THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “There’s a line I have to cross tonight, If I want to stay alive,” sings The Alarm’s lead singer Mike Peters on Transition, the sole original song on their new covers collection Music Television — a technicolor homage to the video explosion of the 1980s via reinterpreted MTV classics.
First planned for release in May 2024, the album was set to coincide with the Live Today Love Tomorrow 45-date tour of the U.S. — which was cancelled at the last minute when Peters was diagnosed with an ultra-rare cancer condition known as Richter’s Syndrome. “The Richter’s transformation happened out of the blue, and I was officially diagnosed just seven days before the tour was due to begin,” he recalls. “I was plunged back into the dark world of cancer and have had to endure intense chemotherapy and now hope to find a potential donor for a proposed stem cell transplant in the near future. Life could not be more uncertain, but music keeps me strong.
“Listening back to the tracks on Music Television makes me think my subconscious was trying to communicate with me before life played its hand,” continues Mike. “Songs like Beat It have taken on an altogether new meaning since I recorded the song earlier this year. In The Air Tonight and Don’t Change all have a different resonance in the new light my life now presents itself. I have added a new recording of the song Transition from last year’s Forwards album as a signal of my intent to survive the transplant and get back to real life sometime in 2025. ‘No one wants to be defeated’ and I am determined to bring about a positive outcome, I have optimistic options ahead of me, and, like all the songs on Music Television that have survived the years since they were first written, so will I.”
Originally inspired by David Bowie’s 1973 album of glam and proto-punk covers Pin Ups, Music Television steps back into the future by reinterpreting songs from some of rock’s most influential and defining moments in visual music. “The Alarm came of age in the MTV era,” Peters reminds us. “Many of our longstanding fans grew up on MTV and saw The Alarm for the first time on MTV’s The Cutting Edge or via the historic Spirit Of ’86 Live Global Broadcast concert, and have stayed with us ever since.”
Featuring 12 tracks celebrating both influential and underrated artists that changed and influenced the lives of so many, Music Television features a psychedelic Bowie-inspired / Nirvana-influenced acoustic cover of The Man Who Sold The World, partly inspired by Peters’ fascination with the groundbreaking MTV Unplugged acoustic performance series. “Unplugged was a series that redefined music as we knew it,” he says. “I remember watching in awe at some of the incredible stripped-down arrangements of classic songs and, at the same time envious that I had been denied the opportunity to appear on the show back in the day. (The Alarm appeared in the series’ first season but without Peters.) This is my chance to take back part of music television history and pay my respects to an era that changed everything.”
Music Television kicks off with a reimagining of Dire Straits’ MTV anthem Money For Nothing (the first song played on MTV Europe in 1987), re-modeled into a harmonica-driven garage-rock anthem in the style of Neil Young And Crazy Horse. The first song to be played on U.S. MTV — The Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star is also featured, with a subtle lyric change that reflects the threat of AI and new technology on rock ’n’ roll as we now know it. Other songs getting re-imagined include INXS’s Don’t Change, The Blow Monkeys’ Live Today Love Tomorrow, Michael Jackson’s Beat It and Modern English’s classic I Melt With You.
A redrawing of Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight embraces the original’s spacious atmospherics and injects raw electronic blues into the mix, centering it on Peters’ iconic vocals. “I was walking with my guitar in N.Y.C.’s Central Park when I came across a busker playing a stripped-back minor-key version on a beat-up old guitar and I joined in,” recalls Peters about a chance encounter in 2023. “It was truly amazing to hear a song so familiar in unfamiliar surroundings. I asked him where he first heard the song, and he said ‘MTV, man!’ and that gave me the inspiration for this version.”
