T.V. Eye versus TV In My Eye

 

"T.V. Eye" is not about television, of course. 

T.V. has a particular private slang meaning in Stoogesworld and to be honest, I would advise you not to look it up, it might subtly impair your enjoyment of the song as it has ever-so-slightly with me, which is a shame as it is a Top 10 all time rock song for me. 

Somehow I've only just got around to hearing Los Microwaves, despite Barney Hoskyns going on about them in the NME back in the day. 

They are None New Wavier that's for sure.

"TV In My Eye" is yet another example of the very low status of television in the cultural hierarchy back then, compared to nowadays.

 From punkers to highbrow literati, all agreed that it was nonstop garbage, rotting your brain. 

cheeky monkeys, Rezillos, going on Top of the Pops and taking the mickey out of it! 

Gil Scott Heron obviously...

What else? 

(Talking Heads being clever semi-invert the idea and in "Found A Job" have the characters making their own television)

"Damn that television, what a bad picture"

"Don't get upset, it's not a major disaster"

"There's nothing on tonight, " he said, "I don't know what's the matter"

"Nothing's ever on, " she said, "so I don't know why you bother"

We've heard this little scene, we've heard it many times

People fighting over little things and wasting precious time

They might be better off, I think, the way it seems to me

Making up their own shows, which might be better than TV

Judy's in the bedroom, inventing situations

Bob is on the street today, scouting up locations

They've enlisted all their family

They've enlisted all their friends

It helped save their relationship

And made it work again

Their show gets real high ratings, they think they have a hit

There might even be a spin-off, but they're not sure 'bout that

If they ever watch TV again, it'd be too soon for them

Bob never yells about the picture now, he's having too much fun

Judy's in the bedroom, inventing situations

Bob is on the street today, scouting up locations

They've enlisted all their family

They've enlisted all their friends

It helped save their relationship

And made it work again

So think about this little scene, apply it to your life

If your work isn't what you love, then something isn't right

Just think of Bob and Judy, they're happy as can be

Inventing situations, putting them on TV

(No quite the total inversion of rock convention as with "Don't Worry About the Government" but different than railing against the braindeath)

Most rock songs, the attitude to television is on the level of Network and Being There, or Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and his short stories like "The Pedestrian", or Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death i.e. typical highbrow "admass" critique of the brainwashing machine in the living room

Ironic, in a way, given that your highbrow literati like J.B. Priestley would have lumped rock'n'roll and youth culture in with TV, supermarkets, advertising, etc as part of admass. 

Now, are there any pro-TV songs? 

I have never really inspected closely the lyrics to ZZ Top's "TV Dinners"

Objects Lesson

 Awesome tune... 

The album it's from is very good throughout but that's the tune I find unfeasibly urgent and exciting. 

Faint resemblances of The Fall and Blue Orchids here and there but really the Spherical Objects have their own sound

It's sort of garage punk influenced, keyboard-propulsive - but skeletal, almost translucent

Like an anorexic Stranglers, in moments

Excellent drumming 

Interesting odd little byway of Manchester after-punk, the Object Music label

None New Wavier (Gruppovoodoo)

I remember when I was first looking at music papers seeing the name Gruppo Sportivo and being faintly intrigued, in the same way that Brand X adverts were faintly intriguing. Couldn't get a fix on what either band would sound like. 

I don't remember ever hearing Gruppo Sportivo  then although they got quite a bit of exposure in the UK. And they were pretty big on the Continent, or parts thereof.

A Dutch group - basically a Dutch bloke, as there's this one central, recurring figure, Hans Vandenburg - who take Anglophilia to an extreme. They basically seem to want to be The Members. 

Although I think they started before The Members. 

Actually what they are really like is a Netherlands version of Deaf School. I believe Bette Bright sang with Gruppo later on.

Well this is None New Wavier to the power of I don't know what - Gruppo Sportivo covering Wall of Voodoo

Like Fabulous Poodles, like Jona Lewie, like Costello and Joe Jackson and Graham Parker, they represent that side of New Wave where it is a time when funny-looking blokes have a chance at being pop stars. People who in most other eras would not get a look-in for not being a looker -  too ordinary-bloke unmemorable,  or actively mis-shapen.

 

No funny-looking or even ordinary-looking women of course - in New Wave, it's still expected that you are pretty. At least when it comes to fronting a band. (So not so "New" after all). 

You can be quirky and wacky and easy-on-the-eye like Lene Lovich but the beauty double standard still applies.

Gruppo have good looking backing singers, who jig about a bit like the girls in Squeeze's "Cool For Cats", to offset the bald gnome-like central geezer. 

Eeuw the mohair makes it look he has horribly hairy shoulders.

Design wise you can't get much more None New Wavier than this cover below

Still going

mouth music (ascesis ascension)

 Mouth music, although there's barely any sense of mouth or throat or any physical mechanism of breath shaping here, so pure and airy are these bodiless tones

Claire Thomas & Susan Vevey turn out remarkably to be an alias of Philip Sanderson of DIY microlegends Snatch Tapes

The whole project is well worth a glisten  - https://snatchtapes.bandcamp.com/album/reprint

The first track - which appeared on Cherry Red's 1981 Perspectives and Distortion comp - reminds me of this other Cherry Red etherealism

Which led to this 

and this

and this 

this too

Interesting facts about Kirsty Hawkshaw the voice of Opus III via a mutual friend

- once engaged to Mark Pritchard of Global Communication 

- now married to Adam F 

- daughter of Alan Hawkshaw, the library music legend (as Adam F is son of Alvin Stardust)

Reminded also of the "sexy psalm" action of One Dove and of Slowdive

They done it live in a place called St. Augustine's Ampitheatre - sadly it turns out not to be an actual ecclesiastical building converted for live music, a veritable Sonic Cathedral

What is it about "purity" and the erotic?

Something about the primness (c.f  those secular nuns: nurses and their uniforms), the constraint, and what might burn beneath... 

Deborah Kerr's clear complexion framed by the nun's coif in Black Narcissus 

Sultry Sister Ruth, delirious with repressed desire

"a major new force in rock music is born"

 

Formed by an escapee from Electric Light Orchestra

Violinski actually had a hit single with "Clog Dance"