Musical Monday #29

I did a Musical Monday post about Terrorvision ages ago -- but the trouble is, on reading it again, it just wasn't good enough. I wanted to post today about their offbeat, fans' favourite b-side of a song Tea Dance. But I haven't done the band justice, previously, so please forgive me -- I'm going to try this one again.

Terrorvision made it big with their debut album Formaldehyde, all the way back in 1993. The early years of a decade are always slightly confusing, because there is so much carried over from the last one -- so although by 1993 alternative rock was making increasingly bigger waves, there was still a lot of the 80s about it. In many ways, Formaldehyde was a classic debut album -- it had some great songs, and this album in particular promised so much of the band with thought-out lyrics and some catchy hooks. But the main thing a debut does is promise -- it hints at greatness, at what a band can achieve together, given time.

The single My House remained until the end a live favourite also set the tone for many later catchy slightly-pop/rock songs, like Oblivion and Perseverance, and it was no doubt this mixture of a sense of humour with the obvious rock edge that scored for the band a major label record deal. I think Tea Dance perhaps appeared on the original indie-label release of the album, and certainly was on their first EP, but was later dropped. I read the lyrics to the song one day without having heard it, when they were published in the band's fanzine at the time Northern Scum.

I quoted the band last time and I will again -- they say now they were always too busy having a good time to take themselves too seriously. Sometimes now I wonder if perhaps they didn't take themselves quite seriously enough. I'd like to ask them.

Formaldehyde was followed by the iconic How To Make Friends and Influence People -- a very appropriate title for a second album, especially one that really did make the band friends. Easily the heaviest of all their albums, combining the hard rock Alice What's the Matter and Pretend Best Friend with the great doo-wop singalong, Oblivion), the band had made it -- their music videos suddenly had budgets, and their gigs were probably as big as they ever got. Until the end, anyway -- their "Take the Money and Run" tour probably rivalled the success.

I couldn't tell you how long it was between the second and third albums -- but the problem with Terrorvision was always that it was too long. The fans of their albums stuck around, but any casual listeners that had like one song or another or seen them at a festival had usually forgotten all about them by the time their next album or next hit single came along.

True to their word for a band that didn't take themselves too seriously, Terrorvision followed How To Make Friends with a James Bond-themed album, Regular Urban Survivors which they said was the soundtrack to the film they wanted to make. The album had a mixed reception among earlier fans, since the harder rock edge had mellowed out a bit -- but the 90s were flying by, and anything else would have sounded out of place. Although I liked the suitably laid-back Easy , singles like Bad Actress and Celebrity Hit List never really did it for me -- although the band had one of their biggest commercial success with the song Perseverance. Everyone was singing that "whales and dolphins" song, Tony Wright presented Top of the Pops, and there was a special edition of Kerrang! magazine dedicated to them one week. "Brit Rock" the magazine called them; "Britpop with balls".

But it went nowhere. The band just sort of went quiet. I saw them live for the first time in the December of 1996, which I think was just after the album came out -- but nothing else on it was as big as Perseverance.

I wonder now if their next album Shaving Peaches would have been enough for the band if it hadn't featured a somewhat random album track called Tequila. The band had again achieve moderate chart success with the song Josephine, and it was one of their best songs, to my mind -- clever, and catchy without being all-out pop. The band apparently had filmed a dark and David Lynch-esque video for the song, but didn't like it -- so Tony Wright came up with a new one, which involved running round a race track in Madrid. In drag. It was a pun on "drag racing", since the song is about a sex change.

I remember hearing the band play Tequila live (and I particularly fondly remember a girl in silver PVC trousers, who was bouncing around next to me during the song) and thinking it would be a popular song for the band -- but among existing fans. Then Mint Royale got hold of the song, remixed it, and before you know it the band were being told by Radio DJ Zoe Ball that if they didn't release it as a single then she would do it herself. They obliged, and it was a big a song as any they ever did -- and remains popular now, although of course most people don't remember who it was by, or that the band ever had any other songs.

Their last proper album (that is, not a greatest hits or unreleased tracks compilation) was Good To Go -- perhaps an appropriate album for a final album. It's odd, the band were dropped by EMI right after their biggest commerical success with Tequila, and the band actually played Reading Festival that year without having a current record deal. They released their final album on a different label, and then subsequently called it a day. Although it seems like it wasn't so much their choice -- the band had limited success with the album's first single, D'Ya Wanna Go Faster and when they came to release Fists of Fury they couldn't get it played. Radio 1 refused to play it and said the band were no longer "relevant" (although they later gave plenty of airplay to the Gerry Halliwell song Scream if you wanna go faster). Perhaps they took exception to the band's video, parodying Madonna.

Officially, it seems that's really the end of the story. There was a farewell tour, Tony formed Laika Dog, and the other members formed their own bands, and occasionally even now there's a handful of one-off Terrorvision gigs -- though I doubt there will ever be a full-fledged reunion or another album.

To end, I return to the start -- Tea Dance is a simple song about a couple who meet years after a break up, and find that they still like each other. It's a quiet, and straight forward song -- but it makes me smile. My favourite line that sums it all up for me: "Well me, yeah, I got hitched -- and, yeah, we're still friends. I don't see her often, still I get the kids at weekends".