Part-Time Punks - The Very Best Of Television Personalities

The missing link in the pre-history of indie-pop, then. Those saddoe obsessives who were struggling for years to make the connection between Belle & Sebastian and the Sex Pistols should pause here.



For a group who started life as a novelty act and sold no records, ever, Daniel Treacy's Television Personalities have had a disproportionate influence on that crazy jangly sound. Alan McGee's vision for Creation Records was based upon their painfully sensitive psychedelicisms and without their timely intervention Stephen Pastel, along with everyone else who picked up a guitar in 1986, would still be in the employ of Lanarkshire Municipal Libraries.



Sure enough, much of 'Part-Time Punks', from the early no-fi sideswipes at punk, through the quadruple-whammy of their '80s albums to the recordings for Fire in the '90s, is inspirational stuff. 'Mysterious Ways' and 'Stop And Smell The Roses' are suffused with the barbed optimism of a man who has evidently been dealt fate's cruel hand several times.



Yet the fact that Treacy never learned to play and never learned to sing may yet make him the ultimate punk legend.