Television

i love how that solo sounds like it is always falling apart...i always think, i can play something that sounds vaguely like that but it never works. and i actually like the way that the solo sounds almost divorced from the backing track, although maybe that was just poor production? anyway, i am sort of obsessed with LJJ right now!

it's a pretty lo-fi recording and the mix is definitely strange. i heard the blow up version of LJJ first and was kind of taken aback by the single on first listen. love it though.
the feelies did the direct plug-in thing a bit on crazy rhythms too -- don't know if it was because they knew television had done it, but i wouldn't be surprised.

Wild Flag opened its Pitchfork fest set with a dead-on "See No Evil."

That bizarro guitar sound, by the way, barely sounds like an electric. I guess it could be or most likely is, but it almost sounds like a nylon string or something, or even a prepared guitar...

Thanks, all. I never thought it might not even be an electric...interesting!

Regarding the Feelies...in the early days, both live and in the studio, and their music was really fierce. You hear the live bootlegs and the pre Crazy Rhythms studio recordings and they're pretty punk rock. Only when it was time to do the LP did they suddenly decide to be really different and do everything direct I think. I think it was an iconoclastic thing where they wanted to be different from everyone else and not sound like another punk rock band. At the time the LP annoyed some of their fans and associates I think, because it didn't represent how they sounded then, and I think now they even have some regret that they didn't keep working the way they had and capture their sound as it was at the time. Of course many of their fans, myself included, think Crazy Rhythms is one of the best and most unique rock records ever.

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

My session guy guitar teacher says this, re: the LJJ sound:

"It's as clean as it gets…… Tele into the board direct? 0.0 effects too…Very present and angular… If it's in an amp, the amp is barely even on…………. "

He also noted it was like a template for the Talking Heads guitar sound.

verlaine's original conception for their debut was to just record live at rudy van gelder's studio, playing live like a jazz group. but i guess the rest of the band (and perhaps elektra) nixed that and they and hired the dude who engineered for led zep and the stones. good decision in the long run, i think.

The story the band tells is that Glyn Johns would have a couple of bottles of wine to start out with, then after he inevitably passed out the group produced themselves.

yeah the liners to the rhino re-ish talk about johns coming in, mic-ing the drums and out comes john bonham's drum sound. and the band is like noooooooo. still would be interesting to hear a bonham sound on marquee moon.

re: the feelies, interesting that terry ork managed them in their early days, as he did w/ television. guy had good taste. there are apparently some feelies "ork sessions" from 1977 that remain unreleased. i found something that was labeled "ork sessions" but they seem to be early live recordings, not studio demos.

also, the intro to "loveless love" seems like an extension of johnny jewel's second part.

The story the band tells is that Glyn Johns would have a couple of bottles of wine to start out with, then after he inevitably passed out the group produced themselves.

Except it was Glyn's brother Andy.

Close enough. Point made.

If some home DJ out there could remix a Bonham sound from Television tracks now, that might well be groovy--but back then, not so much a punk-beyond-punk, in-yo-face move like these cosmic epic solo junkies of CBGB's were already known for--as something ridiculously self-inflated, since Zep was seeming a bit overexposed, to put it mildly (I wuz there, and still liked 'em, but like many younger rockheads ready to give all arena dinosaurs a rest, or at least give Television's Dead x VU missing links a shot). Eno said that his duo albums with Fripp were just guitars plugged directly into the board.

Although he might have messed with the mixes later. Isn't Le Noise board-direct, with Lanois adding at least some effects in real time?

The Beatles' "Revolution" is board-direct, with the distortion coming from the levels in the red.

here's the feelies' glenn mercer on recording direct:
we had a lot of problems getting a good guitar sound in the studio. We tried everything. Different amps, different rooms. Pretty much exhausted everything we could at the studio we were at. Mark Ambel, the co-producer of that record, said "why don't we record the guitar direct and feed them back to an amp when we're ready to mix?" We were scheduled to mix in a better studio. He told us that we'd get a much better sound there. So we were recording the guitars and doing it direct, which is like a rule. NEVER RECORD THE GUITARS DIRECT. It sounded really dry and dead. But we really started actually to like the sound. A lot of the guitars on the record were kept that way. We actually found that when you record direct, it's a little bit closer to your ear. You have the space of the speaker and the ambience of the mike when you're recording it. A lot of what people think are acoustic guitars are just electric guitars recorded direct. A kind of dry sound.

but re: television, yeah i wouldn't change a thing about marquee moon -- to me it's the perfect mix of a minimalist approach and just a straight-ahead 70s classic rock guitar thing.

That Wild Flag video is fantastic.

Do not mix a Bonham drum track onto Marquee Moon. Now!

Another thing making the single of "Little Johnny Jewel" so striking at the time, was having pts.1 & 2, the well-earned confidence of that--like "Tom Joad," which was maybe 7 minutes total, but pt. 1 ended at just the right point, and the whole thing, whole lives, flew by so lucidly (Happy 100th BDay Woody G! Television should cover you someday)

xpost Doubt Le Noise is direct at all (nor does it sound it). Neil loves his amps.

dudes i'm contributing live rarity kinda things to this site now. first up is of course, television: http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2012/09/12/television-live-the-whisky-a-go-go-los-angeles-1977/

cool! this is a great set.

Thanks for the live show...very nice. Kind of interesting cover of "Friction" here, by some ex-no wavers and early indie-rockers. (A few steps required to listen...still trying to get the mp3.)

http://www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/timber-released-unreleased/

article doesn't mention Rick Brown's origins in Information.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/cbgb-drama-rock-club_n_1677947.html

great quote here from Chris Frantz:

I don't think Tom ever recommended any band to play CBGBs and certainly not Talking Heads. I was the one who approached Hilly on our band's behalf. As far as I know, Tom Verlaine has never done a single favor for anyone...not even himself.

hmm, never heard this song covered before. sounds pretty ok
http://soundcloud.com/tennisinc/tennis-guiding-light/s-LJyOL

Foxhole:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=6sCQ0hEYhZE&NR=1

英国音楽 / VINYL JAPAN very proudly presents
【 TELEVISION 】来日決定!!!!!!!
＜TOM VERLAINE / BILLY FICCA / FRED SMITH / JIMMY RIP＞
MAY 02 ( THU ) 下北沢 GARDEN
MAY 03 ( FRI ) 吉祥寺　CLUB SEATA
福岡＆大阪も
詳細は、近日中。

I've never seen that Foxhole clip before. I got chills!

There *should* be a TOTP clip of "Prove It", but it got wiped by the BBC, and for some reason I never saw it at the time.

yeah, that clip is great, tho it always depresses me that there's no other pro shot footage of the band in the 70s.

yeah the foxhole was staple tipsy on youtube viewing for me for some time. but dang, would love to see them doing prove it, or jsut about anything else really from that time, it's a tragedy

those Japan shows are the first ones I've heard of in quite awhile. Two years, maybe even?

yeah they played in south america two years ago? lloyd-less television still seems bizarre...

I saw a Lloyd-less Television in Central Park a few years back. Lackluster.

That Central Park show wasn't very good. Except when they played the new material. I do have confidence that the Rip-for-Lloyd lineup can be great, based off the decades of telepathic interplay verlaine has had with Rip in his solo projects. But if it jells it's gonna be Rip as sound painter for Verlaine's foreground, not a yin/yang like it was with Lloyd.

yeah, ripp is great, the bootlegs from the 80s are fucking incredible. i mean, it basically comes down to verlaine now, whether he's interested in playing or not. maybe without lloyd he'll feel he has a little more to prove? i don't know, that dude doesn't care about anything.

bit harsh, tyler - few years ago i saw verlaine and ripp perform a really nice intimate duo show together (in the 100 Club in London) and he was much more relaxed, happier, engaged than i've ever seen him w/ Television (tho' of course the palpable on-stage tension between him and lloyd did make things v inneresting...)

When he actually gets on a stage or in a studio, he commits. But he really is one of the hardest to motivate motherfuckers in all Manhattan.

ha, yeah, i was just kidding. mostly. verlaine just seems like a hard guy to pin down. i've watched one of those duo shows on youtube and it was great.

And I feel like I get why, just from his body of lyrics. He's such a symbolist that he'd rather just sit around and dream. Actually doing things is way too explicit.

xpost to self

haha, yeah.

meanwhile, here's lloyd's latest missive on facebook:

Here is a link to my blog entitled Yoga, Hypnosis and Gurdjieff. I invite everyone who wishes to participate to simply add comments from which exchanges may form, as crystals form in salt water. "If thy salt is lost it's savor, what good is it - only to throw to the swine and let them trample it underfoot." So please do contribute even if you know nothing of the subjects. There is no better way to learn as to teach, and as teaching is part of my calling, I am at the ready. --Richard Lloyd.

[link doesn't work]

classic

lolll
oh in case anyone didn't get it, this comp of hell-era Television stuff is still available: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/18962115402/television-a-season-in-hell-soooo-heres-a
hell's autobio/memoir is out sometime soon...

weirdness:

Richard Lloyd
This coming Monday, the 14th, the song "Guiding Light" is to be featured in the hit comedy series "How I Met Your Mother" 8 PM Eastern Time. If you are a fan of the show, or of Marquee Moon, from which the song is taken, be sure to watch and enjoy!