Guys and Dolls: Therapy? - Speedball (7 May 1993)

 

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So, having declared myself a fan of Therapy? around the time of my 17th birthday, I did what any good bandwagon jumper would and immediately went cold on the new material, because it didn’t sound like what had grabbed my attention in the first place.  

I’d been hooked by Screamager from the Shortsharpshock EP, and I was excited to see a new EP, Face the Strange, following hard on its heels. Hell..there was even a chance that I’d actually buy this one. But when I saw them perform the lead track, Turn on Top of the Pops, I felt quite disappointed. It was a bit of a drag, which wasn’t a description I generally associated with Therapy? (from my one experience of hearing them). A recent re-listen to it showed me the error of my ways, but in the early summer of 1993, the damage was done, and I didn’t end up buying Face the Strange, because its public face wasn’t giving me what I wanted.

I wasn’t alone in this given that, after receiving an acetate of the EP, John Peel bypassed Turn and went straight to the second track, Speedball. This would have been much more like it from my point of view; full of skittering Fyfe Ewing drum patterns, thorny guitar storms and a wonderfully singable chorus line, You make me sick etc.  But, I suspect for the band, they may have regarded it as being too much like a Screamager retread, while their label would have faced pushback from radio stations who would have blanched at giving daytime radio play to a track named after a drug cocktail. Such were the compromises of major label life.

I went on telling anyone who was interested* that I was a Therapy? fan, though shamefully, I only bought one album, Semi-Detached (1998) and that was a good 20 years after it came out.  Meanwhile, Peel, after several years of airplay, bade them farewell at this point.

Video courtesy of balbees.

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

*Nobody. However, given that Therapy?’s former producer, Al Clay, went onto to produce the debut album by my favourite band of the 1990s, it feels to me that, my initial dalliance with Therapy? essentially served as the preparation for my love affair with Marion.