The Bodines, “Therese”. Creation Records, 1985.

The notes in the video say the venue is called “The Factory,” in Glossop, which seems like it might be confusing. This remarkable bit of ephemera is much more durable than the official videos the band put out, the silliness of which I find generally inappropriate to the music (like some of The Clean’s videos from the same period). The Bodines’ style in this is rock-solid archetype: the aggressive “fringe” on the singer Michael Ryan, Paul Brotherton in plaid, and Tim Burwood’s anorak. But then the C86 style is in such powerful vogue in New York now you see the same thing in any of Todd P’s basements.

Between the correctness of lighting, shambly perfection of the song, band-back story, and general demeanor it could not be better if they were deliberately putting this together for release. The video tape distortion near the middle is, of course, now adopted as a deliberate analog video effect among the lo-fi set. Odd, though: if I’m not mistaken, Paul Brotherton absent-mindedly strums out the opening riff to the Bats’ “North By North” in the warm-up, which is amazingly well-informed, because I’m pretty sure that song was not released until 1987.