[Cover photo credit to Stuart Ling]
Mike Peters + The Alarm will be releasing Music Television on August 23, 2024. It’s a “technicolor homage to the video explosion of the 1980s” through a reinterpretation of MTV channel classics. In short, it celebrates a lot of beloved music that first reached fans through the medium of MTV’s early days.
First planned for release on vinyl and CD in May 2024, the album was set to coincide with the originally planned Live Today Love Tomorrow 45 Date tour of the U.S. The tour, however, was cancelled at the last minute when Mike Peters was diagnosed with an rare cancer condition known as Richters’s Syndrome.
Peters shares:
The Richter’s transformation happened out of the blue, and I was officially diagnosed just seven days before the tour was due to begin. 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.
Regarding the new album, he reflects:
Listening back to the tracks on Music Television makes me think my subconscious was trying to communicate with me before life played its hand. 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.
The new album was originally Inspired by David Bowie’s 1973 album of Glam and Proto-Punk cover versions Pin Ups.
Crafting his own version of Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” had a specific inspiration for Peters.
Peters explains of an even from 2023:
I was walking with my guitar in NYC’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. 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 of the track.
