They Could Have Been Bigger Than the

Description

Coming out just after the band first split up, They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles is Television Personalities 3rd album.
Originally released in 1982 on their own label Whaam! (named after the Roy Lichtenstein painting) They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles is a surprisingly cohesive and entertaining album made of an unannotated retrospective collection of unreleased tracks, demos, early singles, and alternate/unreleased outtakes (all recorded between 1979 and 1982).
Nowhere near perfect but essential 50 plus minutes: from the haunting single Three Wishes (If I had three wishes Id wish for three more) to the brilliant David Hockneys Diaries (a different and much better version from the one on Mummy Your Not Watching Me), adding the perennial punk classic and first single 14th Floor to the enthusiastically sloppy versions of Creations Painter Man and Making Time passing thru the gentle freakbeat of The Boy In The Paisley Shirt and Psychedelic Holiday.
A perfect autumn soundtrack, and autumn is the whole year.
I should go on, but I cant so Id better just tell you that on his last album, They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles, Dan Treacy sings a naked song called Mysterious Ways which floods me with adrenalin. Dont allow any preconceived bias to prevent you from listening. In other words: stop being stupid and get tuned in. (Melody Maker 1982)