The Times

The Times were a British rock band of the 1980s and 1990s with Ed Ball as its prominent figure. Ball, obsessed with '60s britpop, formed the band while he still was a member of the Television Personalities and recorded the first The Times' album in 1980. It went unreleased until 1985 and the second album, Pop Goes Art, was released in 1982. The Times released a steady stream of albums and EPs on Ball's own Artpop! label after he left the Television Personalities: This Is London (1983), I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape (1983), Hello Europe (1984), Blue Period (1985), Boys About Town (1985), Up Against It (1986) and Enjoy The Times (1986). The Times broke up around the end of 1986 and Ball joined Joe Foster as an executive at Creation Records. It wasn't long, however, before Ball restarted the Times; this time the name was cover for a solo career with a less Carnaby Street-obsessed outlook and more of an interest in current trends. 1988's Beat Torture was standard late-'80s U.K. guitar jangle à la Creation's house band, Biff Bang Pow!, half of which serves as Ball's backing band, but 1989's ecstatically titled E for Edward dips tentatively into the acid house boom spreading over the country that summer. Ball alos recorded three acid house EPs under the name the Love Corporation in the early '90s. More Times albums followed, Et Dieu Crea la Femme (1990), Pure (1991), and Alternative Commercial Crossover (1993), Sad But True (1997) and Pirate Playlist 66 (1999) before Ball discarded that band name for good.