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.
