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Lost legends of pop music seem a dime a dozen these days, with internet ghouls stalking history’s graveyard exhuming the forgotten, under-heard, or never heard opus of some suburban recluse every minute, but few of them can match the bizarre story of the rise and snail-paced stumbled of one Michael Tooney-Head, born Muswell, London August 1963— otherwise known as lost post-punk troubadour Mick Trouble.
It’s easy to forget that for a brief time in 1981, Mick Trouble was on the verge of becoming The Band That Saves Britain. But Trouble was just that- poised to make the leap from the esteemed bard in hallowed hip circles including the likes of post-punk trailblazers Swell Maps and Television Personalities to that of a superstar that would give Declan McManus a run for his money. But a week before Trouble and his band were to make their seventh appearance on John Peel in just two years, something happened.
Trouble disappeared. And so, seemingly, did his music- until now. Emotional Response is proud to present the long-coveted 1980 Trouble EP- “It’s The Mick Trouble E.P.”, cut directly from a master reel discovered earlier this year under a cookie jar in his basement, along with a never-before-heard jam, year unknown, featuring The Glitter Band, Lemmy Kilmister, and Damo Suzuki. (Stay tuned.)
The result is what will be for many the first time they’ve heard Trouble’s music- spiky, sarcastic, often louche two-minute bursts of pure pop which recall both Dan Tracey and Nick Lowe at their sodden best.
Our take: Man, untangling the web of deceit around this record gave me a headache. The back of the record’s sleeve says it was recorded in 1983 and features Jowe Head of Swell Maps / Television Personalities on bass. The record sounds vintage (not fake vintage, but real vintage), but 1. these songs are so good that it’s hard to believe no one released them already, and 2. it’s such a blatant homage to the first Television Personalities album that it must be a product of the past-obsessed twenty oughts. Eventually I found this article that explains it all (TL;DR version: it was recorded in 2015), but I have to admit that I went down the Discogs rabbit hole looking for any mentions of one Mick Trouble in relation to Television Personalities, Swell Maps, and the associated universe of bands. So yeah, if you love early Television Personalities (and god knows I do!) this is about as perfect an homage / recreation as you will ever find. Some of it teeters into “rip-off” territory (the first track, “Second Offense,” for instance, incorporates a bit of the TVP’s “The Angry Silence”), but my attitude has always been that originality is of little to no concern when enjoying a pop song. It’s all about the hooks, those transcendental moments of pop bliss, and these four tracks are lousy with them. Yeah, it’s an imitation, but hardly a pale one.