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Sunday, 13 September 2015

Television Personalities - Back To Vietnam Live at Thames Poly 1984 fake 7" (1984)



Re-up this fake EP allowing to provide this live song. More about it below. Strangely, the picture of Kim Phuc, the little girl burned on the picture had recently her contemporary equivalent with the little boy Alan, found dead on a Turkish beach last week. Catch it here.

I make no mystery that Television Personalities is one of my fave bands since they released their first single, more than 30 years ago. I sometimes lost my interest for them (more precisely for Dan Treacy, because it's the only permanent member of the band), but never too long actually. The today fake single is a poignant testimony of the band playing live some months after the release of their wonderful The Painted World LP. They play here a fantastic version of the last track of the album, "Back To Vietnam", and on it Television Personalities sound a little like the Fall with emotion (since this is what is the most lacking in the Mark E. Smith's world). It's about war and Dan Treacy treats this theme with the same innocence and authenticity than inter-lovers relations, a candid approach that few else than him can assume without sounding flat. This track is extracted from a double-vinyl LP released in a single-CD version in 1992 and compiling some songs played at this place between September 1984 and July 1985 by bands invited by Leigh Goorney, who was briefly the Social secretary of this place. On the album (entitled Communicate), one can find Mark Perry, Jesus and Mary Chain and even Sonic Youth, but the sound is crappy most of the time and precluded me to post the whole LP here. One of the rare exceptions to this bad sound quality is by chance this long "Back To Vietnam" version (more than 11 min and not 1 less than genius). Since there was no other track by the band, I decided to create a one-song fake 7". I am conscious that the Vietnam pictures I used for the sleeve could be considered as indecent for a rock band, but reading the lyrics below (only parts of it since he changes them a lot on stage), you'll see it's not inappropriate. Moreover, if most of you know the classic one shot in front of the children running, the other one, shot in the back of the children is much less known. This is a modest way to perpetuate the souvenir of this terrible scene and to say once again, in our troubled times, that war is not a choice anymore (as it was during World War II), only a crime. Remember the great band was Television Personalities on stage at this time.


Back To Vietnam. They'll send him back Send him back Send him back Back to Vietnam They're bringing back conscription They're going to give everyone over seventeen a gun And the housewhife in the kitchen All she can think of Is what to give her husband for tea But he won't be back Do we have to go through it all again? It's all the same: Vietnam, Korea First World War, Argentina, Falkland Islands Another war, what is it for? Now he's in a home For Vietnam refugees He's frightened He's in an institution He's in a wheelchair War is the last creative act I thought we might of learned some lesson Richard Nixon on Channel Eleven I heard it first Happy birthday, happy Christmas Guns go bang bang


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