Television

yeah, i remember a lot of those lessons. maybe he released a dvd of them or something?
at some point, he had all of this bizarre pseudo mystical stuff up, couldn't tell if he was kidding or what.

He took down the lessons from his website! (xpost)
I remember them being interesting, kind of deep, not just "here are a few of my favorite chord shapes and licks," which you wouldn't really expect from him anyway, but still.

I printed out a few of the exercises, and have used them every day for years now. Invaluable shit.

yeah, there's some guitar-y stuff left over in the ask richard section. he seems pretty reasonable there for the most part.

re: RFTT, I saw Lloyd with them in around 2005 or so, and yep, he killed. The crowd was hanging on every note. David Thomas, for his part, sat on a chair in the middle of the stage with a bottle of Courvoisier.

Me preferring Lloyd on the Sweet records has nothing to do with Verlaine's own undeniable talents. It has to do with ... preference. As in, what I actually prefer to listen to. Lloyd (and Quine) were just such a surprisingly perfect fit for that stuff.

Yeah, I want to say I saw RFFT that same year, mostly for Lloyd, honestly. Want to say Thomas was barely ambulatory, leaning on a cane.

huh, i saw an earlier RFTT show (2003-ish?) and Thomas was pretty explosive. He did sit a little bit, but he also went nuts.

Fuck I wish I could find this article written by a dude who traveled with RL on one of his recent tours, kind of a profile piece. I thought I had the link in my email somewhere... anyway, I am far from a behavioral health expert but it seemed pretty obv RL was bipolar.

Re: RFTT I wonder if Thomas was hurt for those shows? He has a pretty active stage presence IME

He was pretty hefty, and it looked like his knees were suffering. This was in NYC, whenever it was.

On the plus side, after the show, Thomas stayed in his stage chair and personally sold RFTT CDs (possibly to circumvent that venue's policy of taking 20% of bands' CD sales). I probably wouldn't have bought one otherwise, but I'm glad I did (for getting to meet Thomas and for Lloyd's playing on the record).

Is this the most underachieving band in the history of rock? You could make a strong argument. They had all the talent in the world, and one of the three or four best debut albums ever. But after 1977 it was all downhill, save for a handful of good songs.

For sure. There are some people that think the band started to go downhill before it even hit the studio!

While I happily agree that MM stands at the apex of TV/Verlaine/Lloyd's output, statements like "all downhill save for a handful of good songs" srsly boggle my mind. I mean, tons of ppl say this, it's not a minority view at all. But I don't know how to reconcile it with what i hear...

yeah, i just think that if you really like marquee moon, then you'll find plenty to love in the records that came after.
do any of them reach the heights of MM? maybe not, but very few things do!

Yeah, like I said upthread, I love the '92 album as much as Adventure – two very good albums.

the live album shows that adventure's problems were more bloodless production and not so much material (i think the adventure songs on the old waldorf just shine)

^ this

i dig the more textured approach on adventure's slower songs -- the fire, carried away, days, but yeah, the rockers come off way better live.

i'd put "the dream's dream" old waldorf up against anything on marquee moon

otm, it's otherworldly.

The first time I listed to the Old Waldorf show I wasn't looking at the track listing, and the segueway from "The Dream's Dream" into "Venus" blew me away.

Old Waldorf is basically the 2nd Television album as far as I'm concerned, everyone should own it.

the rockers come off way better live.

Ain't That Nothin' in particular.

Richard Lloyd is 60 today. Happy birthday, dude.

shine on you crazy diamond

Seconded

Happy birthday!

Aside, fun Verlaine stories from Steve Kilbey yesterday

when i was a kid
i was scouring all the music rags
looking for the next big thing
i read a small article on a band called television
in a mag called rock scene
it was written by patti smith
she wrote about this guy tom verlaines hands
how he was the kinda guy you’d wanna lose yer virginity to….
over the next few years there were tantalising references constantly
all of em saying how this band were incredible
johnny jewel a single (kinda strange but intriguing)
and bits and pieces until in 1977 the first album came out
of course it was called marquee moon
and verily it was all they said it would be
an incredible record
34 years later today
i got an email from some guys watching televisions current progress
co guitarist richard lloyd is out
and some other guy jimmy rip is in
theres a whole argument going down on youtube
richard lloyd weighing in slagging off tv
funny that people are interested in these ancient clashes
i met tv in 1988
he was opening for the church and peter murphy
he wanted to borrow my acoustic guitar
it was a black guild ..it got stolen n broke my heart
as soon as he played one note you could hear it was him
a totally unique approach dare i say virtuoso
pk sometimes has this effect like a total understanding
anyway tv was sposed to go on murphys bus
but within one second tv had some falling out with murph
and ended up on our bus for a whole tour
he started the night with a 30 minute set
alone with an acoustic he was kinda ordinary
he was very jokey in a bizarre way on and off stage
he was a total caffeine and nicotine man too
he was always wired tho he eschewed all other substances
television had been a huge influence on us all
we were all quite surprised n impressed to have tv with us
he treated me a bit like an annoying kid and i probably deserved it
i blabbed on to him all day about television ..why i liked them…
but he was bemused and sent me up a bit
we played monopoly for real money once on the bus
and tv bickered over the fuckin’ rules and argued the toss
eeerrr kil-bee lets see uh this triple double in jail rule
uh i think this is an uh english rule and uh i aint goin’ to jail..
how bizarre to be arguing monopoly rules with verlaine
somewhere in dakota or wherever as we sped thru the night
as the tour progressed tv would come out each night and play with us
we did :you took and cortez the killer with 3 lead guitarists
3 of the very best you can get too
offstage however
tv was an incredible stingy miser arguing over every last cent literally
eerrr uh kil-bee uh you should pay an extra 75 cents for your share of the fries
this was one of the complaints on the you tube vids toms meanness
he was never very complimentary about richard lloyd either
lloyd didnt have anything to do with it if you listened to tv
he downplayed the guy right outta existence
it was unnecessary i thought to be so ungracious….
one day off in houston we went to this place
it was 1988 and you could record your vocal over a cassette backing
i sang my vocal over i left my heart in san francisco ( for DT)
tv got some old country n western track n giggled n whispered n muttered
he played it back to us convinced he’d found some new direction
one night the phone rang in my room
eerr kil-bee eerr uh i’m down here in the bar with some divorcees
and i was ah wondrin’ if uh you could uh take one off my hands …
he was very charismatic and quite the ladies man
every night different women would seek him out backstage
strangely none seemed too bizarre for his taste
he had a little sweetie in every town
one morning we checked in some place early on the east coast
it was winter and snow lay on the ground
tv suggested a walk
and we hiked up this hill with a reservoir at the top
it was 630 in the morning and we interrupted something
cos suddenly about 10 big black guys were chasing us
baying for our blood
tv and i ran downhill into the woods
tv was like a thoroughbred horse leaping thru the trees
it was weird to be in such a pickle with a one time idol
anyway the stuff that happened onstage when he joined us was magic
he could coax a million sounds from a guitar trains and birds
and doppler effects and helicopters and guns ..anything..
but you could never see exactly how he did it …he was a true genius
we vaguely planned on recording together but his heart wasnt in it
we bickered over the financial details and that was it
i dont believe it would have worked out anyway
tv had some essential suspicious jokey sarcastic ny schtick
it was hard to get through it
he insulted lembo who was trying to manage him
and lembo couldnt see the financial gain
as opposed to the grief n pain that managing tv would bring
he was ungrateful in spades and just incredibly penny pinching
like a scrooge from brooklyn or something
it was an unnerving mixture
we drifted apart after the tour i never saw him again
marty played on on of ’is solo records
and the church did an insipid uninspired version of friction
funny seeing tv on that show in portugal just filmed lately
that same old cagey grin that same old tom cat jive
jesus what a character
ha ha

hee hee
too bad verlaine and lloyd seem to loath each other. they sure sound good together
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72GLZ-8zQEo

I was trying to think of the right way to describe Lloyd's place in Television, not a co-equal, not a sideman. When he first joined he's said he felt like George (with Hell and Verlaine as John and Paul), but once Hell split it's not like it was really Paul and George. Lloyd seems like the catalyst that made Verlaine's ideas work and turned them into something bigger. Which maybe Verlaine couldn't forgive him for, in a way.

I dunno, it seems Lloyd kept the George role, whereas Verlaine and Smith did different than John and Paul.

or something.

http://static.ow.ly/photos/normal/k1Cs.jpg
saw this in Denver this morning. don't know the band, would be tough to pull off Television, you'd have to have chops!

Hmm, over here they'd have to state, explicitly, that they are 'tribute' acts.

in tiny type, it says Wire Faces Performing As ... though I guess it doesn't say that it's tribute acts to blondie, talking heads et al. would be awesome if someone went to this tiny club thinking they were going to see the ramones, miraculously reunited.

Given the enduring popularity of Hot Topic Ramones & CBGB shirts, it wouldn't actually surprise me to see "The Ramones" -- Marky and a cast of young ringers -- touring state fairs sometime (like the version of Foghat I saw that had only the original drummer, Roger Earl.)

Now you said that, I can just about read it. Usually that's the "Here Goldmid productions presents" line.

Obviously, that's a tribute to Harvey Goldsmith performing as a promoter.

not sure how they're going to play television songs with just three dudes

one of those dudes has four arms though.
i read up a bit on them and i guess they're a little proggy? or at least mars volta-y. whatever, i'm not going.

Given the enduring popularity of Hot Topic Ramones & CBGB shirts, it wouldn't actually surprise me to see "The Ramones" -- Marky and a cast of young ringers -- touring state fairs sometime (like the version of Foghat I saw that had only the original drummer, Roger Earl.)

― Blue Doggie Sweater (Dan Peterson), Thursday, October 27, 2011 3:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

he's been touring around playing a set of Ramones songs w/ a band called Marky Ramone's Blitzkrieg, which i think is totally fine and cool since he's not messing w/ the Ramones name or anything

Some new song I guess by Verlaine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h81L7VrFzro

That's an old Civil War-era folk song. I like the noir-y band arrangement! Maybe an outtake from Songs And Other Things?

Oh god. I only just realised the T of Tom and the V of Verlaine = TV = Television. I am the stupidest person alive.

^^is that supposed to be well-known? Whoa.

After roughly 23 years of Television fandom, that never occured to me.

ha, i think i remember reading an interview w/ either Hell or Verlaine where they said it hadn't occurred to them either! or that the name 'Television' came before Verlaine chose the name Verlaine.

puns that you had missed

i don't even own a television record

The Blow-Up, at least on Roir's once notoriously (but no worse than many a homemade) normal bias lo-fi cassette, was better heard as the earlier vinyl boot Arrow (prob ditto the digital Arrow posted on tylerw's blog, along with several other Television and Tom Verlaine sets). Funny, I was just remembering how their (mostly Verlaine and Lloyd's 70s rep as self-destructive and generally shady was summed up as "an ill-natured hippie band" by Creem's Robert Duncan. And how Buffalo Springfield's June 2011 Bonnaroo "Bluebird" epic (currently on YouTube) reminded me of Neil Young, in a very good way (way better than any of the early Springfield extensions of it I've heard so far, incl the one on Retrospective). Then I came across robertchristgau.com's archived 2004 review of reissued MM and Adventure (each with a worthy bonus track, he says) and Old Walrdorf (which he says sounds a lot better than Blow-Up) and he now (or on then, in '04) thinks Verlaine sounds somewhat like Young and Garcia, though not as "raw" as the former, or "clean" as the latter. Refined and dirty, awright! Though xgau also starts by saying Television were doomed to commercial failure because they didn't sound like anyone before or since (h'mmm, maybe he means the overall effect, incl Verlaine's "strangulated" vocals). Also, extended solos were def not favored in emerging 70s punk/pop orthodoxy/trends.

Oh yeah, the extended Verlaine reissues from a few years back are worth checking too, and the most (?) recently released albums of new material, on Thrill Jockey (but those two should've been pruned and merged into one medium-length set.)