It is one thing for a band to be cited as influencing a musical trend or sound. It is something else, though, to be referenced as the influence on the label that launched many of those influential groups. Such is the rarefied air inhabited by British musician Dan Treacy. With a revolving lineup of mates, Treacy made music as Television Personalities from 1977 until his 2011 hospitalization for an intracranial hematoma. During that time, he became one of the era’s most unique and influential musical cult figures. Like many such figures, he also lived something of a tragic life, suffering from mental instability and drug addiction that eventually led to a six-year prison term for shoplifting.
The year Treacy was released from jail (2004) marked the commercial apex of Creation Records, fueled by the runaway success of Oasis. Creation, the iconic British indie label, was co-founded and fronted by Alan McGee. With signees including My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver, Teenage Fanclub, and Primal Scream, the label was instrumental in the rise of the shoegaze, dream pop, DIY/C86, and indie-dance scenes.
What does all this have to do with Television Personalities? In a 2009 piece for The Guardian, McGee claimed, “The Creation story really starts with Treacy and his band Television Personalities because they provided the inspiration and motivation for me to start the label.” That is rock ‘n’ roll history.
Still, most music aficionados, especially outside the UK, probably haven’t heard of Treacy and Television Personalities. Like fellow British genius/eccentrics Pat Fish (The Jazz Butcher) and Martin Newell (The Cleaners From Venus), Treacy never had commercial success or even consistent support from a record label. His music, though keenly observational and often full of wit, inhabits its own self-contained world that sprinkles allusions to artists, films, and fellow musicians in relationship foibles and ruthless introspection.
Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out, a newly-compiled, 18-track (plus four on download) collection of radio sessions, is unlikely to change Television Personalities’ standing in the popular consciousness. However, it offers a fresh opportunity to explore the band and its still-unique, seemingly contradictory pleasures.
Four tracks, each from a John Peel session in 1980, another BBC session in 1986, and a full 12-track performance for American college radio in 1992, are included here. As such, Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out doesn’t present an overview of Television Personalities so much as capture them at three distinct points. Appropriately, the two BBC sessions showcase the band’s then-current material, albeit from not-yet-released albums.
The 1980 tracks would appear the following year on the now-iconic debut, …And Don’t the Kids Just Love It. It’s not often that live or radio recordings clean up a group’s sound, but that is the case here. Songs like the jangling “Look Back in Anger” and more moody and imposing “Le Grande Illusion” are shorn of the heavy reverb of the subsequent album versions, revealing something akin to what Buzzcocks (whose “Why Can’t I Touch It” is covered on the 1992 session) had been up to.
Already, one gets the sense Television Personalities created memorable, hooky songs that were this close to being indie hits. However, there’s something just slightly off –an odd chord progression, Treacy’s earnest yet off-key singing, or the playing itself. Many punk and post-punk bands claimed they weren’t very good at playing their instruments, but Television Personalities sound like it, Mark Sheppard’s crackling drums notwithstanding.
This off-kilter feeling continues throughout the collection, even as the 1986 material, which didn’t appear on the album until 1989’s Privilege, shows a more refined, almost professional sound. “Paradise Is For the Blessed” ups the jangle factor while contemporaneous single “I Still Believe in Magic” saunters along confidently like the Go-Betweens or the Jazz Butcher themselves.
Six years later, the 1992 session is heavy on material that would eventually seep out on singles, compilations, and “lost” albums. Television Personalities’ brief expanded from the lofty, almost-dream pop chords of “How Does It Feel to Be Loved” to the snide, grungy “I Get Frightened Too” (Kurt Cobain was a big fan) to the funk/krautrock of “Wandering Minds”. What doesn’t change, though, is Treacy’s ability to write songs and lyrics that draw the listener in as much for what they almost do as for what they actually do.
Not even 18 months later, the bonus download-only session presents a stark, portentous contrast. “The Silly Things Lovers Do” is another alternate-universe hit, but the other tracks reveal an unstable, unhinged-sounding Treacy. A Daniel Johnston cover and a seven-minute psych/noise excursion called “My Very First Nervous Breakdown” are self-explanatory.
Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out leaves out key parts of Television Personalities’ career and output, but it is still a pretty good entry point into the music of an artist whose work is difficult to pin down. Unlike much of Television Personalities’ back catalog, it is readily available in physical format, at least for a time.
Treacy and Alan McGee eventually became friends, and on “Goodnight Mr. Spaceman”, Treacy brings the connection full circle: “Bloody hell, I wish I’d signed to Creation.” However, as Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out illustrates, that would have made things too simple.