The Times: Classic or Dud?

"Pirate Playlist" is one of my favourite albums of all time.

I got it, then suddenly most of his stuff became unavailable.

The only other one I have is the one with the hits, "Mill Hill" and "Love is Blue", if you don't count the "John McGee orchestra" fibby.

Classic. I've got lots of their albums - the first four, plus "Up Against It", a compilation on Creation and one other one with a kinda "dance" direction. Maybe even one or two more that I'm forgetting about right now. Plus one of Ed's solo albums "If A Man Ever Loved A Woman". Ed Ball is a great songwriter with occasional floods of genius.

The evolution of their earlier stuff is very similar to the Television Personalities as they were almost the same band for a while. The main difference is lyrics - while both have obsession with vintage TV, English actors and Pop Art, Dan Treacy is terminally melancholic and bleak whereas Ed is generally celebratory and optimistic.

HOWEVER, possibly the greatness of the band is diluted by releasing too much material cos some of it is patchy and/or samey.

Anyway, here's a video for I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape

generally pretty good until he started releasing records under his own name

Actually the one solo album I've got is really great. It does have that "pop songwriter goes mature" thing going on that people either love or hate in eg. Nick Lowe.

yeah i generally am h8r when it comes to that.. see also nick halstead

I'm still waiting for Captain Sensible to do an album like that.