One of the lost bands of the New Wave era, TV21 tonight – recorded at The Paris Theatre in London in 1981 for BBC Radio’s In Concert series.
TV21 formed in the late ’70s, comprising drummer Colin Maclean, guitarist Ally Palmer, bassist Neil Baldwin, and vocalist/guitarist Norman Rodger. The band took their name from Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson’s fanzine. After releasing their first two singles on Powerbeat in early 1980, they recorded a session for John Peel’s BBC radio program. Another pair of singles followed for the Demon label in 1981. Maclean split and was replaced by Ali Patterson, a former member of the Rezillos. Deram snapped the group up and issued A Thin Red Line in late 1981, the band’s only long-player. Renowned producer and musician Ian Broudie (Original Mirrors, the Lightning Seeds), who had produced one of the group’s earlier singles, loaned his skills to one of the songs on the record. Yet another single followed in early 1982, and the group’s potential hit a peak when they opened a series of shows for the Rolling Stones as they toured Scotland. However, TV21 felt they had reached an impasse musically and opted to break up by the middle of the year.
Now you know – Press Play and do a deep dive back to 1981:
Badgering you into supporting Past Daily:
2025 has arrived, kicking and screaming.. Past Daily is still quietly standing, still cranking out history and pop culture and still looking for your support. Fundraisers are pretty much tapped out – everybody seems to be doing them and even I’m sick of being hounded for money.
But still . . . some of these things are expensive to pull off. In case you didn’t already know, Past Daily is an extension of my archive (The Gordon Skene Sound Collection) – all the stuff I have collected since the beginning of time (it seems) – my goal is to share all of it with you, and since we’ve started there are over 11,000 posts which you, as a subscriber, can explore with thousands more waiting to be digitized..
And in case you didn’t know, once you subscribe you get notified every time we post something and you can download the audio file which you can’t do if you don’t subscribe. That’s the catch.
But it’s my way of saying Thank You for your support and helping me pay all the costs of keeping Past Daily up and running every day.
Subscribing is dead easy and totally painless – you can do it with Patreon – you can stretch it out over months, years or just today. You can do a trial subscription for free for 7 days and then you can either join us or go “no thanks” and life will continue.
Either way, your support is critical. Over this past year we’ve resumed running ads – simply because it’s helping offset the costs we can’t get around, but don’t have enough subscribers to do away with ads completely (believe me, I hate ads just as much as the next person – maybe more). Right now, a little over 100 of you are foregoing a cup of Starbucks in favor of downloading a concert or a World War 2 newscast or a reminder what happened two years ago – and I am completely over-the-moon for your support, you who are pitching in and seeing the possibilities. But we need more of you. We need 900 more to make a difference.
Look, all you have to do is click on the red banner below and make your pledge – you can also do Pay Pal or Buy Me A Coffee if you just want to do a one-time support.
But however you decide to do it, we’re grateful. We’ll be here as long as you are.
We can use the company. And 2025 has just gotten started.
