'Marquee Moon' LP is overrated

It took me 25 years to get into this album. AND IT WAS WORTH EVERY MINUTE.

the only time i saw dave thomas he marched the whole band offstage mid-set to yell at them.
then he got mad at the crowd and forbid any merch to be sold.

― Raptain Chillips (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, April 7, 2014 4:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha, yeah, the guy is a hoot! definitely has stage presence though.

― tylerw, Monday, April 7, 2014 4:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Saw Dave twice; first time was with RFTT (with Richard Lloyd, who killed). He sat down most of the set, chugging from a bottle of Courvoisier. After the show, he personally sold CDs, still sitting on the stage. He did this to get around the venue's policy of taking 20% of all merch sales. I said something like, "I love your work" and he said, "OK. Whaddya want?"

Second time I saw him was when Pere Ubu did a live soundtrack to The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. It was pretty great, but Dave kept wildly "conducting" the rest of Ubu, who would have none of it, and completely ignored his gesticulations (e.g., he would make a dramatic "cut-off" signal, and they just kept going).

That live soundtrack to The Man With X-Ray Eyes was great. Thomas stood outside after the gig and basically just glared at people. I thought about telling him how cool it was, but he did not look interested at all.

answer to thread question: absolutely, i think this album is terribly overrated. i never got it at all. there is so much noodling, so much guitar wankery leading nowhere on it. the trackss are too long and too unimaginative. i wouldn't call it pretentious, i just find it terribly boring and uninteresting. i preferred the comeback album to "marquee moon".

i knew i had answered this before, couldn't find my post as it was a skipped message...

Well, you know, whatever floats your boat, or sinks it in this case... Patti Smith's the one I've never quite got

i really liked the feelies anyway. they must have been big television fans. i REALLY liked the feelies in the 80's. oh i know the minutemen! i don't love them in the same way i don't love television. people who really like television probably really like the minutemen too. just a guess. pretty much everyone i know and hang out with likes the minutemen a bunch. (when i was a kid i liked the project mersh ep and their van halen cover and "little man with a gun in his hand".) (i don't think i've ever made it all the way through double nickles...) (so add minutemen to young marble giants, the saints, and television when it comes to bands i have tried hard to like and never loved...)

Really dont get how this album = meandering wankery.

Everything on this album is there for a reason

yeah it's always felt extremely composed to me, not jammy

the alternate takes on the reissue are interesting because the solos are not vastly different, but different enough to a) verify that there was a bit of improvisation or trying new things in each takes and b) they really picked the right takes, the other ones just didn't have the magic of the ones on the album.

i love the minutemen but i don't love television, as mentioned. tbh even though i love double nickels a lot, i don't think i've ever listened to it all the way through. it's 80 minutes! 40+ tracks! i tend to listen to it in chunks. that doesn't negate my love for it

i never thought television was meandering wankery. maybe it would be better if it was

i love tv but don't love the minutemen. i like them; they like boc so how could you not like them? i know what you mean, the mathiness, though. i think i love tv with the same genes that make me love yes.

the bruford/ficca gene.

that's kind of the root of my problem with the television album. i have based a large part of my existence on 70's riff rock (of all stripes) and that album is just low on my list as far as that goes. i love the two nerd bird riffs a bunch (which is why the roir blow up tape is the only thing i owned for years), but in comparison to the sheer volume and wealth of amazing 70's stuff i just found it...slighter than the stuff i love? (i always liked the composed and deliberate quality the album has though. fussy even. but in the end i'll take "city slang".)

can you name a few albums we should be checking out?

haha, i think that's all i've done on here for ten years. i definitely like VU via detroit via new jersey. wonder if the feelies were starz fans?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn3ADSvZRa0

dunno, those riffs sound great to me. xgau isn't always otm, but i like this: "I don't ask much from life--a classic new rhythm guitar figure at medium-fast tempo like the one on "See No Evil" can keep me going for months. When the call-and-response chorus of the song that follows peaks at a perfectly timed "Huh?" I begin to act silly. And when two consecutive albums, eight songs each, offer a total of 16 unmistakable ident riffs, I apply hyperbole first and ask questions afterward."

and i think it's doubtful the feelies were starz fans? i think you can tell pretty much what the feelies are fans of from the songs they've covered over the years.

This thread inspired me to listen to Richard Lloyd's "Real Time" for the first time in years. I still really like it though it's not as good as Tom's solo stuff. I've never heard the studio versions of these songs, I assumed he was better live.

Television are super hyped though.

Peopl freak out over them. They're "good" but not great

around the 1:48 mark and after on "detroit girls" is kinda what i live for. in life. my math skills aren't very advanced though.

i really want to hear a starz cover by the feelies now.

yeah it's always felt extremely composed to me, not jammy

i once saw starz/rush/bob seger at the palladium. just sayin. after rush played this whole row of kids raised their arms and screamed "black sabbath!" and walked out on the silver bullet band.

i really like the painterly autumnal aspect of mm. it's like they're saying, hey, we're these sorta repressed aesthetes, we can't compete with the riff rockers, we'll just sit here with our legs crossed over our little jazz amps and build this here cathedral. on the one hand that's totally elitist so i can understand why the haters hate. on the other hand, unlike so many other repressed aesthetes, they did build the cathedral.

Once driving through Ohio a few years ago I heard "Marquee Moon" (the song) on an AM station. I love it anyway, but holy hell, hearing it on AM was like wandering into an alternate universe. I didn't think I could have a new perspective on a song I'd heard thousands of times at that point, but there it was.

i can imagine the shimmery part around 8:20 (?) sounding totally sublime under those circumstances.

Struggling to figure out what I want to say here. There's something unprecedented about their use of guitars. There are precedents in VU/2nd MC5 album/Modern Lovers, but it's never the focus like it is with Television. They always sound punk even in the midst of major pastoralism.

that part sounds like a burst of Fichelscher-era Popol Vuh to me (shimmery pastoral guitars, even if it's just for a tiny moment)

but i hear what i want to hear, obvs, ha

i can imagine the shimmery part around 8:20 (?) sounding totally sublime under those circumstances.

― Mayor Manuel (La Lechera), Tuesday, April 8, 2014 3:21 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Indeed it did; and the pause between that and the drums' re-entrance was just, I mean, I think I was holding my breath.

And punk in the best way. Like when it mattered for a band to show that you could work with the absolute basics. And that those basics were beautiful.

Have you read interview with Verlaine in that book, Feeding Back? Interesting stuff about his approach to guitar.

No, would like to see that.

that whole book is good. verlaine's is far from the most forthcoming interview, but that's no surprise.

Believe he says something to the effect that he took a big piece of paper in the shape of a guitar neck, wrote the names of the notes and pasted it on a wall, studied it and made up his own stuff based on that instead of playing the same chord voicings he might have gotten from somewhere else.

(That was xp)
Tyler otm. Discussions are a good mix of guys talking about the creative inspirational side and the technical side. Sometimes you get one or you get the other or you get an oil and vinegar mix but here you really feel like they are talking about where the rubber meets the road.

Sorry

. that part sounds like a burst of Fichelscher-era Popol Vuh to me (shimmery pastoral guitars, even if it's just for a tiny moment)

I always think of this part as a callback to the many moments of birdsong imitation in romantic music like Mahler Delius Wagner etc where the strings get all hushed and the woodwinds imitate birdies. But it does sound like Danny too!

They always sound punk even in the midst of major pastoralism.

That's ludicrous to me. The basics need to have a component of ugliness.

The boots I heard sound a lot better - a sound which is hinted at and not really captured on the LP.

I don't know, maybe I shouldn't have said always. And maybe pastoralism isn't quite right either. I hear "Venus" and it sounds like a breakthrough, though. There's bite to the guitars and the whole thing is stark and skeletal.

Its true there is a bite at times...thinking about it, sorry I called it 'ludicrous'...more like er, interesting word choices...

that part sounds like a burst of Fichelscher-era Popol Vuh to me (shimmery pastoral guitars, even if it's just for a tiny moment)

Meanwhile, the second half of "Du tränke mich mit Deinen Küssen" (on "Das Hohelied Salomos"), when the guitars start kicking in, always reminds me of Television.