Television

I would describe them as "jazzy."

Billy Ficca certainly looked like he could be in Crazy Horse.

yeah i think they are pretty accomplished compared to the horse

Matt, I listened to your podcast with Matt Sweeney, really really enjoyed it!

Marquee Moon became an album I retreat into when I'm going through a tough time, and I've been hammering it hard this winter. For this to happen now, while the songs are so present in my life, feels particularly destabilizing.

I also wonder if I ever saw him at the Strand and just didn't realize. I worked right by Union Square for a long time. The stories of him being so kind to all the employees there are really moving to me. It looks like he was a genuinely good person who treated people well.

Maybe this one got linked already? The whole thread is worth a read:

Tom Verlaine was always nice to me when I was working at @strandbookstore tending the dollar carts. He came around a lot. Tall dude. He must have lived somewhere close by in the Village. pic.twitter.com/JTsXUtRGRO

— Liam O’Brien (@LiamIsTalking) January 28, 2023

that’s a lovely thread

Yes. I didn't quite understand this bit though.

Dodging rain and under strict directions to NOT box up any damp books, we started pulling armfuls of red and white hardcovers off the carts, stripping their dust jackets and stuffing them into trash bags.

Oh I guess the books themselves were red and white but not the dustjackets.

I can feel my brane started to plant a false memory of a Strand sighting.

I mean there were probably plenty of guys I saw who looked vaguely like him, why didn't I put two and two together?

didn't verlaine work at strand himself in his early nyc days?

i kind of envision that scene as a hardcore book person's challenge to pick out the wheat from what the booksellers themselves think is chaff.

Used to see TV around London Terrace when i worked in that hood in the mid-late 90s. Debbie Harry lived / lives there as well and we both used the same video store. One time I was renting "Pixote" and she asked me "Whatcha got there?". I showed her the title and she cringed "Oh no! Too violent for me!" (my heart was a - flutter, I tell ya )

I can imagine

The only time I saw Debbie Harry in the flesh (pun intended!) that wasn't at a show of hers (or otherwise, she was at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs show at the Cooler, Bjork too, at the very beginning of their hype), was at the chelsea flea market walking the stalls with Chris. Was very excited.

haven't seen harry around, but i've seen clem burke around the east village way more than you might expect

was at the ivan julian benefit at city winery and she sat herself down at an empty chair at our table and we were, like, homina homina homina.

NPR has a segment on Tom this evening

^^^ really short, like two minutes

So 1/8 the duration of a Richard Lloyd string tuning session.

https://t.co/hY36qjHULh
In late 1975, two Trouser Press writers brought Tom Verlaine of the then-unsigned Television to their apartment for an interview. This conversation has never previously been published. With an introductory essay and audio clips from the conversation.

— trouserpress (@trouserpress) February 1, 2023

Ok wow I better find a comfy chair for this one

Wow

he worked at the Strand! <3

Well look at that

Original Robert Mapplethorpe photo used for the cover of Marquee Moon. pic.twitter.com/Xf94fBDz1J

— Tyler Wilcox (@tywilc) February 1, 2023

omg so good. it was mapplethorpe. huh.

Pretty blurry!

what a different vibe, feel like the dark, kinda gothic look of the cover sets a specific mood

That walking lobotomy, Lou Reed

That was one of the interviewers I think, there are two interviewers, they formatted the article really weird

Really an amazing read

i don't know why that photo is so remarkable to me. the way the lighting was edited in the final version -and i realized immediately on seeing the og how stupid this thought was- i always assumed it was an oil on canvas portrait of the band. i mean the way it ended up, lloyd looks like a friggin undead on the cover.

very cool.

the story i heard is tom verlaine took the mapplethorpe print and ran it through a xerox machine for a few iterations.

The formatting was totally weird. Italics for one of the interviewers but the other interviewer’s comments were intermingled with Tom’s, it seemed.

Did you read the thing about The Ramones on your favorite substack TSF?

yup i saw that. i was a newsday reader back in 1975 and i suspect some of those articles played a part in my decision to to to a nyc scool for undergraduate.

to *go* to. it's too too too to put a finger on.

i'd also picked up punk magazine #1 because lou's cartoon face was calling out to me from the racks in the penn station magazine shop. and i was a creem subscriber. and a friend who was a year older had already seen tv. and i had the patti smith album. i was primed.

Goodness me, "Breakin' in My Heart" is such a good performance.

i've been listening nonstop to a comp someone posted a link to uptread with 9 early tv songs that never made their way onto a record. it conculdes with tv doing 'breakin in my heart.'

so the actual lyrics to "Fire Engine" are "Let me take you to DMT space"? haha

Have heard that before.

the story i heard is tom verlaine took the mapplethorpe print and ran it through a xerox machine for a few iterations.

Richard Lloyd, apparently:

Richard Lloyd: pic.twitter.com/bMHLIWuGmd

— Tyler Wilcox (@tywilc) February 1, 2023

Do we know that is a reliable source?

j/k!

from the racks in the penn station magazine shop
Ha! Did you also visit the arcade and play Asteroids or whatever?

if there was an arcade in penn station i don't remember it. if they were fifty cents i might have blocked them from my memory. i was a "three balls for a quater" man.

richard hell says it's too soon to write about him.
https://www.richardhell.com/

that's cool he called out a relative deep cut — I love "Scientist Writes A Letter" too.

I'm okay with Richard saying that. He's usually pretty thoughtful about these things. I always compare how he talked about Robert Quine with whatever non-statement we got from Lou.

Goodness me, "Breakin' in My Heart" is such a good performance.

Possibly my favorite from his solo albums, and it's essentially my favorite supergroup of all-time - too bad it's the only track all four ever recorded together!

Because it has...Ricky WIlson?

Does anyone know if the "tell a vision" pun in "Little Johnny Jewel" predates the band name?