Television

i guess i'd be more interested in finding out how the band feel about touring on just three recorded albums' worth of material, with the most widely-appreciated stuff from an album that is 39 years old. does it get boring? do they wish they'd recorded more? would they do it if they didn't need the money? do they need the money?

don't know the answer to those questions, but here's what fred smith does when he's not bass-ing for Television: http://cereghinosmith.com/

awesome - i love it when rock stars age and start getting into esoteric shit, like roger daltrey's fish farm or neil young's model train obsession. and lincvolt. and pono.

Saw an interview where Verlaine said that if Jimmy Rip was living near him, and not in Argentina now, that Jimmy would likely have encouraged him to record. Verlaine introduced one song as being one of his earliest tunes that never made it to a recording, and then added, maybe we will record it the next time we go into a studio.

Television has had new material in setlists since the early 00s (as I've probably noted before in this very thread), but it seems like Verlaine is deeply disinterested in actually putting any of it out. Crazy that his last solo record is a decade old now. That old tune he mentioned is "I'm Gonna Find You" the original of which you can find on that Season In Hell comp. It's good!

Their new record, per Ripp, is pretty much tracked but does not have finished vocals. This was the state of things like... 2 years ago? I'm not holding my breath but I'm not hopeless either.

x-post --Can't remember where I read that, but I also saw this Jimmy Rip interview:

And are you working on anything new?
The first year I was in the band we recorded like seventeen songs that are still sitting on a hard drive. I think Tom pulls them out every once in a while and works on them a little bit. They sound really good, they sound just like Television. We're just waiting for Tom to finish them. There's a really good record there, we play a couple of new songs every show.

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/jimmy-rip-new-york-punk-legends-television

They've been doing that long "Persia" song for awhile now

ha, yeah that song is 20 years old now!
i'd welcome a new Television album ... I like all their records.

new album, reportedly? called "sleep all day"? on RedMusic/SuperEgo?

unless the post to the television forum was an april fools joke? in which case, i took the bait.

I'm assuming it's a 4/1 thing until proven otherwise

Check it tomorrow.

haha, yeah, probably a april fools joke ...
however, i think this is real:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8RZZrgW0AA6QOb.jpg:large
http://www.everythingiscombustible.com/

Funny that , just listening to a Tom Verlaine '84 show when I saw this thread.
Also just been reminded that there was a book about the band that came out about 10 years ago. & I'd stuck it on my Amazon wish list then forgotten about it until a couple of days back.
Sonic Transmission by Tim Mitchell. Anybody read it? Is it any good?

I belatedly thought of checking for sonic transmissions on the kindle store and it's on there (last time I looked for it I was on a Nook). I downloaded the free sample chapter. Will report back. Apprently there's a missing chapter from the kindle edition though?

i haven't read it -- i picked it up in a bookstore a long time ago and was kind of annoyed by the pages I read (can't remember why though). maybe i was just in a bad mood. Bryan Waterman's 33 1/3 on Marquee Moon is probably the best thing I've read on the band.

yeah that and the television section in From the Velvets to the Voidoids

new album, reportedly? called "sleep all day"? on RedMusic/SuperEgo?

― Thus Sang Freud, Saturday, 1 April 2017 19:04 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't know about an April1, more likely a speculative from (quite a few) years ago.

that should be a good read. he's supposed to be one really weird dude

lloyd? yeah the memoir should be bonkers.

i paid for lloyd's 'alchemical guitarist' tutorial videos a while back and they're totally incomprehensible but clearly he's spent a lot of time and energy on this occult system of music. wish i could get on his wavelength.

I "follow" Lloyd on Facebook and he's a, uh, unique character

my friend took lessons with him for a couple of years here and he definitely garnered a lot from it

i see he's playing at bowery electric pretty soon

meanwhile
http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/richard-hell-confessions-of-a-book-collector-9824490

It only took me six years to get around picking up the 33-1/3 book. I kind of got burned out on that series as too many were dull slogs for me, including Lethem's Fear of Music. This one is great though. I like how part of it is investigative research to show the conflicting differences in the various accounts, interviews, oral histories and myth making.

So looks like Richard Lloyd has a new book out

I read Lloyd's book. Lots of funny stories about his escapades--the best one involves his driving a car up on a sidewalk, getting the front wheel caught somehow on a wire and having the car hang perpendicular. His account of making Marquee Moon is really good, and in general it's fine. He discounts the third Television album, but I think it sounds great these days and the live footage I've seen of them playing that material is just great, and saw them in NYC on that tour in '92. Saw him play Nashville--he lives in Chattanooga now--last summer and also thought he was superb, tho he can't exactly sing. I even like Rosedale, his last solo album, kinda has a basic rock 'n' roll edge that reminds me of late Hendrix and, on some cuts, ZZ Top if they'd been junkies in the Bowery in 1977. Quite credible album.

Thanks. Wonder how it will stack up next to Grant & I

I have tickets to see him in New Haven in a few months. I have no idea what to expect.

I like the third TV album a great deal.

Why Rosedale? It’s not named after place in Queens is it?

I always thought his tune “Misty Eyes” was based on “Love Is Strange” by Mickey and Sylvia.

On Lloyd's Facebook page, someone posted : Terry Ork was such a Genius & very much ahead of his time ! Richard , can you shed some light on what it was like to work with him ???

His response: Just read my book, with an Amazon link.

He also posts Youtube videos of musicians he likes such as blues guitarist Magic Sam.

Why Rosedale? It’s not named after place in Queens is it?

I always thought his tune “Misty Eyes” was based on “Love Is Strange” by Mickey and Sylvia.

― Some Dusty in Here (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, February 5, 2018 9:44 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think it's a reference to "crossroads" as done by the cream

Guys, Rosedale is a town in Mississippi, in the delta, on the river. Down Highway 1. It's in Robert Johnson's song. Lloyd's album is quite listenable--the songs are good and the playing really is "Dolly Dagger"-era Hendrix gone gaga. He did all of side 1 of Marquee Moon. Lloyd's one of the most free-jazz of electric guitarists but he keeps it such control. He even did "Number Nine" and "Thought You Wanted to Know." I'd seen him w/ Television and with Rocket from the Tombs, so it was just great to stand close and watch his hands. The only mistake in his book I found is "Fred Marr" for "Fred Maher," so I assume it was dictated--but who was reading the proofs? I'm with Alfred Soto, though, the third TV album is underrated. I'm also a fan of Verlaine's schneideries and find him droll and wonderful--Dreamtime is a marvelous album, one of the most New York records ever made.

that is, he did Marquee when I saw him in 2017.

I rate the third TV album very very highly myself. My favorite solo Tom is Flashlight. The drum sound may be dated but in terms of guitar thinking and lyric writing it's the best thing he did after MM.

Songs and Other Things is also great musically and lyrically but something bothers me about the mix. Live, those songs killed.

This might have been the first thing I read about Television: "Somebody Somewhere Must Stand Naked," by Patti Smith, in the October 1974 issue of Rock Scene, Lisa & Richard Robinson's pulp mag (invaluable resource for a po' little boy down in the boondocks, where Creem never seemed to be on the same newsstand twice, and you had to trek to Collegetown to get the Voice) http://www.thewonder.co.uk/rckscene.htm
After it was published, a bunch of UK crits and musos flew to NYC---hopefully it turned out better than when Clive Barnes sent Paul Simon to scope, whereupon, according to Creem, "in an all-time classic fuckup, they picked that night to play the whole show dead drunk." Aw how bad/unusual could that have been? Anyway, Eno did produce them demos of course, and maybe the Smith vision->night flight helped that to happen.

Another piece preserved by The Wonder: Trouser Press ed. Ira Robbins writing for a 2001 issue of Mojo, going way back in there for quite a while (in which Lloyd mentions the Penthouse mention that led to a bunch of orders for the Ork single, when mailorder rock was quite a novelty; I was certainly too much of a wuss to try it---think this skin mag piece was the Tosches show review I read, with a mention of Sonny Sharrock, another first for me):
http://www.thewonder.co.uk/mojo.htm

(Skin mags were another handy boondocks music resource; some of xgau's contributions are on his site.)

https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2018/02/08/richard-lloyd-the-aquarium-drunkard-interview/

Guy I know is playing bass with Richard Lloyd but unfortunately I am going to have to miss the show.

when is it?

Tomorrow at Bowery Ballroom. Tonight in New Haven.

bowery electric, i think you mean. he's also playing for free at the hoboken arts festival in may. (as are dream syndicate.)

his latest record rosedale is pretty good. you need to suspend disbelief, a little bit -- he has embraced his terrible vocals to a point where they almost become a feature. the songs are tightly wound and well constructed with some almost stonesy layering of guitars in spots. billy ficca plays on most of the tracks, chris frantz on a couple. there's one where ficca channels his inner mitch mitchell.

ooh did not know about ficca being on there!! Is he in the live band that's playing tonight?

No, this guy: https://www.codenycmag.com/kevin-tooley

ficca and fred smith must be very chill dudes to have put up with the two television guitarists over the decades

Indeed.

And yes the correct venue is The Bowery Electric.