In the early 2000’s me, my wife Deb and our great friend Dawse found ourselves in the Moseley Arms in Birmingham thinking “this can’t be where TV Smith is playing”. The pub was full of “old” guys in their 40’s with beer bellies seemingly all dressed in distressed brown leather jackets. “Where are the Punk Rockers” we were thinking. Then it dawned on us, these WERE the Punk Rockers !

That night TV Smith, one man and his acoustic guitar, tore through a set of his songs running from his current album and stretching back to songs from this album, one of the great underrated albums, and songwriters, of the first wave of Punk. In the upstairs room of a pub in the backstreets of Brum a guy who should be lauded as a songwriter gave one of the most energetic performances I’ve ever seen.

You can feel Howard Pickup’s guitar slashing at you, bassist Gaye Advert’s parts may have been simple but hearing them played live by someone else (TV Smith & The Bored Teenagers at the 100 Club some 30 years later) proves they were integral to driving these songs along…and then there are TV’s lyrics. We’d argue this album has more quotable opening lines than many others, “Life’s short don’t make a mess of it”, “But I don't believe you have to be an idiot to get somewhere these days“, “We're talking into corners finding ways to fill the vacuum”, “The great British mistake was looking for a way out, Was getting complacent”…they just keep coming. There are 3 hit singles on here too.

TV Smith is still toting his acoustic around Europe playing with as much energy and conviction as a teenager. We were lucky enough to get to know him and when we still lived in Birmingham he would stay with us after gigs to save on hotel bills. He and The Adverts deserve to be hailed along with the best that the first wave of Punk delivered.

The Great British Mistake - https://youtu.be/klQH7k-5dEw

Any conversation revolving around the subject of Greatest Debut Albums, in our opinion, has to include a consideration of this pop behemoth, it is quite simply stunning…yeah snigger if you like but we’re serious and it’s you that’s missing out.

It all starts with the songs and the songs here are sublime. Martin Fry’s lyrics hark back to another age, to the great songwriters of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s (think Cole Porter, Rodger’s and Hart) and are heartfelt and a little bit sarcy/clever, clever at the same time. Trevor Horn’s production is superb, mostly aimed straight at the dancefloor but also grandiose in the extreme on a ballad like “All Of My Heart”. Most of this production team would go on to ZTT Records and the production on Frankie’s “Welcome To The Pleasure Dome”.

We have four top 20 singles ("Tears Are Not Enough" (#19), "All of My Heart" (#5), "Poison Arrow" (#6) and "The Look of Love (Part One)" (#4)), the album went to number 1 in the UK and still sounds bloody fantastic 41 years after it’s original release.

Pure pop music in the extreme…if you never have, go on, give it a try

All Of My Heart - https://youtu.be/Lfph3043yZU

I said when I started this that there would be no bad reviews, they are all records in my collection ergo I like them. But, there will inevitably be some like this, albums where I don’t like this one as much as others by the same band.

“Blind Man’s Zoo” is the Maniacs 4th album, the 2nd produced by Peter Asher (he of Peter & Gordon and brother to McCartney’s former squeeze Jane) and a million seller in the US.

All the components are there. The songs are good (but not great), the playing is good but to my ears it lacks something following on from “In My Tribe”. It’s not as confident, almost as though it’s being apologetic for not being “In My Tribe”. If this had been their 3rd album and “In My Tribe” the 4th it would make perfect sense but as a follow up it feels like a regression.

Standout track(s), it's difficult to choose between them, would be “Eat For Two”, the story of a teenage girl coming to the realisation she is 5 months pregnant, and “Trouble Me”, a song about Natalie Merchant’s father. Everything else is much of a muchness.

Eat For Two - https://youtu.be/le9RHVrlWlk

Trouble Me - https://youtu.be/DPcK0sU3jEw