Well I’ve actually scrapped the original post that I was going to write, I’ll explain all. Just to briefly touch apon the other two bands I caught last Wednesday at the Camden Barfly, the first was one who name I had heard but had never actually experienced, the excellent Dirty Little Faces, thoroughly recommended and the penultimate act the ever eventful Dustin’s Bar Mitzvah, who seem to becoming consistently excellent judging by recent gigs (except for the bizzaire incident of Dave’s guitar head breaking this night!), and they’ll be getting plently of practise according to their gig schedule.
Getting back to the headliners, Television Personalities, the hype leading up to the gig was immense. Apparently Kurt Cobain’s favourite band and the inspiraiton for Alan McGee starting Creation Records. Having seen the DLF and DSM as the support acts I was expecting something quite special. Initially and for some time we weren’t sure if it actually if it was TVP as the lead singer we knew was a bloke and a youngish lass stood centre stage even if the lead singer had been for gender realignment surgery the person on stage looked far too young. Then on came a chap who was dressed in several layer and a wooly hat (despite it being incredibly hot in the room), this person was the protagonist in TVP, Dan Treacy. The place was packed by as each tune unfurled the audience dwindled, it was reminiscent of any number of my friends’ bands or mine for that matter who were just starting out and seemed woefully inexperienced. The band consisted of four people the bassist Ed Ball, who seemed to be holding things together and was apparently a member of the original 19777 line up, a female lead vocalist, a cellist and the drummer. The female vocalist had a torrid time with a drunk at the front who apparently kept trying to get on the stage, this ruined her night although some could argue the state of Dan Treacy himself was demonstrating how adept at this he was.
Ed Ball made some interesting comments, the non event thing was true, DSM had to close the TVP set with a cover of “Part Time Punks” but something that played on my mind afterwards was Dan Treacy’s own stability. Shambolic was what I had first thought of the performance, I felt insulted that I had paid money to see this performance and all that the lead singer could do was cower in a corner and abuse the audience. The next stage was considering the artist I am to see in a few weeks, Daniel Johnston, a man described as a Savant and also coincidentally much admired by Mr Cobain. An article I had read had described whether it was exploitative to have Johnston perform and create art due to his inability to take care of himself. I drew some similarities, Treacy is well known to have issues with drugs and alcohol (a burglary in order to fund his habit lead to his incarceration in a prison ship off the coast of Dorset according to this) and he has had mental health problems as well as stints living rough. Given all these facts my opinion shifted dramatically, I no longer thought Dan Treacy was some obnoxious has been that was trying to cash in again whilst not giving two hoots but rather an individual whose mental state and physical addiction did not allow him too. This isn’t meant to be some looney lefty liberal rant (and trust me I am open about getting involved in those regularly!) but Treacy’s performance did not suggest that he should be on stage other than some sort of distasteful Victorian spectacle. So my question is should those people who are around Treacy and are supporting him be encouraging him to perform? I really don’t know enough about TVP to form an informed opinion but given his reported history of mental illness and substance abuse and judging by his performance it wasn’t of a standard which would warrant paying any sum of money to watch, unless someone had rather unpleasant voyeuristic tendencies.