Television Personalities

It wasn't like there was this, at that point, it wasn't really a scene.

It was like when we started, for instance, we didn't really know, aren't there more bands doing what we were doing? Then when we started playing in London and we got to know a guy named Dan Tracy who was in a band, the Television Personalities, and he ran a club and we started playing there.

And then we started playing with bands like, you know, the June Brides and That Petal Emotion and all these bands that...

We were like, ah, there's bands that are kind of similar doing to what we're kind of doing, you know.

What I wasn't aware of until I started prepping for our conversation, however, was the depth of Shepard's musical history.

I knew that he was a musician, yes, but I hadn't realized that he'd been a member of the television personalities in the early 80s and been one of Robin Hitchcock's live drummers.

Mark is a man who was made for a podcast called Letting Them Talk.

Indeed, when I told his Supernatural cohort Jim Beaver that I'd talked to him, he simply asked, Did you get to say anything? Spoken like a man who's been on more than a few panels with him.

So we took it to the desk and I think Luther mixed it out and it became quite an interesting show.

Oh, absolutely.

And I have to admit that even though I knew you as a musician, I did not realize you remember the television personalities until like literally a couple of days ago.

Well, yeah, I was I was in the first I guess the first live version of the TV piece.

What's your number three? Sorry, what is my number? I don't even know anymore.

My number three is a track from the 1989 Television Personalities album, Privilege, which is a record which finds our hero, Daniel Tracy, in a rather melancholy mood.

And the song is called...

the engine driver song, and it tells the vague story of a girl named Kathy who is escaping her current situation, whatever it is, to return to the security and love of her parents, that is, if they will have her.

You're on the right show, guys.

I can tell.

With the television personalities, Go-Betweens, The Cure.

Yeah.

Before the Soup Dragons were Midway Still with I Won't Try.

Up next we have the television personalities with Strangely Beautiful.

Fronted by Dan Treacy, they were active from 1977 to 1998 before reforming in 2004.

Despite not having any charting singles, they were very influential with acts such as Half Man, Half Biscuit, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Nirvana, citing them as influencing them.

They called it The Day in 1994, but reformed in 2009.

They had a few indie charting singles, but not Major John, which was their last single, until Clouds Disco, which was released for Record Store Day in 2015.

Proceeding The Wake were the television personalities with Strangely Beautiful.

We have The Dylans now with Planet Love.

In front of that, I played a track from the Beach Bullies, a UK duo I was completely unaware of until recently coming across a reissue of their lone album from 1980, We Rule the Universe.

It was in a used bin, and I'd be kind of intrigued by just the hype sticker that made comparisons to Young Marble Giants, Television Personalities, and the Vaselines, all bands I really admire.

And the primary songwriter, James Smith, I come to learn, was apparently running in similar circles as Robin Hitchcock and the Soft Boys with his previous band, The Containers.

And when they broke up in 1979, he carried on making music in this much more stripped-down, homespun DIY approach, you know, just a guitar and a rhythm machine or drum machine.