Television

the Live at the Waldorf versions of the Adventure stuff is so much better than the album

Absolutely, those songs generally sounded much better on the accompanying tour, although hearing those live recordings later on did make me appreciate Adventure a lot more.

Like a predecessor to 00s Sonic Youth.

― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Tuesday, August 3, 2021 12:02 PM

uhh, yeah. or maybe exactly where all of their ideas came from. jfc.

that was completely awesome and i'm pretty surprised to see there's been no official release of any live material from that era. seems like a no-brainer, but what do i know i'm a stupid asshole.

anything adventure or adventure-related is also very awesome.

That Lloyd interview in Seattle can be depressing. Another excerpt:

Do you view Marquee Moon as an albatross or the gift that keeps on giving?
Both. For Tom, it’s more of an albatross than it is for me. When I left the band in 2007, Television hadn’t put out a record since 1992 and had written eight songs in that whole time. Tom would start a song and he had no lyrics and he didn’t want to sing and he didn’t want to tour and he didn’t want to do this or that. I had a studio where we could have made a reasonably good-sounding record for free. But he didn’t want to use it, and he kept making excuses, even though he would come over and we would spend hours testing microphones. We both had quite a collection of microphones.

So I have an eight-song demo, but with no lyrics. But they sound great.

What’s going to happen to those eight songs?
Nothing.

They’re just going to remain unreleased?
[Voice shifting into high-pitched tone of resignation] Yeeeaaaah, that’s probably the way it’s going to be. Because they’re not my sole property. I can’t just release them as a bootleg.

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Live At The Academy is an official (if poorly distributed) live release documenting the tour following the s/t and it is great

About words from the front
The title song is one my favorite things he ever did and one of my all time favorite guitar solos by anyone. But the rest of the record gives me problems. And the title song is on The Miller’s Tale so I just listen to it there.

it's cluttered

One issue I have with Adventure and the s/t is that Lloyd doesn’t stand out so much on the albums - not just in terms of the solos but all those melodic parts on MM that I don’t think people realise it’s him and not Verlaine

Whether or not that was a conscious thing from Verlaine I don’t know

I think there's plenty of Lloyd on "Adventure"? There's an awful lot of Verlaine too, of course - including on keyboards.

How do Verlaine, etc, make a living day-to-day? I can't imagine the residuals on even MM amount to much.

Lloyd said here that Verlaine is wealthy but he himself needs to supplement his income by teaching guitar: https://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2015/09/09/22834379/ex-television-guitarist-richard-lloyd-on-tom-verlaine-hendrix-music-biz-corruption-and-much-more

that's a fantastic interview

lloyd's book is worth reading. he is a weirdo but it is easy to separate the real stuff from the bs. i had always assumed andy johns was the hero of the sound on marquee moon, but the book makes clear it was verlaine & lloyd. verlaine heatedly talked the producer out of a big drum sound and lloyd added all that double-tracking. lloyd's description of seeing the allmans at the fillmore east made me feel like i was there.

thanks sund4r!

I find it hard to believe Verlaine is "wealthy." Perhaps Lloyd has a different idea of wealthy.

keep in mind lloyd was discussing an era when tv was an active band.

I'm sure Verlaine is a millionaire, which is an easy definition of wealthy

Serious question: what kind of publishing dough would he have earned? Has he licensed any TV tunes?

Lloyd definitely seemed to have grudges there; I take his comments on Verlaine with a grain of salt but it seemed useful wrt Lloyd's own situation. It might be true that Verlaine doesn't have a day job, though. Aiui, he's done a few film scores and played on a number of records by other people?

Bowie covered "Kingdom Come" on Scary Monsters which probably helped, he also produced that Jeff Buckley record among other guest sports & covers etc. I don't know what makes a musician rich these days but it certainly doesn't seem like he feels the need to tour for money or anything like that.

I've seen Lloyd solo a couple times and it has always been smaller-scale affairs

i would imagine he's made most of his $ recently on touring and not publishing. but if he alone has the publishing for Television, it's not a huge sum but it ain't nothing.

Verlaine was a private school kid, i.e. like many rockers, he already had some money.

Just a guess...but probably not far from truth. How do you think so many of those indie rock bands afforded to put out boodles of 7"s when they were like 19-21.

https://networthpost.org/net-worth/tom-verlaine-net-worth/

Yeah, he went to prep school - but also ran away from it and changed his name; do we know that he was still living off family money in adulthood?

verlaine heatedly talked the producer out of a big drum sound and lloyd added all that double-tracking

Interesting. When Johns died, DeRogatis claimed the opposite during a memoriam on his WBEZ Sound Opinions show. His claim was that Johns recorded without the big drum sound, and then when the band complained in detail, he immediately "got it" and did for them what he did for John Bonham on Led Zeppelin's records. Personally it sounds like he split the difference on the final result - it's probably a bigger drum sound than what I'm used to on punk records from that era (thinking of when the drums kick off the last verse in "Marquee Moon") but it's not what you'd hear on John Bonham's kit.

Old, but in 1993:

"I would do one in a minute," says Verlaine of another Television album, but he doesn't sound concerned; he already makes what he calls "a decent living" from royalties, mostly publishing rights on his own and Television's recordings, although "when Bowie covered a song that helped a lot, actually." (Bowie recorded "Kingdom Come," from Verlaine's first solo album, on his "Scary Monsters," which was recently rereleased.) A few more checks should come in with the reissue of "Dreamtime," "Words From the Front" and "Cover," the three Verlaine albums originally on Warner Bros. in the United States; that deal may also lead to the American debut of "The Wonder," the 1990 album that never got released here because, Verlaine claims, his U.K. label never informed his U.S. one that the disc was finished.

Verlaine lived in Britain in the mid-'80s, and although he and Television are more popular over there -- the band's first post-reunion gigs were in Europe -- the singer/songwriter soon soured on the British music business. "Everything had to sound like what was on the radio that week," he remembers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1993/02/26/tom-verlaines-re-visions/2feaf2ba-8fb7-4b2a-b911-03fb156ecd93/

i gave the book back to my brother so i can't double-check, but from what i recall he said that andy johns spent a week setting up the drum sound before they even arrived at the studio. then when verlaine heard it he spent all night yelling at andy johns to get rid of it.

My post revive inspired by a terrific Musician interview from fall '92. The four members were interviewed.

Those stories about Johns are here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.uncut.co.uk/features/the-story-of-television-by-richard-lloyd-71368/4/%3famp

Tbh, I always imagined Lloyd was embellishing them a little.

Musician interview from fall '92

I am really bummed Musician is not really available online. Was a great source of info back in the day

Yeah, I'll take Lloyd's word over DeRogatis on this one. There's just too much detail in there for Lloyd to get it wrong (the drum sound part at least), and there's no reason why he'd lie or make it up.

I am really bummed Musician is not really available online. Was a great source of info back in the day

― a (waterface),

You can find copies on eBay cheap!

Well, the stories are pretty flattering to Lloyd and also position the band in opposition to this out-of-touch decadent rocker but I'm sure they're at most exaggerations of the truth.xp

Putting on the CD of Marquee Moon, it really does sound beautifully clean and the double-tracked guitars are standing out. I see what you mean about John's splitting the difference, bird.

*Johns

Taking a week to setup drum sounds seems like lunacy anyway. People used to be so crazy.

Wait, Lloyd said Johns did it in a night. If anything, he repeatedly describes Johns as a bit lazy rather than obsessively meticulous.

The first day in the studio came in November 1976. We had a 2pm start. Andy was nowhere in sight. Finally, about 4.30pm, he came traipsing in. He said, “I came in yesterday, to see what the place was like, and… I can’t work here!” He started listing all the technical tools these old studios didn’t have. We tried to calm him down. Finally, grudgingly, Andy said, “Well, I did manage to set the drums up last night. Got a good sound. Wanna hear it?”

He put on this tape he’d made. And, by God, from the speakers came this humongous, pumped-up John Bonham drum sound. Tom started freaking out. “No! No, no, no, no, no! We don’t want that! You need to take that apart!”

Andy was outraged. “Well, why did you hire me? That’s what I’m famous for. Fuck this! I’m getting a flight back!”

i might have exaggerated by citing a week. i was working on memory, having read the book a few weeks ago.

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My theory for how Verlaine gets by is he has one of those rent control moved in in 1985 kind of situations… if not, 700,000 is not wealthy for nyc (NB I sure wish my net worth was 700,000)
This still doesn’t tell me what the fuck he does all day long though
—smoke
—tune guitars
—watch TCM
—go to the strand
—???

You could ask the same of so many musicians.

I read something about him haunting used bookstores.

Are those "net worth" sites even remotely credible?

I read something about him haunting used bookstores.

Yeah, the poignant last chapter in Richard Hell's memoir involves Hell running into Verlaine for the first time in years - he was outside of the Strand going through their dollar book bins.

Are those "net worth" sites even remotely credible?

A former roommate of mine who's just a paralegal is on there - I don't know why, but regardless, if their "net worth" was anywhere close to what was listed, they sure aren't spending it.

I have recently retrieved a shit ton of Musicians from storage: I have every issue from 1989 through 1993, and a bunch throughout the 80s and a few going forward from 94… if anyone wants me to hunt for something in a piece during that period or see if I have an issue that their interested in, shoot!

I was an intern for the mag in the early 90s, and it is super interesting to look at these things now… a lot of it is influenced by my interactions with the people who ran the mag, a few of whom I dislike, and when Lord Soto mentions the high boomer, late 80s armani-rock movement, as he has often done lately, Musician pushed the SHIT out of that stuff…more than Rolling Stone… Clapton all the time! Amused to Death, Tin Machine II, Human Touch/Lucky Town, the Soul Cages, the first Robertson album and On Every Street are all hailed as major major works…not to mention Jesus Jones and World Party being held up as the great white guy hopes…

"i might have exaggerated by citing a week."

Not really out of bounds of old school big label budget records though. You could run probably run a small space program on 70s-80s on studio block out time paid for artists that decided to do drugs or fxk off instead of actually making music. A couple I have read about include the Church making Starfish with Waddy Wachtel and the Chili Peppers making their record with George Clinton.

back when wfmu held their fundraising record shows in manhattan, verlaine would always pop in to browse. he did not like strangers acknowledging him, but he seemed to have certain buddies behind certain tables. so...

- buying cheap used records.

Speaking of The Church, Steve Kilbey's autobiography includes some good Tom Verlaine anecdotes. He toured with them (early '90s, IIRC) as their support act, which was a big deal for them as he was a major musical hero. Verlaine's parents were invited backstage at a show near their home, and his mom implored Kilbey to "make sure Tom eats properly".

"Here's a bag of horse."

What was the last example from the boomer/"Armani rock" era that had critical and commercial success, rather than being seen as nostalgia or as a comeback? Ten Summoner's Tales?