The Television Personalities - They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles

Coming out just after the band first split up, They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles is Television Personalities' 3rd album.

Originally released in 1982 on their own label Whaam! (named after the Roy Lichtenstein painting) They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles is a surprisingly cohesive and entertaining album made of an unannotated retrospective collection of unreleased tracks, demos, early singles, and alternate/unreleased outtakes (all recorded between 1979 and 1982).

Nowhere near perfect but essential 50 plus minutes: from the haunting single "Three Wishes" ("If I had three wishes I'd wish for three more") to the brilliant "David Hockney's Diaries" (a different and much better version from the one on Mummy Your Not Watching Me), adding the perennial punk classic and first single "14th Floor" to the enthusiastically sloppy versions of Creation's "Painter Man" and "Making Time" passing thru the gentle freakbeat of "The Boy In The Paisley Shirt" and "Psychedelic Holiday".

A perfect autumn soundtrack, and autumn is the whole year.

"I should go on, but I can't so I'd better just tell you that on his last album, They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles, Dan Treacy sings a naked song called "Mysterious Ways" which floods me with adrenalin. Don't allow any preconceived bias to prevent you from listening. In other words: stop being stupid and get tuned in." (Melody Maker 1982)

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