The best thing about Television Personalities – the DIY punk band, not the narcissists on your telly – is their titles incorporating famous figures. And this song.
Most of them are not actual TV personalities but they’re funny and obviously made up for comedy value: Salvador Dali’s Garden Party, David Hockney’s Diary, Little Woody Allen.
The exception was I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives, which was actually true, and probably ended their hopes of mainstream success when singer Dan Treacy gave out his address onstage during their biggest, and unlikeliest, gig supporting Pink Floyd themselves in 1984.
Treacy formed Television Personalities in 1977 after hearing The Sex Pistols and Jonathan Richman and wrote their first single, the autobiographical 14th Floor, about the misery of living in a council tower block with broken lifts on the Kings Road (“I’ve lived here for seven years now / But I don’t know anyone”), when he was 17.
Part Time Punks, recorded in January 1978 with his childhood mates Ed Ball and Mark Sheppard and released as the lead track on their EP Where’s Bill Grundy Now?, mocked a once-vibrant punk scene that had already descended into parody by then.
Its primary target was the parade of plastic punks who migrated to the Kings Road each weekend, preening themselves in mohicans, safety pins and leather jackets painted with “Punks Not Dead” before going back home to their comfortable lives in the suburbs.
As the song said: “They play their records very loud / They pogo in their bedroom / In front of the mirror / But only when their mum’s gone out.”
Treacy’s mum lent him the money to press 500 copies of the four-track EP, each with a photocopied sleeve, and after selling them to friends he sent one of his remaining two copies to John Peel, who instantly championed Part Time Punks, earning them a prized place in punk history and a deal with Rough Trade.
Re-released in 1980, Part Time Punks sold 27,000 more copies before the end of the year and an extended lineup of the band belatedly made their live debut.
Over the next 45 years they’ve gone on to enjoy a long career spanning off-kilter punk and equally off-kilter psychedelia, always with Tracy’s whimsical songwriting and characteristic vocals to the fore, without ever sounding as if they have quite mastered their craft (or wanted to).
They have continued to record – their last album was in 2018 – despite Treacy battling mental health issues, drug addiction and a spell in jail on a prison boat. And I find it encouraging to see that this song has had more than 330,000 views on YouTube so far.