedelic masterpiece ‘The Painted Word’. If you’ve ever enjoyed anything on Creation Records, you need to hear that album. While the TVPs may be woefully underappreciate and misunderstood, Fire Records has been doing a great job of shoring up the band’s legacy with archival releases. The latest, ‘Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – Radio Sessions 1980-1993’ features an early John Peel session, covers of songs by Buzzcocks, The Raincoats, and Daniel Johnston, and much more. Essential for fans and an excellent overview for newcomers.

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This new collection brings together classic radio sessions from Television Personalities, the masters of DIY post-punk and indie pop. Featuring two 80s BBC sessions that aired on John Peel and Andy Kershaw, along with a super rare 1992 WMBR set, this double LP features covers of Buzzcocks, The Raincoats and Daniel Johnston with previously unreleased songs and a bonus download WFMU session from 1993.
“Catchy hooks and schoolboy wit are in abundant supply.” Pitchfork
The Television Personalities’ splendid DIY skills and loveable ramshackle persona led them on many a subversive trip both on record and playing live. But it was the radio that first introduced them to the world in a whirlwind of repeated spins. John Peel let outsiders everywhere tune in to their altered world. And, at the height of punk they parodied the new revolution, their single ‘Part Time Punks’ becoming a Peel staple, and the clamour to hear more eventually resulting in a session in 1980.
Through the 80s, Daniel Treacy had matured into a gifted storyteller turned pop culture narrator who placed the modern world in his own hazy shade of focus. His songs were loveable, immediately identifiable and pin prick sharp; they were tidily observational, and often magically acute. This was a gifted raconteur, an inspiration and an essential alternative to the hiss and flutter of “normal” radio, a medium that by the late 80s had just about abandoned them.
‘Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out’ captures this pilgrim’s progress to pop nirvana, a psychedelic wonderland shaded by dark and brooding memories, all played out through a crackling transistor radio secreted under the pillow so that these sketches of society remain perfectly personal, a direct line into Dan’s psyche.