eMusic Review 0
Ed Ball and Daniel Treacy started playing music together in the late '70s, under a handful of names; by 1980, when this album was recorded, they'd moved from their early tongue-in-cheek obsession with punk rock to an even more intense fascination with the U.K. mod sound of 15 years earlier. Treacy's songs appeared as Television Personalities records; Ball's songs were 'O 'Level or Teenage Filmstars records, and Go! With the Times was apparently originally intended to be the first Teenage Filmstars LP. The group had changed their name to the Times by May 1981, when the album's first single was released ("Red with Purple Flashes," named after the way Eddie Phillips, guitarist with forgotten mod heroes the Creation, described his band's music); Go! itself didn't appear until 1985. (This reissue appends later mixes and alternate recordings, of which the best is an earlier Teenage Filmstars take on "My Andy Warhol Poster.")
Ball's songs here present his taut, zippy take on the phenomenon of discovering and trying to burrow deep into the artifacts that make up a cool lifestyle — sort of like Dick Hebdige's seminal book Subculture: The Meaning of Style, but with better riffs and a guitar sound… read more »
