Well, I did radio, it only follows I continue with a list of my favourite songs about the idiot box...
Special mention goes to two bands names after TVs - Television Personalities and Television. If I ever do a Top Ten about tents, Marquee Moon will be number one.
For any Blur fans wondering where Graham Coxon's Coffee & TV is, I'm saving that for the Coffee Top Ten. No, seriously.
10. The Handsome Family - All The TVs In Town
You can’t see the stars
Above the city skyline
But sometimes the air shines like gold
Under the yellow street lights
The psychotics in the park
Howling up at the sky
And the silent airplanes
Slowly drifting by
Sometimes it all seems to glow
As bright as the lights
From all the TVs in town
But when I wake up scared
In those still summer nights
When the air hangs like snakes
Around flashing neon signs
It seems like there’s nothing
Along these broken roads
But blinking lights on creaking metal poles
Ah, Rennie Sparks. Lyrical poet.
9. I Am Kloot - 86 TVs
I really should pick up the new I Am Kloot album. The reviews seem to suggest they're finally ready for their Elbow moment (years spent flogging a horse that only a few people realise isn't dead... until said horse is reborn as a stallion).
8. Billy Joel - Sleeping With The Television On
I am the product of a misspent youth spent listening to Billy Joel records. See also 'Close To The Borderline' in which Billy sagely notes, "I don't change channels so they must change me".
7. Pulp - TV Movie
Without you my life has become a hangover without end
A movie made for TV: bad dialogue,
Bad acting, no interest.
Too long with no story & no sex.
See also Clem Snide's Made For TV Movie, Everclear's TV Show and Bruce's TV Movie.
6. Mansun - Television
Overblown, theatrical instrumentation? Check.
Pretentious lyrics? Check.
Every album a concept album> Check.
So why did Muse become massive and Mansun disappear? Paul Draper was robbed.
5. Airborne Toxic Event - I Don't Want To Be On TV
I don't.
I've worked with a TV crew twice in my life, recording two separate documentaries, and both times I've found them peopled by arrogant tosspots who thought everybody else existed purely to do their bidding.
Apologies if you work in TV and you're the exception to that rule.
4. Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Kill Your Television
Music blogger Friend Of Rachel Worth over at Cathedrals Of Sounds has a regular feature in which he names Bands That Should Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles. I thoroughly agree with many of his suggestions, including Spearmint, Furniture and The Pearlfishers. Even if they'd never released a record, Ned's Atomic Dustbin deserve pop sainthood for their name alone.
3. Bruce Springsteen - 57 Channels (And Nothing On)
The early 90s is generally considered Bruce's creative nadir. Releasing two albums on the same day is always a sign that something's up (see also GnR - though Use Your Illusion I & II were slightly less disappointing than Lucky Town and Human Touch). This is probably the best track he recorded between Tunnel Of Love and The Rising, and the lyrics hint at just why his mojo went astray.
I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills
With a truckload of hundred thousand dollar bills
Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on
Never trust any artist who's so content the only thing they've got to complain about is "there's nowt worth watching on TV".
2. Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy - Television, The Drug Of The Nation
This was one of the toughest Top Ten decisions I've had to face. Which is the better television tune, the Disposable Heroes... or the track that - by toss of a coin alone - made it to Number One? Both are essential listening, and yet they're also somewhat surprising choices that venture a little further from my usual whiteboy indie/rock safety zone.
T.V. is the reason why less than ten percent of our nation reads books daily...
1. Gil Scott Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.
No, the theme song will be written by Gil Scott Heron... and lo, it shall be genius.
So... which TV track would have you refusing to change the channel?
