The Times

Edward Ball guided The Times as vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, producing tightly constructed pop songs whose words delivered a sardonic and frequently caustic commentary on British popular culture. During the opening half of the 1980s the band delivered albums that moved from brisk Mod revival on Pop Goes Art! to assertive new wave on Hello Europe, before turning toward noise pop and Madchester textures as the decade closed and the 1990s began; the group remained active long enough to mock Brit-pop with Pirate Playlist 66 in 1999.

Ball first registered with listeners in the late 1970s through partnerships with Dan Treacy on several recording projects—the Teenage Filmstars, the Missing Scientists, and the O-Levels—that coalesced into the Television Personalities, a band that secured a deserved cult audience with songs such as “I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape,” “I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives,” and “A Picture of Dorian Gray.”

While issuing three albums with the Television Personalities, Ball launched the Times; the project began as a collaboration with Treacy, yet Ball quickly emerged as principal songwriter and singer, and the group debuted with the 1981 single “Red with Purple Flashes” on the Whaam Records label operated by the pair. Their first album, the strongly Mod-flavored Pop Goes Art!, appeared in 1982 via a partnership between Whaam and Ball’s newly established Artpop! Records. In 1983 Ball re-recorded “I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape” with the Times for an Artpop! single that also served as the title track of a Times EP, while the same year the band released its second album, This Is London, on which Ball addressed weightier subjects.

By then the Times functioned entirely as Ball’s vehicle, supported by a shifting cast of musicians with Ball as the sole fixed member, and he maintained a rapid release schedule that included the 1984 album Hello Europe and the 1985 EP Blue Period. Also in 1985 the band issued Go! With the Times, a compilation of unreleased recordings dating back to 1980. In 1986 Ball co-wrote Up Against It with Tony Conway of Mood Six, a stage adaptation of Joe Orton’s unproduced screenplay for a Beatles film, and the Times released an album of music created for the production that year; another Times album, the loose concept piece Enjoy the Times about the continuing breakdown of civilization, likewise appeared in 1986.

Ball withdrew from live performance and recording for a period to serve as an executive at Creation Records, but label head Alan McGee persuaded him in 1988 to record a new Times album backed by members of Biff Bang Pow!. Beat Torture, the Times’ first Creation release, came out that year, after which Ball sustained his customary pace by issuing nine albums and EPs on the label between 1988 and 1999, among them 1989’s E for Edward, a skeptical portrait of Ecstasy and rave culture, 1990’s Et Dieu Créa la Femme, a collection of French-language pop songs, 1991’s Pure, which included another French-language track in the form of a guitar-driven version of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” and the two sets of caustic satire Alternative Commercial Crossover in 1993 and Pirate’s Playlist 66 in 1999. While the Times recorded for Creation, Ball also began releasing solo material and recordings with his side projects Love Corporation and Conspiracy of Noise, yet after Creation folded in 1999 little was heard from him until he rejoined the Television Personalities in 2004 and made occasional live appearances as the Times. In late 2021 Cherry Red issued the comprehensive anthology My Picture Gallery: The Artpop! Recordings, covering the Times’ output from 1980 to 1986.