Dorothy & The Television Personalities

This week two of the records that were part of Lawrence’s collection in the Record Store Day video from my previous post. Which, I forgot to mention, was directed by Douglas Hart and Valerie Phillips. And if you want to read what I think of the BFI’s re-released Lawrence of Belgravia Blu-ray, here’s a link.

Okay, first up is Dorothy’s I Confess, released by Industrial in 1980. According to its back cover: ‘When 19-year-old Dorothy first walked into the reception of the Industrial Records office no one was quite sure what to expect. But it only took one play of the tape she’d made with young Scottish guitarist, Alex Fergusson, and our minds were made up – HIT was stamped all over it!’

This might conjure up a vision of a naive teen pop fan from the sticks somehow stumbling into Industrial completely unaware of their reputation as a noisy and confrontational experimental label.

This goes to prove one thing at least, it isn’t only major labels who are less than 100% truthful about their acts. Dorothy was Dorothy Max Prior, who was in her mid-20s when her record came out. And everybody at Industrial knew exactly what to expect. She’d worked in the ICA in 1976, during the brouhaha over COUM Transmissions’ Prostitution exhibition (which she’d helped mount) and got to know the members of Throbbing Gristle, becoming a regular at the label’s Beck Road base. Fergusson, then playing with Alternative TV, was also a frequent visitor. Rema Rema, Dorothy’s band which had just split, had also recently shared a bill with Throbbing Gristle (and I featured a great cover of one of their songs in this post).

I Confess is a list song, where Dorothy tells us about some of her passions like The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., Lolita, Herman Munster, and Harry Palmer. She also displays an admirably wide taste in music from Cajun to music concrete (which she really was a fan of); Sinatra’s Songs for Swinging Lovers to Subway Sect.

With a burbling synth sound straight out of a 1970s children’s TV show, singalong chorus, cabaret guitar break, chirpy yeah-yeahs and little girl voice, this is a real oddity, and needless to say, it wasn’t a HIT. But I’m happy to confess that I like Dorothy. Best thing Industrial ever put out if you ask me – I’m likely in a very small minority on that one, I know.

In 2016, the track was included in the Sharon Signs To Cherry Red compilation of independent female acts, along with tracks by Strawberry Switchblade, The Mo-dettes, The Twinsets and others. It was also reissued as a single by Sealed Records. Dorothy recently contributed to Jordan Mooney’s Defying Gravity and this maybe encouraged to pen her own autobiography 69 Exhibition Road, which is out in November.

I like The Television Personalities too. Appropriately enough for Chelsea boys, their second release came out on their own King’s Road label. The Where’s Bill Grundy Now? EP featured four tracks and proved highly influential for Britain’s growing independent label movement – which wasn’t ever called indie back then.

Part Time Punks poked fun at the kind of missing the point punk fans who were all about posing and who ‘want to buy the ‘O’ Level single / Or ‘Read About Seymour’ / But they’re not pressed in red / So they buy The Lurkers instead.’ Bet, they all love Record Store Day.

From November 1978, here is Part Time Punks:

Lawrence, formerly of Belgravia

2012’s Lawrence of Belgravia documentary will be released in the coming weeks for the first time on Blu-ray, so to get you/me in the mood, this week some music by the man himself from various points in his career.

I’ve not been keeping too up to date with Lawrence’s career in recent years and I’ve only just discovered that he is now going under the moniker Mozart Estate and playing at an event at Glasgow University in August called Glas-goes Pop.

I’ve not been keeping up with Record Store Day either. In its early years it had struck me as a good idea but more a good idea for other people to help keep record shops open so that I could visit any day of the year that hadn’t been installed as RSD. I’ve just never felt any inclination to queue up for hours on end in order to get the chance to fork out over the odds for a 12 inch piece of grey vinyl speckled with pink – or something equally hideous – featuring a couple of tracks I already own on CD or could download within seconds.

Jean-Luc Godard is credited with once saying that all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun and here we see that a girl and a record collection are all you need for a promo video. With a jingle like simplicity, this is Mozart Estate with Record Store Day from 2021:

Presumably the singles here were supplied from Lawrence’s own collection and the biggest surprise is likely the inclusion of Lio, who featured in my previous post. I didn’t have him down as a Red Noise man either. While I would never classify myself a collector, I have owned a fair amount of the singles featured and have even managed to hang on to a number of them such as Horrorshow, Blue Boy and Ambition by my favourite Godard, Vic, and his band Subway Sect.

That final 45 you see, Felt’s debut Index is one of two copies of the single that Lawrence sent to John Peel – when the first copy wasn’t played, Lawrence guessed that it must have been lost somewhere down the line and sent another but Peelie was just not very keen on it, a fact that prompted Lawrence to then post off what the DJ later claimed was the most ‘vitriolic and nasty’ letter he’d ever received.

Before Mozart Estate there was Go-Kart Mozart, and before Go-Kart Mozart there was Denim. Denim’s music was rooted in the music of Lawrence’s childhood and deliberately rejected the 1980s – the closing track of 1992’s Back in Denim was even called I’m Against the Eighties (you might legitimately ask why he has joined the Glas-goes Pop lineup as the acts are all associated with 1980s indie). In Middle of the Road, though, it is earlier musical sacred cows that he merrily slates: ‘I hate the King, I hate Chuck Berry / I hate Hooker, I hate Leadbelly.’

Lawrence obviously doesn’t hate Jonathan Richman and the Roadrunner guitar riff, to which he added a little glitterbeat (he even hired a couple of The Glitter Band to help out) and Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep. Yeah, ooh wee Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep. Released in January 1993 on Boy’s Own, this is Middle of the Road:

And now for some Felt from 1984, a year that was perhaps the highpoint of independent music in Britain with the releases of Upside Down, Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops, The Smiths’ self-titled debut album and Felt’s Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow.

The latter begins and ends with a bassline maybe influenced by Jah Wobble’s opening of Public Image. In between there are some great strings, a very pleasing vocal interplay between Lawrence and Strawberry Switchblade’s Rose McDowall, and Maurice Deepak’s chimiest of chiming guitars. No video unfortunately but you can hear it here:

On Wednesday 15 June at 7pm, the BFI and Rough Trade East (150 Brick Lane, London E1) present a special launch event, with a screening of Lawrence of Belgravia to be followed by a conversation with Lawrence and Paul Kelly, hosted by journalist Siân Pattenden.

The following day sees the official release of the Blu-ray. For more information, click here.