Yeah definitely a strange career. The early Teenage Filmstars 7"s are very well regarded I think, but don’t know how much of that was to do with Dan Treacy being in the band as well.
Never really listened to The Times except in passing and doesn’t really seem to be my thing. I have the boxset of the other three albums Teenage Filmsatrs did in the 90s and there is some decent stuff in there, but barely listen to them tbh. The Buy Our Record… album is entirely composed of songs played backwards which does wear a little bit thin after a couple of listens…
Despite Ball’s past with the name Creation actually tried to push Buy Our Record Support Our Sickness as by some elusive teenagers, and only the Sunday Times fell for it. (I wonder if The Shed is a play on The Shend, who definitely wasn’t a young man in 1998?)
That’s super interesting - thanks for posting. Never saw any of this at the time (although I wasn’t a regular reader of the Sunday Times in the 90s). Pretty weird marketing angle.
Only thing I’ve ever seen written about them is Kevin Shields saying how good they were which should have been a decent hook you would have thought. Better than a man in his late 30s pretending to be a bunch of public school teenagers at any rate
Just found out that coincidentally Edward Ball’s The Mill Hill Self Hate Club was released thirty years ago today - it didn’t do quite as well as a single it shared its release date with, Wannabe - so I wonder if McGee tried this because the recent big push for Ball as a solo star had failed and he felt he couldn’t just put out another record with Edward’s name on.
Just had a brief scout around Discogs and Creation put out an insane amount of his stuff in the 90s - solo albums, albums from his various bands, albums under aliases etc. Also looks like they distributed his own record labels and briefly gave him his own Creation sub label as well (Ball Product). Good job they had that Oasis money coming in!
Apologies - I did try and get into this again but found the same problems. Can see the early Boo Radleys comparisons but just felt like this album was missing song structures. Maybe it’s just bit too abstract for my tastes but thanks for bringing it to our attention. All part of the fun of this listening club!
Nah all good - thought I’d dropped a total brick at first, but once it got going there was a bit of love, bit of hate and even a bit of education! Can’t ask for more than that
