Mick Trouble

Mick Trouble is a British artist whose witty and energetic pop-punk suggests a more upbeat version of the <a href="spotify:artist:4MlLVFHiA4e7BU7vQ4r5Lh">Television Personalities</a>, and he was on the verge of cult stardom when he dropped out of sight in the early '80s. Or at least that's what Jed Smith would like you to believe. Smith, a member of the indie pop acts <a href="spotify:artist:2zxL0GXudUVBH5OK92wdMG">My Teenage Stride</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:4brlhKgPDyI5xPbmRFm8eZ">Jeanines</a>, created the Mick Trouble persona for a project in which he created music for a handful of imaginary artists, and he was pleased enough with Trouble's work that the alter ego took on a life of its own, releasing a lean but tuneful debut album (Here's the Mick Trouble LP) in 2019, and following with a more full-bodied but stylistically consistent sophomore effort (It's Mick Trouble's Second LP) in 2022.

Originally from Western Massachusetts, Jed Smith launched <a href="spotify:artist:2zxL0GXudUVBH5OK92wdMG">My Teenage Stride</a> in 2003 as a vehicle for his songwriting and home-brewed recordings. The project evolved into an ad hoc group featuring Smith and a constantly shifting group of accompanists, making their debut with the 2004 album A Sad Cloud. As <a href="spotify:artist:2zxL0GXudUVBH5OK92wdMG">MTS</a> developed a following and issued a handful of albums and EPs, Smith began hatching different musical ideas, and in 2015 he created Wondering Sound, a banner under which he wrote and recorded songs credited to artists that existed only in his imagination, among them jazz fusion star James Lingonberry-Deschain, new romantic synth-pop combo HI, and proto-emo punk rockers Primo Dix. One of Smith's Wondering Sound productions was "Shut Your Bleeding Gob You Git," his first creation as Mick Trouble, and he even came up with a backstory for Trouble, insisting he was born in 1963 in the Muswell section of London and recorded demos in 1980 that earned him an invitation to appear on John Peel's BBC radio program. However, Trouble mysteriously vanished before he could make his radio debut, and the master tapes for a Mick Trouble album completed in 1983 went missing, only to be found in 2016 hidden under a cookie jar. (Trouble also insisted he was unaware of the <a href="spotify:artist:4MlLVFHiA4e7BU7vQ4r5Lh">Television Personalities</a> until he heard his manager discussing them with <a href="spotify:artist:7thP9IU5wMkjdtAtTstE0Y">Joey Bishop</a> while taking a steam bath in New York City.)

After the Mick Trouble masters were "recovered," the British indie label <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Emotional+Response%22">Emotional Response</a> (operated by Stewart Anderson of <a href="spotify:artist:6a5w4wOqUEzhA7zZKK8Wiq">Boyracer</a>) gave Trouble his first release on vinyl, a limited-edition three-song 7" titled It's the Mick Trouble EP. Once he was rediscovered, Trouble became unexpectedly prolific, with a flexi-disc track, "Glad I'm Not Me," appearing in 2019 in advance of his full-length debut, Here's the Mick Trouble LP, which, true to its U.K. 1980s indie credentials, included a picture of Margaret Thatcher posing with British soldiers on the front cover.

Smith's work with the indie pop duo <a href="spotify:artist:4brlhKgPDyI5xPbmRFm8eZ">Jeanines</a> would keep Mick Trouble under wraps for the next few years, but the fictive Englishman returned in 2022 with It's Mick Trouble's Second LP, which followed the same creative blueprint as his earlier work but boasted a more full-bodied production and tighter arrangements alongside the tongue-in-cheek lyrics to tunes like "A Well Known Drag," "Jim'll Fix It," and "Top of the Fops." ~ Mark Deming