Times

(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

The Times were formed in London by Edward Ball after he left the TV Personalities. The single Pop Goes Art introduced them as meticulous restorers of 1960s psychedelia. Their self-titled 1982 album (for Whaam), featuring I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape and Biff Bang Pow, remains one of the classics of that revival season. In truth, the group had already recorded Go With The Times in 1980 (Pastell, 1985), but the album was not released until five years later.

Goodbye Piccadilly and Chimes Of Big Ben are the gems of This Is London (Artpop). Hello Europe, Blue Period, and Up Against It, on the other hand, suffered from a certain pedantry and melodramatic dandyish posturing.

Beat Torture (Creation, 1988) attempted to revive their career, but the commercial effort failed, and Ball was essentially alone for the subsequent E For Edward (1989), with the homage to the emerging Manchester rave scene in Manchester, and Et Dieu Crea La Femme, bland and subdued works in which it is hard to recognize the psychedelic sprite of old.

Ball later converted to "acid house" under the pseudonym Love Corporation, which for a few years produced singles for raves (the eleven-minute Give Me Some Love), and later rode the Brit-pop wave with the Boo Radleys.

If A Man Ever Loved A Woman (Creation, 1995) was Ed Ball's first solo album, a quirky offering of acoustic folk, and it was followed by Catholic Guilt (Creation, 1997) and Why Do I Need a Gun I'm Chelsea (Creation, 1999).