Television

Who is Jimmy Ripp :(

Dude who played guitar with Verlaine throughout the 80s and 90s. Great player actually.

at this point, he's probably logged more hours with Tom than Lloyd has.

at the last television show i saw, 2005 i think?, he played some great stuff i didn't reccognize. I particularly remember a long song with a terrific eastern motif.

Sounds hopeful. Still sad to think of that band without Lloyd.

yeah, would be pretty weird to have a Television album w/o Lloyd -- is there a single review of that band that doesn't talk about the dueling Verlaine/Lloyd guitars? it's pretty much their signature.

i've only seen television once - one of the early '00s reunion shows in DC - but my main takeaway was that i'd severely overrated verlaine and underrated lloyd as guitarists. verlaine was a mess (sometimes in a really good way, obvs) with flashes of inspiration, but lloyd was lyrical, hypnotic, and locked on. it was weird to realize how many times i'd listened to recordings and been like "omg verlaine!" when it was actually lloyd's playing. verlaine rules, but i think his stuff is more of an "if you catch him on a good night, wow" kinda thing.

yeah i don't think Verlaine's heart is in the epic intense guitar solos these days. he can still do great stuff, but i think he left the heavy lifting to Lloyd in the various reunions. Like when I've heard latter-day versions of "Little Johnny Jewel" Tom barely seems there, whereas he kills it on those 70s recordings.

yeah...you just hear Verlaine's name so much more than when you hear guitar stuff on the albums you kinda assume it's him until you learn otherwise...i wish they'd credited who did which solos/leads on Marquee Moon like they did for the self-titled album.

xpost

they did! it's on the vinyl, anyway.

I heard somewhere or other that Lloyd's parts were a lot more written than Verlaine's, much truth in that ya suppose?

ah really? I need to check my CD reissue to see if it's in there.

oh totally, re: Lloyd's parts. On Marquee Moon, Richard doubletracked every note he played.

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.

I’m surprised at how much I warmed to Flash Light after several listens— meh, meh, meh, eh this just ain’t it, hmm, aright, and then BAM i love this. The expanded guitar sound finally sounded more verlaine-normal or something to me.

I came to this album after decades of MM and stray other stuff. From listen one I could hear his playing in this, but the mor atmospherics just didn’t work. Until they totally did. What a nice thing.

Now I wonder what it would have been like if I’d heard this one first. Would I have had the reverse difficulty going the other direction? I must have, I think.

richard hell in the new yorker:

Were you in touch with Verlaine before he died, recently?

No. I never recovered from what felt to me at the time like a total betrayal. Our relationship was really complex. We were so close, but it always makes me think of how I once got a postcard from Ted Berrigan advertising a reading he was doing with Ron Padgett, and on the postcard he said, “Ron and I hate each other as only best friends can.” And then, when that thing happened with that split, it just, it was final. When I would see him, I would invariably come away thinking, He just rubs me the wrong way. Even though he was my best friend, and in lots of ways we had more in common than anybody else in my life. Those are the most impressionable years; they’re when you’re forming, and, if you shared that experience with someone you’re with constantly, it’s eternal. It doesn’t go away. So I still have that feeling of brotherhood with him, even though I couldn’t stand being in his presence. But there was a funny thing that happened right after he died. There was this little book about graffiti at CBGB, and I wrote an introduction for it, and, within the first couple of days after Verlaine died, I’d be looking for references to what happened, and I came across this tweet, which the editor of the book who approached me to write the intro tweeted. When he was doing this book, he first approached Verlaine to write the intro, and Verlaine demurred, but said to him, “I can’t stand the guy, but you gotta get Richard Hell.” [Laughs.] And that gave me a really good feeling. Because it was the same for me, about him.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/how-richard-hell-found-his-vocation

aw damn.

Excellent.

whole interview was great

Thanks! Reminds me of this extended review re Hell's memoir-lit-literary sketchbook I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, with the Kentucky boyo setting up Village camp in the 60s, soliciting and then rejecting a poem from Ginsberg for his zine and all, also for instance, way later but still pre-Neon Boys, I think?

Hell dates his "junkie mentality" to before he was actually using--to Theresa Stern, the hooker poet he and Verlaine invented and impersonated in their collaborative 1973 collection Wanna Go Out?

"I can’t imagine what it was like for Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell when they were getting started; to have a weird voice, and wanting to sing for a band in NYC, without the advantage of being able to just rip off Tom Verlaine or Richard Hell."

https://zacharylipez.ghost.io/eight-unfinished-essays-on-marquee-moon/

god i really relate to what hell says about verlaine

things are kind of like that with my ex, this sense of mutual betrayal. people i respect but on a personal level i never want to fucking talk to again.

Definitely. I think you get some relief. So why do you have to go pay somebody to sit there and listen to you do it? Most of what people are is chemical. It’s biological. Did you ever see [Michael Apted’s] “Seven Up!” movies? The seven-year-olds are still the same, even at seventy. You don’t change. You’re who you were at three.

...what? did _he_ see the up series? like art is subjective but how the _fuck_ did he get that from the films?

NYC booksellers band together to hold resale of Tom Verlaine's collection of 50,000 books

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/nyc-booksellers-band-together-hold-resale-of-tom-verlaine-collection-of-books

There is another sale of his books going on (bigger space). Tomorrow, books go for five bucks. A few copies of the Theresa Stern zine (I think they were going for 25?) https://www.instagram.com/p/C0MwmeSOWqu/

probly most people reading this thread know, but just in case: tylerw's blog Doom And Gloom From The Tomb, on Tumblr and now Substack, has always been an excellent source of TV (and much other) info x soundz...

Is there a list of his books (for sale or otherwise) posted somewhere? Currently having trouble seeing all of the Instagram post.

Doubt there's a list. I went yesterday and there were large sections of fiction (especially poetry), occult/religion/spirituality, art, movies and music (which had a ton of books about using vacuum tubes in recording).

they've put some pricey ones on line.

https://www.betterreadthandeadbooks.com/searchResults.php?action=browse&category_id=365

they had a few 'theresa stern' originals on the table for $600 each. and other things like that.

There's a magazine special on the band out at the moment that I saw at the airport and now regret not buying. Uncut. May have been older but was in there on Wednesday maybe shelflife longer in an airport newsagent.

That came out this year but I don’t think it reached U.S. newsstands until very recently. Still, I’d get one sooner than later just in case they didn’t stock many copies.

I wrote about Marquee Moon in the Uncut special! Came out in October I think?

I wrote about the band's live albums + bootlegs in the Uncut special! It is a cool mag, definitely grab it if you see it.

How do you even wind up with 50,000 books! Lets assume he showed up in NYC in 72 or whatever with >10 books. He really bought 20 books a week, every week, for the rest of his life?

He was at the Strand every single day, going through the dollar bins, so I can see that leading up to 50,000.

How do you even wind up with 50,000 books!

― Reeves Gabrels' Funko Pop (majorairbro)

It gets away from you fast, trust me

Doubt there's a list. I went yesterday and there were large sections of fiction (especially poetry), occult/religion/spirituality, art, movies and music (which had a ton of books about using vacuum tubes in recording).

― jbn, Sunday, December 3, 2023 11:27 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Apparently lots of really weird, cheap-o UFO books as well

i imagine verlaine bought a bunch of collections sight unseen, too – like those random ebay auctions that are like "12 boxes of books for $100" ... pretty funny, he must've at least entertained the idea of opening a bookstore at some point. tom would've been a great cranky dude behind the counter, glaring at your lame purchases.

Highlights:
-Running into Sang Freud & Wife!!
....
-couple of books concerning da blooze.
-Stockhausen interviews
-book of jazz interviews (a gift!)
-Photo/text book abt West Virginia traditional music
-2 copies of the Bernie Kraus book/cd of his nature recordings/journals. (one will be a gift.)
-A book about the history of Martin Guitars (also a gift)
-Ellroy & Gibson 1st editions
-Sidney Bechet "Treat It Gentle"
-book of Raymond Chandler essays/interiews/miscellany.
-book of essays about Ross MacDonald

some more stuff too.. from what I gather, yesterday was a lot mellower than Saturday.

You can see some of the items from the collection that have been listed on the BRTD website-
https://www.betterreadthandeadbooks.com/searchResults.php?action=browse&category_id=365

great seeing you, ian!!

between the two of us we amassed 31 books, mostly from the literature section and some music stuff. i'll list some titles at some point.

"1880 or so" is the best song ever written

"the fragrance sweet
in the evening air
i could leave this world
quite without a care"

Definitely my favorite non-Marquee Moon Television song.