TV Smith and Punk Lurex O.K. (2000)

(Image courtesy of Record Collectors of the World Unite)

TV Smith's (more here), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE) elasticity, demonstrated in his ability to play full-on whether the material is old or new, electric or acoustic, is one of his defining traits. The strongest proof of this elasticity, however, is seen and heard in TV's ability to play solo, just man and guitar or with any number of musicians. We've already heard him play with the Adverts, the Explorers, Cheap and Tom Robinson and even though we've so far ignored his guesting with Florida metal band Amen and German punk band the Nervous Germans, we've really just begun to explore the infinite permutations of TV Smith.





Punk Lurex O.K., a Finnish band whose origin story is cooler than the Joker backed up TV Smith on a tour and then recorder this little corker. The fact that the record kicks off with re-recorded Adverts song (Alongside his "Punk Rock Poem") prove TV Smith remains in touch with his own past but it's the two new songs, "The World Just Got Smaller" and "The Future Used to be Better" proves that TV's as incisive, melodic and elastic as ever.





MRML Readers give us your take TV & Punk Lurex and tell us if you want to keep the TV on!


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T.V. Smith & Die Toten Hosen: Only One Flavour (2001)

TV Smith (more here), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE) re-recorded some of his best work with German super-punk-stars Die Toten Hosen (his fourth biggest fans). The album, Useless: The Very Best of T.V. Smith proves his peculiar genius. Specifically, TV proves what a deft re-interpreter of his own material he really is because he never gets caught in that old stuff vs. new stuff war that artists and their fans can get dragged into. To TV, it's all the present:





Musically, Die Toten Hosen's (more here) backing him up on material spanning much of his career (but, sadly, not 1979-1983) proves how devastatingly consistent and relentlessly inventive the man is. Lyrically, TV and co. chose songs like "Gather Your Things and Go" and "My String Will Snap" that portray a world out-of-sorts, a world unjustly turned upside down. While Smith's never had truck with religion, he decries the wickedness of the world like a biblical prophet, just listen to his voice-of-one-screaming-in-the-wilderness anthem, "Get Ready for the Axe to Drop" for proof. To hear TV and the Dead Pants (as they might be known in English) work this theme to its most brutal effect, witness "Expensive Being Poor" one of the most excoriating broadsides ever written, a sharp paradox wrapped in a tune you could hum yourself to death with:





Smith's worldview is never clearer than on the album's sole new track, "Only One Flavour". Here, TV hoists himself up onto the rickety platform of the post-Communist left and, in a pique and at a peak, decries the monotony of political discourse in a capitalist society (see how even that sentence sounds awfully pre-1989). Useless, which shows off Smith's catalog of stirring songs that mix punk brio with folk tropes and that joyously hammer away at the the necessity at looking at our problems through different eyes (though maybe not Gary Gilmore's), is anything but.





So while the physical version (LP, CD) of Useless is seemingly out-of-print, the MP3 is back at iTunes, but to hear the single go to the COMMENTS section

                                       

                         (Images courtesy of Record Collectors of the World Unite)

 

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TV Smith's Explorers: Tomahawk Cruise (1980)

Clive Product: Do you see yourself following in that "folk" tradition of early Dylan or Billy Bragg?”

TV Smith: “I suppose. That tradition and spirit of using songs to protest has been around a lot longer than Dylan or Bragg though - I think we're all following a tradition that's been around in music forever.”

Following the Adverts (more HERE) dissolution in 1979, TV Smith (more HERE), remained unbowed. He continue the slower, more electronic feel of the Advert's second album, Cast of Thousands but his burning anger remained undiminished. Some songs from this more experimental era, such as "Tomahawk Cruise", positively explode with righteous indignation.





"Tomahawk Cruise" still oozes all the piss, vinegar and bile of punk just with less speed and distortion. I mean, how many many songs are written from the perspective of a long-range, all-weather, subsonic cruise missile (even back in the eighties when such nuclear angst was ubiquitous)? The song's lyrics, like most of TV's narratives, force you lean in to catch each word and savour their devastation:

Tomahawk Cruise

I woke up this morning, felt completely at ease
Put on my clothes and had something to eat
No desire to act, no desire to move
Unless I get a reason from you

My name is Tomahawk Cruise

We wear our problems, we wear our fate
But we have to eat what we put on the plate
Some people wallow in hate, some wallow in fear
Neither two are recommended around here

If you so wish I could get nasty
Create all kinds of disasters
I know things run away with you
But at the cusp, you have to choose
Between living and Tomahawk Cruise

Now in my heart something starts
Down in my heart something starts…

I get your message, I understand
Break down the barriers as fast as you can
I dream unnatural power, unnatural grace
Bricks and wreckage all over the place

I change my clothes for a uniform
Throw caution to the wind and walk into the storm
At the cusp, you choose
Between living and Tomahawk Cruise

I look at myself - what is this body?
A few limbs, stock responses
A heart turned to steel
I just love the attention
I’m in the news!

You choose,
Between living and Tomahawk Cruise

TV Smith

This is no paint-by-numbers protest song musically either, listen how Colin Stoner's bass carries the song, while Mel Wesson's keyboards add a mechanical menace. It's a gross injustice that the failure of the Explorer's would send Smith to The Wilderness for years to come. Fortunately, between Ojit Records expanded re-issue earlier in the decade and Easy Action Records' new even-more expanded (2 CD's!) version, we may may now finally see the wrong of TV's banishment righted.





MRML Readers give us your take on TV's Explorers and tell us if you want to hear more!


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TV Smith: War Fever (1983)

Following the break-up of his Explorers (more HERE), TV Smith (more HERE), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE), began his first foray into solo work. Smith's solo debut, the album Channel 5, immediately sunk below the radar but you'll have to buy the CD re-issue to read the whole laugh-about-it-now-but-at-the-time-it-was-terrible story. Here, as small sampler is a vinyl rip of the lead-off single, "War Fever", which shows Smith (backed by Tim Renwick and Tim Cross) excoriating those who would lead us to slaughter with undiminished fire and a cracking tune.





TV Smith ‎– War Fever
Expulsion Ltd. – OUT 2
Tracklist
A     War Fever        
B     Lies    

MRML readers, give us your take on Smith's first solo outing and tell us if you want to hear more TV!



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TV Smith's Cheap: Peel Session, 1988

In the late eighties, despite mass indifference, TV Smith (more here), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE), fought on with a bracing electric band he dubbed, Cheap (more HERE). Today, we get to hear the band's lone Peel Session, a ferocious four-song statement of intent.

Don't miss the full stream of the one-hour BBC doc on TV Smith (and the Adverts, The Explorers and Cheap!) available as a full stream HERE!






John Peel Session 5th Jan 1988

Tracks:

1. Third Term
2. Silicon Valley Holiday
3. Luxury In Exile
4. Buried By The Machine

T.V. Smith (Vocals)
Mik Helsin (Guitar)
Andy Bennie (Bass)
Fuzz Deniz (Drums)


MRML Readers give us your take on Cheap TV and tell us if you want to hear more!



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Punk Aid: 'Ere's Your Xmas (2003)

This little three song'er will have to kick off my dis-contiguous series of Christmas posts. This wildly-tacky looking 2003 single is a benefit featuring TV Smith (The Adverts), Captain Sensible (The Damned), Charlie Harper (UK Subs) and Martin Newell (the Cleaners from Venus) which slags the pop charts in a pop chart-friendly kinda way. The song bears the Captain's theatrical absurdity ("Say Captain, Say Wot") and is pretty fun, as his re-make of the old Damned obscurity "There Ain't No Sanity Clause".





The big ticket item under this dead tree, however, is TV Smith's "Christmas, Bloody, Christmas" a broadside aimed squarely at the big man in the red suit's symbolic fat ass. While it attacks all that is ridiculous about the season, it's not terribly mean spirited, it just demands more of the season while being a virulent ear-worm (ask my eldest child and his none-too-pleased mother if you don't believe me!)





For more video of this TV Smith/UK Subs show from yesterday, go visit the ever-excellent Aural Sculptures.

 (Thanks to atvmpdiscography for the images)

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TV Smith w/ Leigh Heggarty:12 Bar Club, 2012

Few artists are as emblematic  of everything this blog stands for than former Advert, TV Smith (more HERE) and his never-shut-up, never-mellow-out and never-say-die philosophy. So it is fitting that we break our longest silence ever, with a bootleg of the indefatigable Mr. Smith accompanied by an even more subterranean punk figure, Leigh Heggerty. Heggerty, who here provides superbly tasteful guitar back-up, currently plays with The Ruts D.C. and well as... well, here's a link to his blog and a promise that I'll try to run down some more of this under-appreciated figure's accomplishments this month.  What we have here is a super-clear audience recording of a powerful show with a varied set-list - big thanks to exedore for the stellar work.





TV Smith w/ Leigh Heggarty - 12 Bar Club - 07 Dec 2012

01. Intro Banter
02. No Time To Be 21
03. Bored Teenagers
04. Tomahawk Cruise
05. Have Fun
06. Coming In To Land
07. It's Expensive Being Poor
08. Banter
09. Ready for the Axe to Drop
10. You Saved My Life Then Ruined It
11. Buried By The Machine
12. Buried By The Machine Breakdown
13. In The Arms of Our Enemies
14. Banter/Bringing Up Pascal Briggs
15. The Lord's Prayer
16. The Lion and the Lamb
17. Gary Gilmore's Eyes
18. One Chord Wonders
19. Farewell Banter
20. Good Times Are Back
21. Encore Banter
22. Runaway Train


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TV Smith: We Want the Road (1994)

At the height of his obscurity, TV Smith (more HERE), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE) broke up his loud rock n' roll band Cheap (more HERE). Then, going on the advice of his old friend Attila the Stockbroker, Smith struck out as an angry folkie on 1992's, March of the Giants. By cutting off the electricity and turning up the finger-pointing, he did an anti-Dylan, which is fitting since TV is no man's disciple. While his taking up acoustic arms didn't turn him into a generational icon, it certainly re-launched his career.

The next album in his solo oeuvre, 1994's Immortal Rich was championed by The Big Takeover's Jack Rabid (TV's 2nd greatest fan) and released in the U.S. on Henry Rollins' (his 3rd biggest fan) label but did not match the relatively high profile of March of the Giants. Despite the lack of smashing commercials success, the album helped establish TV's sustainable practice of recording with a varying cast but touring solo. The album's first single was the somber-but-restless, "We Want the Road, which might make some of our younger readers (Do we have those?) think that TV is Frank Tuner's dad.

Track Listing

1 We Want The Road 3:49
2 Walk The Plank 3:34
3 Eurodisneyland Tomorrow 3:09
 

(Image courtesy of Record Collectors of the World Unite)

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Update: Don't miss the cool 2006 live show from TV posted over at Aural Sculptures!

TV Smith: Dangerous Playground (2012)

A DMCA takedown order was issued because this post used the EP's cover. Really.

"TV Smith’s new EP Dangerous Playground, comprises four new songs specially written for the play “Der Kalte Kuss von warmem Bier” (the cold kiss of warm beer) by German playwright Dirk Laucke"





It's nifty little EP with a song in German and three acoustic rockers sure to make it into the man's fearsome live repertoire. And it marks a frenzy of recent Smith activity including the airing of  the We Who Wait documentary, the launch of "Tales of The Emergency Sandwich" The Punk Rock Tour Diaries Part 3, the release of a new collection of rarities, Lucky Us as well as a deluxe re-re-issue issue of TV Smith's Explorers and a remastering of March of the Giants (plus a visit to Jools Holland:)





 
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TV Smith and Suzy & Los Quattro (2003)

TV Smith (more here), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE), drafted Spanish punks Suzy & Los Quattro to be his partners-in crime for this 2003 release.




Smith and Suzy rip off the Adverts "New Church" from Crossing the Red Sea and also take TV's solo song, "What If" from Generation Y.





The gang pulls it off with guts but it's the cool vocal interplay with Suzy that once again proves just how much TV can get away with.

MRML Readers, give us your take on Suzy and Smith's misdeeds and tell us if you want me to keep the TV  blaring!

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TV Smith: Lucky Us (2012)

I haven't yet secured a copy of the new volume of rarities from TV Smith (more here), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE), this donation-only pair of out-outtakes (especially "The New You") promise some lost wonders



 
 
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TV Smith: Thin Green Line (1995)

TV Smith (more here), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE) has never lost his knack for penning songs with cutting lyrics that assail the privileged with unforgettable tunes that can rouse almost anyone. "Thin Green Line" isn't so-called folk-punk but a blazing punk song hammered out on an acoustic guitar. How TV Smith keeps his energy and passion burning so hot is a mystery I'm not sure I want solved:

Thin Green Line

We're faced with mile-high piles of money
Sitting in banks
Gold bars, credit cards
Aeroplanes and tanks
Buy, buy, satisfy
Call me when you're rich
Cheap food, cows dying in a ditch

We're having a hard time
Holding the thin green line

We're faced with out-of-town shopping malls
Suburban housing boom
Inner city empty lots
Damp in all the rooms
Bulls and bears, speculators
Marks, francs, yen
And the baby's crying again

We're having a hard time
Holding the thin green line

So come on down to the bottle bank
Make your deposit and relax
Nothing's going on behind your back
We'll make all the big decisions
You just watch the television
Smash the brown!
Smash the green!
Smash the clear!
It won't happen here

We're having a hard time
Holding the thin green Line

We watch the last of the species
Vanish from the screens
And get replaced by killer dogs
And their man on the scene
There are peeping toms, pop songs
Crime and sin and sex
All spewing out on newsprint
While the forest dies a death
They're cooling down reactors
While the natives die of thirst
They say let's all pull together
You first

We're having a hard time
Holding the thin green line

They say let's all pull together - you first
But they never pull together
No wonder we're having a hard time
Holding the thin green line

This Tom Robinson fortified E.P. also includes a sturdy version "The Lion and the Lamb", a pile-driving take on "Runaway Train Driver" (both originally from March of the Giants) and a hard-strumming attack on the Adverts "Gary Gilmore's Eyes". Like the album, the single is way-out-of-print.

(Image courtesy of Record Collectors of the World Unite)

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The Adverts: The Wonders Don't Care (The Complete Radio Sessions)

In his sharp, if occasionally plodding, biography of Joe Strummer, Redemption Song , Chris Salecwicz reduces The Adverts to "a punk group who had a couple of hits". Such bloody nonsense (he slams the Ruts as, "reasonably successful Clash copyists") taints an otherwise well-written and meticulously researched piece of work. The Adverts and their leader, TV Smith, cannot be so glibly dismissed.

(Live clip features, "Gary Gilmore's Eyes", "Love Songs" and "Television's Over")


The Adverts 's two late seventies albums, the sorta accessible one and kinda difficult one, would be towering achievements enough. But over the course of his career, as band leader and as a solo artist, Smith has proven himself Strummer's finest peer. I mean if the Strummerian ideal is the fiery visionary spitting truth at power whilst rocking furiously then TV Smith has been what Strummer should've been in his later years.

Author, critic (and mega-fan) Dave Thompson argues that "Nobody would make music like The Adverts and nobody ever has. In terms of lyric, delivery, commitment and courage, they were, and they remain, the finest British group of the late 1970s". As proof, here's an out-of-print collection of their BBC recordings, which spans their brief existence.


1.One Chord Wonders 2.Bored Teenagers 3.Gary Gilmore´s Eyes 4.Newboys 5.Quickstep 6.We Who Wait 7.New Church 8.Safety In Numbers 9.Great British Mistake 10.Fate Of Criminals 11.Television´s Over 12.Love Songs 13.Back From The Dead 14.I Surrender 15.The Adverts 16.I Looked At The Sun 17.Cast Of Thousands 17.I Will Walk You Home

Tracks 1-5: Peel Session, first broadcast 29.4.77
Tracks 6-9: Peel Session, first broadcast 30.8.77
Tracks 10-14: Peel Session, first broadcast 11.9.78
Tracks 15-18: Peel Session, first broadcast 12.11.79



The Wonders Don't Care CD

(Link for missing track, "Bored Teenagers" can now be found in the comments)

Yup the NEW LINK is right there above but you should still leave a word in the COMMENTS!!


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The Adverts: The Wonders Don't Care (Complete Radio Sessions)

In his sharp, if occasionally plodding, biography of Joe Strummer, Redemption Song, Chris Salecwicz reduces The Adverts to "a punk group who had a couple of hits". Such bloody nonsense (he slams the Ruts as, "reasonably successful Clash copyists"), taints an otherwise well-written and meticulously researched piece of work. The Adverts and their leader, TV Smith, cannot be so glibly dismissed.

The Adverts' two late seventies albums, the sorta accessible one and the kinda difficult one, would be towering achievements enough. But over the course of his career, as band leader and as a solo artist, Smith has proven himself Strummer's finest peer. I mean if the Strummerian ideal is the fiery visionary spitting truth at power whilst rocking furiously then TV Smith has been what Strummer should've been in his later years.

 

Author, critic (and mega-fan) Dave Thompson argues that "Nobody would make music like The Adverts and nobody ever has. In terms of lyric, delivery, commitment and courage, they were, and they remain, the finest British group of the late 1970s". As proof, here's an out-of-print collection of their BBC recordings, which spans their brief existence.

1.One Chord Wonders 2.Bored Teenagers 3.Gary Gilmore´s Eyes 4.Newboys 5.Quickstep 6.We Who Wait 7.New Church 8.Safety In Numbers 9.Great British Mistake 10.Fate Of Criminals 11.Television´s Over 12.Love Songs 13.Back From The Dead 14.I Surrender 15.The Adverts 16.I Looked At The Sun 17.Cast Of Thousands 17.I Will Walk You Home

Tracks 1-5: Peel Session, first broadcast 29.4.77
Tracks 6-9: Peel Session, first broadcast 30.8.77
Tracks 10-14: Peel Session, first broadcast 11.9.78
Tracks 15-18: Peel Session, first broadcast 12.11.79

Hey Advert-tarians, give us a word or two on 
these BBC sessions in the COMMENTS section!


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TV Smith: Live at the KWNN, Stevenage, 1993

In the nineties, TV Smith (more here), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE), finally struck out on his own. On the advice of Attila the Stockbroker, TV took up his acoustic guitar and began life as an insurrectionary troubadour. The result was the folky-but-fearsome March of the Giants album (just re-released on Easy Action). To document this phase of TV's march from obscurity to semi-obscurity, here's a  good  sounding audience bootleg of a 1993 solo gig.





Friday 1st October 1993
Stevenage - KWNN

1     Atlantic Tunnel          
2     Immortal Rich          
3     Haves And Have-nots          
4     Can't Pay, Won't Pay          
5     The Day We Caught The Big Fish          
6     We Want The Road          
7     Gather Your Things And Go          
8     March Of The Giants          
9     Lion And The Lamb          
10    Runaway Train Driver          
11    Borderline          
        Encore
12    Gary Gilmore's Eyes


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TV Smith's Cheap: Third Term 7" (1989)

(Image courtesy of Record Collectors of the World Unite)

In the late eighties, despite mass indifference, TV Smith (more here), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE), fought on with a bracing electric band he dubbed, Cheap, which featured Mik Helsin on guitar, Andy Bennie on bass and Fuzz Deniz on drums. TV says, “Summer, 1986. Time to form a new band. After The Adverts and the Explorers had both broken up in disarray I´d thought I wouldn´t fall for it again, but hmmm, there was that familiar itch. This time though, it would be JUST FOR FUN. A bunch of mates traveling around the country in a couple of estate cars, all the equipment piled in the back; mobile, compact, above all CHEAP.” TV's razor-sharp writing remains full of treasonous sing-alongs like the anti-Thatcherite anthem, "Third Term", which burns like a fuel factory fire.





The other side of this 1989 single, their sole album, R.I.P. Everything Must Go, only came out after they broke-up, may even best the A-side. "Buried by the Machine" is a song that you can imagine being in a room full of sweaty punters roaring along to, only partly realizing how that ringing melody brings you face-to-interface with your own dehumanization.



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We Who Wait: The Adverts & TV Smith (Full Stream!)

An amazing BBC hour-long documentary on The Adverts and TV Smith, marred only by sprinting through the 90's/00's at the expense of so much great music (how could they leave out the TV/Die Toten Hosen alliance all togther?)

TV Smith: Live in Blackpool, 2001

TV Smith (more HERE) formerly of The Adverts (more HERE), kicking ass and kicking up a racket in Blackpool in 2001. Nice clear, audience bootleg.





 


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