Television

xpost the guitar solo credits etc are def on the rhino cd reish

saw the reformed television twice this decade, and both times the tension between verlaine and lloyd was self-evident in the way that they played together, stood on stage together, glared at each other (mostly tom) etc etc - i wouldn't say that either of 'em was 'better' on the night, tho' the second time around (2004) the whole group was noticeably sloppier - the first time i saw 'em (at the Tortoise curated ATP in 2001) the version of 'little johnny jewel' they delivered was stunning and tom v was on fire

in 2006 i saw verlaine and ripp play a really sweet duo set at the 100 club - ripp was v. much the accompaniest and subservient to the master, and verlaine seemed much more engaged w/ the material and event, even when playing a few of the old hits - i don't ever expect to see tom in action so close up and personal, and he was def. on form that night - so he still has it, still

yeah i've heard some of the Ripp/Verlaine duo (mostly instrumental) -- really lovely stuff!

btw if yr interested in hearing a bunch of vintage Television bootlegs, I did a long overview at my blog a couple weeks back: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/ I'll get around to the reunion years someday.

hmm: http://aquariumdrunkard.tumblr.com/post/677685931/indieandyy-careful-by-local-natives-originally
Aquarium Drunkard will be digitally releasing L’Aventure on June 22, featuring 8 Los Angeles bands each covering a track from the 1978 Television LP, Adventure.
1.The Henry Clay People: “Glory”
2.Foreign Born: “Days”
3.The Happy Hollows: “Foxhole”
4.Local Natives: “Careful”
5.The Deadly Syndrome: “Carried Away”
6.Imaad Wasif [ft. Lykke Li]: “The Fire”
7.Dirt Dress: “Ain’t That Nothin’”
8.Growlers: “The Dream’s Dream”
don't know any of these bands ... good/bad/eh?

local la bands, seen most of them, none of them are that bad but nothing really that special about any of em

^^ tyler--any chance that you could re-post No Glamour-- later TV @ Academy '92?

yeah, sure i'll re-post that one. totally an amazing set. blows away the s/t record. lloyd's solo on 1880 or so = craaaaaazy.
i'm in the process of putting together a couple of comps covering unreleased Television songs from the 70s and the 00s for the blog, too.

Venus de Milo has no arms, fwiw

^^ thanks tyler--sounds great!

this covers thing has me thinking -- are there any really *great* television covers? i liked chris stamey's mellow take on "venus" ... feelies do a good see no evil. clientele did a nice version of "the fire" a few years back.

[ft. Lykke Li]

Huh? How'd she get involved? (swedish pop princess (imo :))

LOL Upthread somebody said Television was a rip-off of early U2. I fervently pray that they were kidding.

'Marquee Moon' remains one of the great guitar-oriented rock LPs, a distinction that was certainly not damaged by the inclusion of "Little Johnny Jewel" on the reissue. The arrangements are also spot-on, the melodies infectious. The other records are also very good. 'The Blow-Up' is a terrific sounds-like-you're-there live recording & the s/t comeback disc was better than I thought it was going to be. 'Adventure' isn't as crazy-good as 'Marquee Moon' but I think it suffers only by comparison. Pretty solid throughout & it makes me wish they had continued long enough to do a 3rd LP so we could really judge its sophtware (sic) slump qualities more accurately. BUt - there ya go...

LOL Upthread somebody said Television was a rip-off of early U2.

omg holy lols

It was dave q, it was a joke

this is cool -- the classic ARROW bootleg, uploaded by the taper/bootlegger himself: luckypsychichut.blogspot.com/2009/11/television-arrow-bootleg.html
pretty awesome bootleg (most of it shows up on the Blow Up, but as the dude notes, it sounds better here). Johnny Jewel might be the definitive version.

cool indeed, thanks

From that blog:

Tom Verlaine is now my girlfriend's grumpy upstairs neighbor and has (like myself) lost most of his teeth, but I still get a kick out of seeing him stumbling in off the street with a pizza for dinner, mumbling a few random problems that need fixing to the doorman.

haha, sounds about right.

Hate the way The Blow Up sounds

Would be nicer if he'd uploaded the whole show, not just the stuff on Arrow. I might have been at this show btw. They played at My Father's Place three times in '78 & I don't remember which one I went to. It was definitely before the Adventure album came out. I spent a fair amount of time thinking TV had a new song called "Fatso, Fatso."

lol. i've got at least one of the complete father's place recordings, incredibly jealous you got to see it in person. television was pretty much the best band on the planet at that point. just amazing.

Hahaha
There's a link in the comments to a blog that offers an entire 78 Television show. Not sure if it's the same gig though (can't check quickly as I'm browsing on a not so handy phone).

phone allows xposts...

tbh i remember it less for the performance than for the pigeon who shat on me afterward. The club was situated next to a tall viaduct, & people parked underneath (illegally, as it turned out -- that's nominally what did the club in, lack of legal parking, though what really did it in was NIMBY on the part of the good people of Old Roslyn). usually the pigeons would be kind enough only to use the cars for target practice, but this one was particularly ornery. The performance was great, of course. I'm an old fogy, though -- in 1978, the bar was just set higher. Lots of performances were great. I prolly just go to the wrong shows, now, i dunno...

i'm even jealous of your pigeon story. srsly, if i was granted one time machine trip it might be to go see television around that time.

just posted this - an imaginary third 70s television album made up of unreleased live tunes 1975-78 http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/5667774473/kingdom-come-the-lost-television-album-dont-get

all over that thanks!!

damn tyler awesome

thaking u

no problem. it is pretty good!

:):):):):)

got around to getting Portland '78 off yr blog and jesus fucking christ

weirdness!
Metallica's Lars Ulrich On His Cult Heroes
To me, Television’s first record still sounds as fresh today and as all-round awesome as it did in 1977. I grew up in Copenhagen, and pretty much I got everything I knew about music came from this tiny record store there. There weren’t any Danish music periodicals, so it was all word of mouth in this place, and I remember this guy called Tim who put me onto all kind of things – including 'Marquee Moon'.

Television played Copenhagen around the time it came in, and I saw them in this tiny venue. The Pistols had played in Copenhagen in June or July of 77, the Ramones played as well. ACDC came down too, and played in early September. So in the span of about three months the Pistols, Ramones, ACDC and Television had all played in my home town as headline acts. Excellent! Those concerts were actually what kept me alive at that time.

With Television, I got the sense that here was a real band who were really connecting with each other. Obviously Tom Verlaine was the mainman, but some of the songs on that first album, like 'Friction', are just so intricate. That one's actually like this real hard rock track too. Don’t tell anyone this but 'Marquee Moon' is one of my secret tracks for Metallica to play. I'm gonna try and sneak that one in there without anyone noticing!

"i rememberuuuh how the darkness duhbuhlledyeaah"

Ah recalluh.....lightnin struck itselffffffah

the lightningggggah rode itself!

I'm imagining Lars' double-bass-drums bit from "One" ruining the post-solo breakdown.

who's actually had the guts to cover marquee moon? i've heard that kronos quartet version, but can't think of others.

One could argue that Richard & Linda Thompson covered it before it was recorded...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXB4q-V14TI
hee hee

this television cover band from NC actually sound pretty rad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cIwVhL183A

Kronos Quartet covered Marquee Moon on an Elektra anniversary comp. Not on YouTube...

I remember liking it. Probably have the tape somewhere in the attic

I do have the cassette version that the previous owner transferred onto CD.

It's not all that, really.

Ha, just now seeing that tyler already mentioned it. Ah well, it's here: http://somegirlinspace.blogspot.com/2007/04/marquee-moon.html.

i heard a mashup of the original television "marquee moon" with the kronos quartet version. which was interesting. didn't quite work.

Ah recalluh.....lightnin struck itselffffffah

Been enjoying the lost third TV album!

oh cool, yeah there's some good stuff on there. amazing that there hasn't been some sort of television box set ... or at least a rarities comp.

tyler, the "lost" "third" "album" is aceee, thankyou very much.

^ seconded, well done Tyler

Maybe it's not that good

Or else I might have trouble organizing and typing it into the chat box. But I will sleep on it and maybe I can come up with something tomorrow

TELL

IT

^^^

we need a story, Redd!

Don't make us beg!

(begs)

Aww man RIP

as I posted today on Adaam Jacobs thread, Lucy Sante says:

Some of you may already have seen this, but the tape I made at CBGB of a Television/Talking Heads show on January 24, 1976, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary by being shared all over the internet: https://archive.org/details/television1976-01-24.unk The T-Heads archivists had approached me and digitized and cleaned it, and I encouraged them to make it public. I'm sorry my batteries were dying during the second Television set; "Guiding Light" is especially wobbly. Overall, though, the tapes, made on generic cassettes with a cheapo recorder and stored in a shoebox all these years, sound at least as good as most of the commercially distributed bootlegs from those years. It's also ghostly for me, because at the end of some of the Television numbers you hear a whoop from my old girlfriend Eva, dead now almost 28 years. Oh, and the Talking Heads (trio and still pretty green): https://archive.org/details/th1976-01-24.unk.sante

A reminder for me to read her memoir.

I believe Eva and that Noo Yawk era are in Maybe The People Would Be The Times, maybe among others.

Tom Verlaine’s Record Collection Up For Sale.

https://www.spinmagazine.com/2026/06/tom-verlaine-record-collection/