from the LP …And Don’t the Kids Just Love It, Rough Trade Records, 1980Materializing out of the later-day punk scene in England, Dan Treacy and his schoolmate Ed Ball managed to quietly and awkwardly help develop what would broadly become known as indie rock (more specifically, the entire jangle-pop-c86-brigade of indie rock) under the name Television Personalities. Their lysergically skewed brand of fast & fey rock music didn’t sound like much else going on at the time, gaining them both a dyed-in-the-wool fanbase and consistent name-dropping as being a major influence from the indie elite which were to follow in their footsteps. Treacy’s achingly stereotypical twee-British singing and his biting wit are infamous, and they certainly permeate this number about humanity’s fixation upon materialism and success, “…in the past I always tried, but I never got amongst the glittering prizes; I put it down to confidence, or something trendy, like an emotional complex…”
