Television

oh great i misspell competent

You substituted an A for Angular.

haha that's one of those words that makes me stop reading a review. unless patti smith says it or something.

Xpost days on the mountain is really fucking cool on the live CD2 of The Miller’s Tale

Also the title track of words from the front is top 5 verlaine with a holy shit guitar solo

BLIINNNNDDD
(shreds)

oh shit yes! how could i forget

Upon the ridge they're dug in deep
We move in waves as if asleep
And there they lay, 4000 men
The general orders, "Attack again"

One of my all time favorite lyrics

Loving the sister ray vibe of the Ain’t that nuthin’ run through on the Rhino compilation.

"A Town Called Walker" boasts "It's not their tricks that I mind/it's just the way they say 'We' all the time," another killer.

My favorite later song of his is "All Weirded Out".

From that album, I think I have to go with documentary, nice actress lovebird asylum seeker and the earth is in the sky

It’s basically an excellent 10 track album that has more than 10 tracks

The solo from The Dream's Dream has been running through my mind all weekend and still won't shift. That's OK.

loool

pic.twitter.com/UsQT48307I

— Marc Masters 🌵 (@Marcissist) January 30, 2023

loool

pic.twitter.com/UsQT48307I

— Marc Masters 🌵 (@Marcissist) January 30, 2023

amazing!

Well yeah.

lol
funny thing is that Verlaine probably hated being lumped in with "punk" as much as he did with the Dead.

was he a Dead fan? I see people say that they were influenced by the Dead but Deadheads basically claim everything was influenced by the Dead...I always thought some of the further out jams of Quicksilver Messenger Service feel way more proto-Television

of course he might have been a Dead and just got sick of the comparison

Richard Lloyd was definitely into the Dead, he said he saw them a bunch at the Fillmore East in the early 70s. Verlaine, I kind of doubt it, he always said he didn't really have "rock" influences (which is slightly bullshit, but I think it's true that he was more of a jazz guy).

he liked the yardbirds. and 50s tunes with cool production and sounds. a friend once saw him walking down the street holding an album and ventured "hey tom, what record you got there?" tom murmured "everly brothers" and kept walking.

yeah — this WFMU show with him DJ-ing is worth a listen: https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/17652

(maybe someone already posted it here)

thanks that all scans lloyd vs. verlaine in terms of the dead as well as the yardbirds and 50s stuff

did he ever say whether he liked fairport or not? things like the solo in 'sloth' are some the most proto-television moments i can think of

i think he did end up liking Richard Thompson but professed not to having heard Fairport until after Television broke up. Adventure definitely has some Thompson-esque moments.

Flipping through my social media feeds this weekend, there was a point where I started to feel like I was the only American who didn't run into him book shopping.

Seriously though, the outpouring of love and appreciation was really nice to see. Always kind of held out hope for another Television record someday. Ah well.

should also probably mention the Richard Hell comp Spurts which has two Neon Boys songs, one being an early version of "Love Comes in Spurts" in which you can really hear the VU/Electric Dylan influences at the fore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvvh1UZFB68

there allegedly is one in the can, or at least jimmy rip has said something to that effect, but i am not sure what stage of completeness it is in and which guitarists do or don't play on it.

i think some recordings existed before richard lloyd left.

the way i understand it, all that was left to do for a 4th television album was for Verlaine to write lyrics / record vocals. Don't think he ever did, sadly, but I'd love to be proven wrong. On those latter-day tunes that were performed live, you can tell he's singing placeholder lyrics a lot of the time.

i wish jimmy rip had a different name

yeah this is someone on the hoffman forum:

My recollection is that Lloyd kept bothering Tom to get going on recording but Tom resisted. In 2007 both sides had finally had enough.

Ripp replaced him immediately, and suddenly Tom became interested in making another Television album.

In about 2008 the tracks were recorded. They were "complete" except for vocals and Tom's guitar solos. The lyrics and melodies were never actually finalized, let alone recorded.

And that's where the project has been stalled ever since. All there is, is about a dozen backing tracks that probably no-one would be that interested in hearing twice.

I mean, yeah, that whole "except for vocals and Tom's guitar solos" significantly reduces my interest in hearing them.

I'd like to hear them at least once!
I said way upthread that their Rhino Handmade CD of Old Waldorf and download were both OOP, but Amazon digital says otherwise (also still has equally splendid RH of Beefheart at My Father's Place, I'm Going To Do What I Wanna Do, so hopefully the Handmade Fugs as well), also OW with first two studio albs as The Complete Elektra Recordings. WLIR My Father's Place show back once again as Live...Long Island 1978.

Speaking of the Yardbirds, this is from Greil Marcus's eyewitness report (Brixton, '66), posted by birdwistheword on the Jeff Beck thread):

They were both explosive and careful, anarchic and precise. It was an unstable combination of values and it seemed to make every song feel like a risk, where anything could happen.

compared *Verlaine's* and/or Lloyd's sound, that is.

patti's tribute:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/he-was-tom-verlaine

maybe this has already been posted but i hadn't seen it before...

sorry, i can’t help recommending this italian interview tonite – sorry if you already know ithttps://t.co/K3xnItSFd5

— ms2 (@marco_ms2) January 30, 2023

p.s. the second half of that clip is a live marquee moon and is an absolute treat for people who wanna watch what tom's hands are doing

also the wire are making alan licht's 2006 interview with him available for free for the next month...

Tom Verlaine (13 December 1949–28 January 2023)

Tom Verlaine died on 28 January aged 73. Read Alan Licht’s 2006 cover story on the Television guitarist and singer free in our online library:https://t.co/tZTGj33b4c

— The Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) January 30, 2023

Oh that patti piece
Tears are streaming rn

goddammit patti <3 ;_;

yeah, that Patti piece is a tearjerker. When she's good, she's good! wow.

really moving, wow

In his final hours, watching him sleep, I travelled backward in time. We were in the apartment, and he cut my hair, and some pieces stuck out this way and that, so he called me Winghead. In the years to follow, simply Wing. Even when we got older, always Wing. And he, the boy who never grew up, aloft the Omega, a golden filament in the vibrant violet light.

"Winghead" is in "Little Johnny Jewel", how about that?

That interview / performance .

nice piece by dean wareham:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/31/encounters-with-tom-verlaine/

I think that's a picture of Lloyd in Couterpunch article. It's a nice read though.

His friend Patti Smith said somewhere that Verlaine “plays lead guitar with angular inverted passion like a thousand bluebirds screaming” — but that says more about her than it does about him.

lol ouch

Yes and no