Seems to be confirmed by some who have worked closely with him. Marquee Moon has been part of my life for 30 years, and I was just listening to it again last night. Nothing else sounds like it, including their previous and subsequent recordings: duelling lead guitars stripped of any hint of blues or swing, desperate yet melodic vocals and precise, spiralling compositions.
Absolutely majestic.
RIP
RIP Tom Verlaine
by 135 Comments
What P said above.
Been playing MM a fair bit myself of late and hoping that I would get the chance to see him do it live one day soon. Sadly not to be.
Think I’ll go and play the Scientist Writes a Letter very, very loud while re-reading Nick Kent’s seminal review from the NME.
RIP Tom
I remember how the darkness doubled
I recall lightning struck itself
Great , great records. Always thought of him as a wasted talent.
But how brightly that talent burned and will burn every time any budding young guitarist hears the opening chords of MM – the sort of music only MC Escher might have imagined and only TV ever managed to actualize
But how brightly that talent burned and will burn every time any budding young guitarist hears the opening chords of MM – the sort of music only MC Escher might have imagined and only TV ever managed to actualize
As you went down the page you saw yourself coming up.
A veritable doubling of the darkness
Another favourite: marching band drums and a guitar riff that sounds like Sweet Child O Mine’s weird uncle.
Marquee Moon is a miraculous, perfect, record – one of the great guitar albums. This is a very sad loss.
If I may say so, I always thought Adventure was an overlooked gem.
“When I see the glory, I ain’t gotta worry”
RIP, Tom.
Ah. However miraculous MM is I actually think Adventure is the better record.
Sad, sad news
Put my name down on LoW’s list. Adventure was the first one I bought and heard. I listened to Marquee Moon again today, partly in hope that I would hear what others hear. But it still sounds to me like a rather muddy rock album, dominated by by one guitar. Adventure sounds like a new wave pop album with proper choruses, the clear production letting all 4 instruments and accompanying voices shine, breathe, throb and beat confidently and beautifully.
Much of MM is first-take run-through live in the studio. Andy Johns, the engineer, had the tape rolling the whole time. There was no producer nor any ‘production’, just a balance/mix with no effects or compression. So it sounds quite raw, just a great band playing live in the round. That’s probably why I love it.
Thanks, fs – that’s a helpful explanation
It set the template for almost every recording I’ve ever been involved in, but I’ve yet to better MM.
Blood & Chocolate is my fave Costello album, although it was decades later I found out it had been recorded in the round. Ditto Lou Reed’s New York.
I seem to have a sixth sense for it.
Except Richard Lloyd is on record as saying his guitar leads were double tracked, @fentonsteve.
TV’s weren’t, as he had no idea what he’d played, so couldn’t replicate it.
Hence “much”.
There’s debate about who told Billy Ficca that the first take of the title track was the keeper. Some sources say Tom Verlaine, some say Andy Johns.
“Recorded mostly live in the round with the occasional overdub to double-track a guitar solo” would be factually correct but a lot more typing…
And now you’ve typed it, Steve 🤷🏻♂️
Surely two guitars dominate, @salwarpe?
Lloyd’s is the flowing, more lyrical style, Verlaine is spikier, Neil Youngesque.
No, I said what I meant. Verlaine´s guitar dominates, and I hardly notice Lloyd’s. I came to the album after Adventure, remember, which has the guitars far more in balance to my ears – more like the guitar counterpoint I am intensely fond of from Neil Young with Crazy Horse, and from Quicksilver Messenger Service, esp. Happy Trails – where each is playing separate but deliciously complementary melodies. The second half of Foxhole, for example, is a wonder.
This. ⬆️
MM is such a strange, out-of-it’s-time album: I can listen to it endlessly
This, on the other hand, has an acutely 1980s production but I also like Verlaine’s enigmatic song.
I saw the London show with Blondie supporting, the Adventure tour, solo shows and a few of the reformation gigs..They were all different to almost any other rock gigs which I’ve seen..I caught a solo show with Jimmy Rip at the 100 club, where TV sat and pealed off the most fantastic licks..
I’m weirdly upset about this in a way that I haven’t been about the demise of other heroes… It’s rotten news..
Lucky you to have seen him at all let alone such glory days.
Let’s not forget this early tour de force. Had a cassette of Blow Up.
Same here – might still have it stashed away somewhere
That’s phenomenal, not least for Billy Ficca’s drumming, which really swings. Great post.
Fine tribute on Facebook from Robert Forster of the Go Betweens who recently wrote in the Guardianof the majesty of Venus:
Greetings on Sunday Morning.
I have woken up to the news of the passing of virtuoso guitarist and singer-songwriter Tom Verlaine. Absorbing that as best as I could, I made my muesli and a strong coffee and sit here typing, a little stunned, not knowing what to write, but knowing what Verlaine meant to me. An elder brother, someone in the mid-to-late Seventies who opened up doors for me. An enormously inspirational figure to Grant and I with his New York band Television. The Go-Betweens, one more band in a swarm of bands to form and bloom in the wake of Verlaine and his fabulous group.
And it’s so poignant, that this Friday, with the release of my new album, I name-check him in a song that collects my thoughts so much better, and more succinctly, than what I can write here. The song is called ‘When I Was A Young Man’. The verse goes – ‘Elder brothers, they came along/ There was a new David and there was Tom/ They bewitched me in wardrobe and song/ When I was a young man.’
The ‘new David’ is David Byrne, and Tom’ is of course Verlaine. They were my twin peaks. Showing me how to dress and behave as a nervy twenty-one year old, trying to act and look as intense and interesting and poetic as I could. (Check any photo of me from 1978 to 1987 for evidence)
Musically, I couldn’t really compete with either of them. They were incredably strong influences I had to shake off (a little) to get to anything original I could do. But thinking of Verlaine’s guitar playing this morning – and that’s what really hit me- was the influence of his tone in Seventies Rock. He ended or at least challenged the heavy bluesy thrust of Page/Clapton/Richards. Verlaine’s guitar was loaded but sweet. It sang and soared. It was lyrical. it possesses enormous beauty. It hinted at jazz. It was ethereal and other worldly. And for someone like me, who was not a follower of guitar players and their lengthy solos, here was a guitar player for my age. And you just have to listen to the shape of guitar bands of the Eighties and beyond to hear the legacy of his playing. No disrespect to Clapton. but who sounds like him these days? Verlaine’s soaring melodic tone and flurry of notes are everywhere. I am not meaning Rock is a competition – just that Verlaine is very present and always will be.
Regards
Robert
Interesting how Robert links Byrne and Verlaine together. I, too, was somewhat awestruck by the pair of them at the time.
Live, Byrne fidgets, twitches, jerks as if shocked with electricity. Verlaine is intense, focussed, totally concentrated. Later in life, Byrne has been diagnosed as having autism, which explains the quirk in his songs and performances. I always wondered if Verlaine was a bit OCD, all that intensity, all those endless hours of practice. In a way, he was unfortunate to have produced his masterpiece so early in his career. Although, there are many great things in the rest of his repetoire, he seemed to be constantly striving to match it and never quite being satisfied with the results. Still. What a legacy!
(All speculation on my part, of course.)
Saw a TH doc back in the day. Byrne explained his jerky movements were a direct impersonation of people, particularly Southern State preachers, speaking in tongues.
Was he just covering up his autism – who knows?
I only ever saw Talking Heads before Remain In Light when they were just a four piece and Once In A Lifetime and My Life In The Busy Of Ghosts weren’t even terms of an idea. He is a very gawky figure on stage. The autism comes out in his spiky music and peculiar worldview in the lyrics. There is little emotion in them and living, breathing creatures seem to be regarded dispassionately. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care passionately about life and the world, nor is he incapable of moving me (This Must Be The Place brings a year to my, for example). In fact, his autism gives his songs a character distinct from most others. Besides, the man is a genius.
He talks about this in How Music Works, using his spectrummy personality to create a stage persona before he was even in a proper band.
He gives full credit there to Television’s influence on the Heads. Shame he doesn’t give enough credit to Tina Weymouth, or indeed hardly any, but he’s no saint.
Despite it’s ‘global’ title, the subtext of the American Utopia Broadway filmed performance (an absolute must if you haven’t already) seems to me to be his trying to navigate and ’emerge from’ some of aspects of autism. His spoken intro to This Must be the Place encapsulates the whole thing to me. And I think a similar sense of subtext informs Stop Making Sense – such an emotional experience that transcends so many other concert films. That sense of emergence and connection bring such a sense of humanity to both performances.
The American Utopian tour is the best gig I’ve ever witnessed. And I’ve been to many, many gigs. It was deeply moving for me, having “followed” Byrne for over forty years.
Byrne’s diagnosis was Asperger’s, I think.
Which is a (lower) form of autism
Indeed. My pal’s son has Asperger’s, and I’m pretty sure a colleague is undiagnosed. Byrne had trouble with relationships with the other Heads which, in retrospect, is understandable.
Autism is an umbrella term for a wide range of conditions, like IBD is for Crohn’s for Colitis (and diverticulitis?) and tends to be thrown around at anyone who isn’t the life and soul of the party. Or is just very dull.
By the sound of it the trouble was for other people, not Byrne himself.
Diverticulosis/itis is more degenerative, prone to infections, the degeneration related to low fibre “western” diet, constipation and all that.
I’ve never been tested, but I suspect I’m ‘on the spectrum’. If I am, well it’s such a part of me that I wouldn’t be me without it. There are situations where before doing/responding to stuff, I find myself referring to my internal ‘Haynes Manual’ for a response. Haynes would have you believe that reassembly is the reverse of disassembly, and whilst true for mechanical stuff, it is not the case for Human OS; Byrne probably goes over the step that I pause at.
It’s a particular bugbear of mine. I’m going to go a bit further and say all of us are, because Everyone Is On The Spectrum. The spectrum includes ‘normal’ (whatever that is) to completely non-communicative. It is also 2- or 3-dimensional, there’s severity and time on the other axes.
I was painfully shy as a teenager. I’m not now, but you still wouldn’t hire me to be your party host. I file my records alphabetically. Does that make me ‘Autistic’? I don’t think so.
Offspring The Elder was often non-communicative when she was younger, GPs with their 10-minute appointments suggested we get her tested. Turns out she was completely deaf in one ear.
People can’t just be shy or meticulous any more. We can’t all be Christopher Biggins.
There was a good prog on BBC R4 one lunchtime last week (perhaps the week before).
Yes, there was: it was called Antisocial.
Good discussion on all the terminology used and abused. Neurotypical and neurodiversity being two bugbears of mine, as degrees of Autism become something fashionable to self diagnose and assume. Sort of this years my child isn’t naughty, they have ADHD, they aren’t stupid, they’re dyslexic. Don’t get me wrong, like the ASD, dyslexia and ADHD are real and can be disastrous without intervention/support, but need a reputable diagnostic tool to be used in the diagnosis.
Mind you, I always thought I was plain clumsy, but my wife tells me I am dyspraxic. (Mind you, she has that diagnostic knowledge and ability.)
Talking of good radio, anyone with an internet in such, there is a great series, also R4, called Is Psychiatry Working. Powerful stuff. The answer, btw, is it could but probably isn’t, at least in the UK.
That’s the one. Mrs F, who is in HR and has seen all shades of people, commented on how good it was.
This was good, as well. “Holly Smale talks to Helena Merriman about being diagnosed as autistic aged 39”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001dn5s
Not everyone is on the spectrum, some of us can afford a Commodore…Ayyy thangyewww
I nearly wrote an hilarious joke about my 48k RAM expansion pack but thought it too nerdy even for me.
I was in two minds about the ‘spectrum’ bit, as I agree very much with you that we perhaps all are. One of our group of friends I suspect is rather like me. Some of the things we do/don’t do are the sort of things that it’s easy to say ‘spectrum’ about, but as I said above, those things are an intrinsic part of us. I’ve certainly learnt how to work around it over the years. My partner’s nephew has two young children, one with autism, one with dyspraxia and a couple of other issues. Both are diagnosed, both have support at school.
I think they are trying to move away from saying Aspergers to spectrum nowadays. Which I think is a bit of a shame because it was a short hand for mild Autism, which can be quite helpful (for example when describing my daughter, wife and sister-in-law).
Daughter just been kicked back from a work placement because she “lacked empathy”. Well, yes. And extra time to fill in the form will not help that.
(I’m sure you are not interested but twin son is not Aspergers, but probably ADHD. I have a PhD in Physics which is practically the dictionary definition of aspergers, but apparently I am fairly neurotypical. Apparently. Well, at least for a physicist)
I’m interested. Best pal’s son has Aspergers, as do two of my three nephews, and they’re all quite different, as you would expect of three different young people.
I’m an Electronic Engineer (so one strand of Physics) who prefers to work from my garage than to go into the office. This is not a medical matter, as far as I am aware, but I am very dull compared to Mrs F who, it seems to me, talks to people All Day Long in her HR role. Exhausting!
This is truly awful news.
Marquee Moon has been a favourite album since I was a teenager. Only a couple of weeks ago I introduced my eldest to the title track. It’s a miraculous thing, that song – the way it ebbs and flows back and forth, before building and building to something transcendent. That spiral staircase of guitars it floats you up, and then those twinkling lights at the very top of it.
Just imagine actually producing something like that, from out of thin air. Something that beautiful. Putting that joy in the world that will outlive you and all the rest of us.
RIP Tom.
Before I bought Matquee Moon I read an interview with Tom Verlaine and one thing I remember was him saying how much he liked The Byrds. That did it for me MM was an instant buy and it’s a true classic rock album.
R.I.P. Tom Verlaine and thank you.
I came quite late to Marquee Moon, but then I liked it so much that I decided to never buy any other album by them – as my gut feeling was that I’d be disappointed if they didn’t live up to that perfection (I know; I’m weird sometimes…)
But I was lucky to see them play the album live some ten years or so ago, not quite living up to that album perfection either, but adding those live only moments to make up for it, of course.
Sad news indeed.
I fear that the name of this site will become way too apt in these coming years, BTW.
To an extent, I can understand the thinking, @Locust: but following that logic means that you miss out on hearing Adventure – different, of course, but just as good.
See above
If I remember correctly, I’d had a run of disappointments at that time when I’d found new (to me) artists I loved and then sampled their back catalogues…so I decided to avoid any more of those sad moments.
But I may give Adventure a try after the many recommendations on this thread.
Did I ever tell you about the decade or so when I refused to see Prince live, because the last two gigs I’d seen him play were so spectacularly brilliant that I was convinced that he wouldn’t be able to live up to his own high standard on any tour after that one (the Sign o’ the Times tour)?
Thankfully I ditched this theory in time to see him play live again before he died!
Actually, on reflection: I’ve been there! I saw Yes on the Going for the One tour – it was transcendent, I remain convinced that I levitated during And You And I. I saw them again on the Drama tour. Um, not the same feeling at all.
I grew to like the album – but that gig just failed to hit the spot like the one before it.
Not the same band either without Jon Anderson! I was there as Trevor Horne struggled to win over the slightly hostile audience.
@Locust I was about to say exactly the same thing – that’s precisely why I have never heard Adventure. Somehow MM has been always been so perfect, so glorious, that it has felt like all the Television I ever need. Like you say, weird and frankly illogical. Given the comments here from others I am going to put that right (though I have Marquee Moon on as I write, and God it never fails.
Bad news. Sad news. That twin lead guitar sound of Verlaine and Lloyd was so thrilling. I listened to Marquee Moon over and over – particularly the perfect Side One.
I was going to post “The Scientist Writes a Letter”, but I see that 2 Afterworders have already had the impeccable taste to mention that song.
So I’ll post this track from the first solo album and say rest easy and thanks, Tom.
The only time I saw Television was at Glastonbury 1992. For once, a whole field was silent – you could hear a pin drop.
The MM album was, for years, my end-of-gig soundtrack. After the live bands and the DJ sets, I’d put MM on at the stroke of midnight and start packing the gear away. The last of the drinkers would be ejected after the dying chords of Torn Curtain, then I’d take down the speakers and head off to bed at 1am.
There was a great feature on Verlaine in either Uncut or Mojo a year or two ago.
Either Uncut or Mojo, the Ant or Dec de nos jours.
It was Uncut.
Such a sad loss. Like many others, I loved MM and felt Adventure was unfairly criticised at the time, but has endured as an exceptional album.
I found it: Uncut April 2022. Their pick of the solo albums is Tom Verlaine (1979), Dreamtime (1981), Flash Light (1987) and Songs and Other Things (2006).
Having heard most of his work at least once, I concur with the above.
Same here – what a stunning performance that was. I’m so glad I got to see them live. Their album of the time – the eponymous one – is the one I go back to most frequently; brilliant album.
That third album is great. Apparently, they completed a follow up that’s never been released. Perhaps, it will be soon.
Very sad news, the green 12″ of Venus/Prove It was one of my first 100 purchases (second hand of course to make), then Adventure. I don’t own a copy of MM as Mrs Moles has it! Saw them at Luna Festival in 2016 and though the performance was perfunctory, with zero crowd engagement and onstage enjoyment (so it appeared to me) seeing them live was very moving after listening to them to thirty years.
Make my pocket money go further should have said.
Got that green 12″ too.
And the black 12″ of MM (stereo on oneside, mono on the other).
This case, this case, this case that I
I’ve been workin’ on so long, so long
This case is closed
I always regarded punk guitarists with distain as I thought they couldn’t play which was pretty fair in most cases but I had to eat my words when I heard MM which is quite brilliant in terms of the dual lead guitars. Loved it ever since. Like others here I never went further as I thought is couldn’t possibly be better in its niche.
So long TV, you were one of a kind.
“I always regarded punk guitarists with distain as I thought they couldn’t play”
I remember Roger Waters making a similar assertion in an interview, except he made an exception for Mick Jones.
I wouldn’t have made an exception for Mick Jones.
I’m not sure I’ve ever regarded anyone with distain.
You should! Haughty disdain is one of my favourite emotions!
Oh I do that pretty much continuously. It’s this staining business that sounds like hard work.
This is the Sounds review of MM from 1977.
I remember rushing out to buy my copy of Sounds the week that “Adventure” came out, and being rather shocked that it only got 3 stars!
Sounds? Not enough metal for them.
Bit of an ‘80s thing, that – NWOBHM, etc.
In the ‘70s, Sounds covered all sorts. Geoff Barton even interviewed VdGG and gave a good review to Still Life – and that was 1976!
I don’t remember Sounds having a star rating system at all, but they clearly did, so it’s my memory. I’m realising now from the Sounds_Clips Twitter account that Vivien Goldman had great taste. She really knew her reggae. I wish I had appreciated it more at the time.
And now, through the magic of the internet, HERE IS that very Sounds review of Television’s Adventure. It’s on page 38 of this pdf file.
My memory failed me somewhat: it was actually a 3½ star review, not 3 stars. But still considerably less of a rave than the 16-year-old me had been expecting…
https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Sounds/70s/Sounds-1978-04-08-S-OCR.pdf
I think Sounds was the only one of the weeklies to do ratings. NME didn’t start doing them until 1987, MM were later still. The idea of reviews without ratings is a bit weird now…”Whaddaya mean I have to read it?”
My gateway to Television was hearing the early (ish) REM cover See No Evil when touring in the mid eighties. I’d heard of Marquee Moon but never actually listened to it. I’m so glad I did.
I came to it in a slightly round the houses fashion. I’d heard of Television, but never heard any of their music, when I stumbled on Richard Hell’s Love Comes In Spurts on the soundtrack of Christian Slater’s immortal Pump Up The Volume (what a movie that was if you were the right age at the right moment).
Love Comes In Spurts lead me to go investigate Hell and become slightly obsessed with Blank Generation, in which I detected a soupçon of the same stuff that made me fall in love with Marc Bolan as a kid. Around the same time, I caught Madonna’s utterly wonderful Desperately Seeking Susan on TV, in which Hell has a blink or you’ll miss it cameo. The film provoked a tremendous fascination with 80s, and latterly 70s, New York: the people, the clothes, the bars. It all looked like life on another planet and I couldn’t get enough of it.
By this time, the pieces were all in place and my brush with Television was all but inevitable – you burn through the core Hell catalogue pretty quickly, and any serious consideration of 70s New York music will of course wash you to those particular shores.
I was 15 when I found myself stood in Our Price, nervously eyeing the cover of Marquee Moon. It looked like the kind of thing I wanted – skinny, arty white boy gang, photo composition redolent of many a punk record, probably some angular guitars and yelped vocals, the Sonic Youth of the 70s maybe – but the graininess of the image for some reason gave me pause.
When I got it home and stuck it on, I was blown away. It didn’t sound anything like Blank Generation, or remotely as punk as I’d expected. It had the same nervous energy and twitchiness, but that was all in the vocal. The actual music was something else entirely – in its own way it reminded me of my first encounter with Siamese Dream, that same strange virtuosity, only it felt way more legitimate and less postured, less wasteful. By the time the album finished, I was in love. When I read up on their backstory, the love only grew – who doesn’t want to run off to the city and name themselves for a romantic poet?
Ten years later, when I finally visited New York for the first time, I found a very different city to the one I’d obsessed over. That old New York was long gone, conceptually bulldozed and paved over with something slicker and more palatable, but so much less interesting. Naturally, I was desperate to go for a drink in CBGB. None of my pals had any interest in joining, and I was too skint for a taxi, so I walked alone for what felt like hours to find the place, arriving to discover a bar much like so many others, but with the lingering electricity crackle of having once been absolute ground zero for The Thing. I stayed for a bit, read my book, people-watched and went away glad to have seen it. 18 months later they closed it down.
All of that stuff was one of my favourite things about my teens and twenties: catching a snippet of a song in a movie and following it right down a rabbit hole, surprised at the places it eventually deposited you. It’s fertile ground when you’re still very young – there’s fresh fruit on every tree. Gets harder as time goes by, but still worthwhile pursuing that same inquisitiveness, because it so often leads to adventure … and indeed to Marquee Moon.
I was at Summer Sundae at Demontford Hall, Leicester in Aug 2005 watching headliner Patti Smith. I recognised Lenny Kaye on guitar. There was another guitarist who sat down, played with a fag in his mouth and switched between guitar and bass, depending on whether the keyboardist was playing keyboards or bass. He was eventually introduced as Tom Verlaine. The whole show was great.
I suppose the music you are drawn to reflects your sense of self or world view in some way. I was drawn to Television because it was arty, reflecting an alienated feeling, detatched, evoking a world that seemed more real to me than the realism of the other acts of the time like The Clash and Jam. I never really believed in them.
“I suppose the music you are drawn to reflects your sense of self or world view in some way.”
Whoops…
Not in your case you mean or what?
I was considering (in short form) what the music to which I’m most completely drawn might reflect about me. VdGG, anyone? Existential angst, howling into the void, vast expanses of space/time and the gaps you can slip into between the dimensions, the disintegration of the self…
…I don’t know how I get out of bed some days…
Yes quite. What does it say about me? Maybe best not to go there. When I tried to do a playlist for my other half so we could have some music on when we sit with a glass of bubble of an evening, I realised my choices were all rather sad sounding, even depressing. That’s me. Laughing boy.
Always controversial, BC from BC says
“Marquee Moon- “The most overrated non punk punk album ever”
Never saw it as a punk record myself but we’re a broad church in here (aren’t we?)
ps he also doesn’t like Patti Smith
No wonder he got banned.
Seconded
I don’t like Patti Smith: and yet I retain my dining privileges – for the moment…
The young Parisians forgive you.
Huzzah!
Patti Smith has always been presented to me as someone I OUGHT to like – but I’ve never got it and in the end I stopped trying.
The best of Patti Smith’s recorded music is terrific stuff, but there’s a fair bit of other less interesting stuff to wade through too.
Horses for courses innit?
Bravo!
It’s always so enlightening when someone says something is overrated. Marquee Moon, Van Gogh, oranges, Paris. Oh really? How fascinating.
It confuses people when they hear it’s a punk record. It just emerged at that time and in that place, the CBGBs scene. All those bands did their own thing except there were some influences in common. Then they called it all punk and it all got less interesting. Just lazy categorising as is often the case.
I think it confuses the British – “punk” always meant something different in the US, all the way back to the 1950s. It was England where it became a 1976/1977 hairstyle (pardon the shorthand).
It was so much more than that. It was also safety pins and flicking the Vs.
There was an American mag called Punk which covered this stuff. The Punk Rock Rule Book had not been written in early 77 so all the CBGB bands got labelled. When the new rules were introduced they became new wave. The only people who cared were the punks.
I think Tom deserves a hamper thread.
Here’s an anecdote.
A top Aussie guitarist played a tour with TV , anecdotes of lending guitars etc. He also played unattributed on one of his albums.
A few years later they intersect.
Guitarist Hi Tom blank look Its me Marty we toured and recorded together. Ah Marty huh yeah. Return to blank look and silence.
Patridis :
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jan/29/tom-verlaine-television-perfectionist-guitar-genius-always-kept-punk-guessing
Other bits and pieces..
TV is often reduced to MM and other less significant stuff.This may be attributable to the fact that MM to my ears sounds unlike anything which I’ve ever heard.. Little Johnny Jewel was equally extraordinary, but very different..( The drum and bass work on this and other Television stuff was also pretty amazing and is barely mentioned.)
I was fortunate to be in London during a time when Talking Heads, The Ramones, The Heartbreakers and Television all gigged..All New York bands, lumped together, for want of a more adequate characterisation as punk or new wave, but all very different, yet brilliant at what they did…
There’s plenty of interview content with Verlaine in which his influences and interests are outlined..
This thread includes links to some mildly diverting odds and sods..
The drumming on MM is fantastic, a beautifully engineered.
And not a …ffs
Patti Smith – had I been a boy I would’ve been him.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/he-was-tom-verlaine?fbclid=IwAR2WvppRMwjTPbH2djgWGFT5Ycidfa6EbLPHnxyNWoteNGFgL1PmbWMEoJw&mibextid=Zxz2cZ
Nice piece. Thanks for posting the link.
@Junior-Wells
Nels Cline – if I hadn’t been an incredible guitarist called Nels Cline I would have liked to be be him
Stunning cover btw
Thanks Jaygee only just listened to this. Don’t you love the pause toewards the end and then they walk back into it. I always wait for it. Like the time change in Midnight Rambler by the Stones ,every time I listen I’m just waiting for the change.
100 Greatest Bootlegs site today has a 2016 live performance of an unreleased Television tune, Persia. It is very good.
Anyone know if the six early demos of TV and the Neon Boys Brian Eno recorded for Island ever see the light of day?
Dunno, but I could ‘help’ with this if you need it:
https://www.discogs.com/master/277889-Richard-Hell-Spurts-The-Richard-Hell-Story
No worries, Steve, but thanks for the kind offer
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/feb/01/they-felt-like-a-possible-future-how-brian-eno-and-i-recorded-televisions-first-demos
I prefer the early demos etc
(Phone kept trying to autocorrect demos as Demis. I nearly went with it)
https://www.discogs.com/release/2192507-Television-Double-Exposure
I can also ‘help’ with that one.
Really good article from Dean Wareham about Tom
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/31/encounters-with-tom-verlaine/
The day Tom sat in for a show and played some records on WFMU:
https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/17652
What a god awful playlist he selected.
A bunch of scans/images of old TV interviews and pics from 1974-1990. Can’t remember where on earth I picked these up from, but some fascinating stuff if you can cope with the low-tech scanning.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qa8x9do1iruge55/AAADokd5GlSkAZCCKWM4iVgta?dl=0
I don’t know if it’s included, but I remember when MM was reviewed (re-reviewed?) in the NME when it came out on CD in 1989 or so, the piece concluded by saying something like “We can’t give this 10, because then other bands who get 10 might think they compare”
I think it was in Q magazine that I only once ever saw an 11/10 review. Or might have 6 out of 5. I can’t remember. Might not have been Q. Anyway, I do remember it was for The Flaming Lips’ album The Soft Bulletin. I bought it on the strength of that review. Played it once, never played it again.
(I quite liked follow up, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots though.)
NME often messed with the ratings system. Danny Kelly, reviewing the Byrds box set in 1990 gave it “infinite 10s”. I was once proud owner of an album by Ice-T which they gave minus 154 – presumably the lowest rating ever. Bloody good album, but they objected to the sexism on the cover.
When – I think – Patrick Humphries reviewed Scott Walker’s Tilt in Vox (remember that?) he just threw up his hands at the end and said “It’s either 1 or 10, I don’t know which”.
Serves him right for eating his hands
Well, Bouncer See Bouncer isn’t everyone’s idea of fun..
What I like with the live albums The Blow-Up and LIve At The Old Waldorf is that you get Little Johnny Jewel and the best bits of Adventure included and I prefer to have them than the whole of MM as a listen. Also The Adventure cuts sound better for not being so refined as on the original versions. You can have The Blow-Up for the raucous audience enthusiam while Old Waldorf gives you live tracks without any crowd noise, so you can concentrate on the details, like the drumming on the instrumental part of MM. My preference is for Old Waldorf because the other album can get wearing after multiple plays. That’s today’s top TV tip.
And who would have ever believed it possible to make Satisfaction and Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door sound quite so thrilling?
I bought the original ROIR cassette version of “The Blow-Up” which came out in 1982.
The muddy, bootleggy sound quality was so bad that I hardly ever played it, despite the brilliant songs.
How has the sound quality been on the more recent CD and LP reissues of “The Blow-Up”?
Not the answer to the question you asked, but Live At The Old Waldorf sounds superb.
Although the CD release was apparently, remastered, I don’t remember any massive improvement, I have to say. I found the cassette the other day so I could compare them but then I’d have to work out where my cassette deck is.