“This is from our first album ‘A Thin Red Line’ offers Ally Palmer, guitarist in TV21. What he omits to mention is that ‘`This is Zero’ is (1) from their only album, and (2) that both band and LP are celebrating over 25 years in the business. TV21 are back, and, whisper it, they have a NEW SONG! ‘Last Man Standing’ in fact opens the set and undoubtedly catches much of the 40-somethings in the audience by surprise, given that many know the lyrics to just about everything else played tonight. As singer Norman Rodger points out, ‘`If we’d said it was a new song, you’d all have gone ‘`ech”`.
So, to the hits (ok, should-have-been-hits). Since reforming for Peel Night last year the band have a good few shows under their belts and they’re much tighter than that night at the Citrus Club. They’ve also been varying the setlist, which pleases the fans who’ve seen them in just about every show. ‘`It’s Me’, which only ever appeared in a Peel Session, has been given a new lease of life, while a ‘`cover’, ‘`When Cole Was King’ – originally by Shame (a short-lived band formed from the ashes of TV21). And ‘`Swimming’, which was mooted as a single on Stiff before the split – Rodger throwing in the line ‘`you can’t always get what you want’` as a little paean to the Rolling Stones, with whom the band toured Europe just before their dissolution.
But it’s the oldies the crowd want to hear, and they get them – the primal pound of ‘Snakes and Ladders’, the still-fresh 80s power-pop of ‘Ambition’, and ‘On the Run’ which with its twin guitar attack sounding like it could have been written yesterday, and by a band 20 years their junior.
They trawl the back catalogue again for a deserved encore, debut single ‘Shattered By It All’, and could easily have remained onstage all night such is the audience reaction.
However, it’s curfew time, the club due to be cleared to let in some younger revellers. T here’s surely time for one more? ‘`We’ve run out of songs,’` Palmer confesses. Ah, for now, maybe.