Television

Postcard from Waterloo is based on an old Televsion song (never recorded?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0yfoIa_Wgg

This thread much more fun than some others right now.

re: that early stuff, here's a Richard Hell-era Television comp I put together way back when. Cool, weird, raw sounds! https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/149945081937/television-a-season-in-hell-sunday-re-up-ive

I like the track "Coming Apart" on 'Words on the Front", it doesn't really fit but then none of the tracks seem to fit with any of the other tracks on that album.

Verlaine's vocals are so weird on Words (and a lot of his solo stuff in general). Sometimes his approach works, but often it seems like he's reaching for something and not quite getting there. Actually, his last vocal album from 2006 might have his most pleasing singing on it, a little more relaxed and warm.

(and I say all that thinking that he can be a really fantastic singer sometimes. I read someone call him the christopher walken of rock once and I can kind of see that)

That Hell-era comp, shambling, ragged, is some of my favorite music ever, you get a sense of how thrilling they must have been even early on, this weird unholy mix of both Hell's & Veraline's approaches, and while it is clear the combination could never last there is something so charming & naive about them without being cloying, it feels so light and almost goofy

totally. that early 1974 clip that surfaced last year is just amazing in its all-out strangeness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLlhYiN4gmU

I like this bit from Zach Lipez:

"I can’t imagine what it was like for Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell when they were getting started; to have a weird voice, and wanting to sing for a band in NYC, without the advantage of being able to just rip off Tom Verlaine or Richard Hell."

https://zacharylipez.ghost.io/eight-unfinished-essays-on-marquee-moon/

I found the book I managed to buy off the Strand carts that one time. I paid 48 cents for it.

Just put on the remastered Marquee Moon cd after not seeing it for a while. It's totally fuzzing out. Very distorted.
So am just wondering if anybody else experienced that with this version.
Don't want to get another copy to find out this was a widespread thing.

Shame, thought I'd finally got around to sticking some of him on. But just get what sounds like a cloud of fuzz accompanying then replacing the sound. I think other 2 discs on 3 changer are ok.

Need to find my Miller's Tale set I think.

I'd swap the three discs around, tbh

i realized that one reason i love television so much as they stand at the nexus of pretty much everything i love in rock music - late 60s jamming, bratty garage rock, punk, art rock, prog, crazy horse, post punk, dylan, jazz, no wave skronk...like they are kind of the center

Hey so what Verlaine should I lichen to if I've only heard Television?

listen, lol

The first two solo albums and Cover.

Miller's Tale is a good compilation with a live set on 2nd disc. Not sure how widely available it is but it was a good introduction at teh time I think anyway. THink I had been aware of him for a while when I got it.

and find as many live boots as you can (TV included). There are many scattered around the interwebs.

Also many fine TV live sets like this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFEU1yXTf8w

Such a shame taht there isn't a rest of teh set from the OGWT clip of Foxhole. There is so much more of teh reunion on film and there's even more of the Richard Hell lineup than classic era classic lineup.

I haven't been able to find The Miller's Tale for years.

Just looked around at prices for it and they are going up on what I payed for it quite a bit.
Not sure exactly when i got it though, may have been through CDConnection in 2003 but could be wrong.

i got mine at the sadly defunct subterranean records owned by the sadly deceased guitarist from winter hours. every time i walked in they were guaranteed to be playing some tv live tape. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/nyregion/thecity/vinyl-idling.html

Just put on the remastered Marquee Moon cd after not seeing it for a while. It's totally fuzzing out. Very distorted.
So am just wondering if anybody else experienced that with this version.
Don't want to get another copy to find out this was a widespread thing.

I don't have it anymore, but I didn't like the remaster - it sounded heavy on the compression, which is a shame because the old CD had one or two mistakes like clipping off the first note of "See No Evil."

I actually tweaked the old CD, restoring that missing note with some editing, then smoothed out the top end just a touch. (The album was always a bright sounding recording. I only dropped like 2 db at 10k.)

Yeah, when I got "Miller's Tale" I ended up paying double the "new" price, whereas I was hoping for half.

subterranean is one of my top five favorite record store ever……in the 90s, I didn't do much other than hunt around record stores downtown and so I was in the that place al the time… and yeah, it would be verlaine/TV/lloyd or Richard Thompson/Fairport over the speakers, always…you are referring to the guy that didn't have the most alabaster complexion, right TSF? he's dead?

I was there a lot, esp the summer in college when I lived in the NYU dorms just down the street. I remember like, vintage patti smith poster on the ceiling or something, was def a classic NYC punk holdout.

Yeah, great shop — I think I bought the classic Television boot Double Exposure there someteim in the late 90s. Carlucci passed away in 2015: https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/winter-hours-michael-carlucci-death-6746383/

Listened to Cover for the first time (and the second time). It's super satisfying in some kind of weird, like, accesibility sense. No way I'd consider it synthpop, but the keys are there, and also lots of reverb in parts that feel make the songs really feel not-like-Television for me.

The guitar repetition in Lindi Lu sounds like something a synthpop band would do with the synth lol. Way more enjoyable than I'd anticipated.

So. 5 miles of you sounds exactly like a Bill Nelson song. A really really good one. So does the opening of traveling.

Right? "Cover" really took me by surprise when I finally sat down with it. Still not entirely sold on "Flash Light" though it does have it's moments.

I really loved the first Verlaine album, not so much the second one, and I'm currently enjoying Cover. Wow is it Talking Heads-y though...I know that was rife and that there was some mutual influence there, but I never really got that from Television tbh.

Or rather, I can see how Television might have had an effect on David Byrne, but I never really heard it going the other way until now.

It is odd, it’s like what i wish Nelson would always sound like, but nelson did it in 1980, so he should sue. But like, it’s better, so props, Tom.

If u dont know what i mean listen to Quit Dreaming … by Nelson.

Clarification: nelson, who was awkward with lyrics, would never lyricize as terribly as Verlaine’s Miss Emily. Maybe TV was taking the piss the whole way thru because he was _that talented_ idk.

Clarification: nelson, who was awkward with lyrics, would never lyricize as terribly as Verlaine’s Miss Emily. Maybe TV was taking the piss the whole way thru because he was _that talented_ idk.

Clarification: nelson, who was awkward with lyrics, would never lyricize as terribly as Verlaine’s Miss Emily. Maybe TV was taking the piss the whole way thru because he was _that talented_ idk.

Clarification: nelson, who was awkward with lyrics, would never lyricize as terribly as Verlaine’s Miss Emily. Maybe TV was taking the piss the whole way thru because he was _that talented_ idk.

Holy shit i’m in the mtns and that’s so fucked, 😔

lol

Almost kinda weird that TV never guested on a Sonic Youth album?

this one (which is great) has ranaldo and shelley on it (plus nels cline)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8blDM3XqVg

That whole soundtrack's pretty cool. It's probably my favorite compilation/album of Dylan covers by a large margin.

yeah definitely more hits than misses

Wow, that's really great. I've gathered up his b-sides, does he have many tracks exclusive to compilations?

i think the discography on this site pretty much covers it.
http://www.thewonder.co.uk/facts/index.htm

Listening to 'Warm and Cool' on youtube now, it's sick. Billy Ficca on drums. Sometimes it sounds like nothing so much as a John Scofield album, other times skronky free improv.

Anyone know why his Thrill Jockey records are out-of-print/not streaming? Seems weird, maybe that's what he wanted, or a money dispute?

I’m surprised at how much I warmed to Flash Light after several listens— meh, meh, meh, eh this just ain’t it, hmm, aright, and then BAM i love this. The expanded guitar sound finally sounded more verlaine-normal or something to me.

I came to this album after decades of MM and stray other stuff. From listen one I could hear his playing in this, but the mor atmospherics just didn’t work. Until they totally did. What a nice thing.

Now I wonder what it would have been like if I’d heard this one first. Would I have had the reverse difficulty going the other direction? I must have, I think.

richard hell in the new yorker:

Were you in touch with Verlaine before he died, recently?

No. I never recovered from what felt to me at the time like a total betrayal. Our relationship was really complex. We were so close, but it always makes me think of how I once got a postcard from Ted Berrigan advertising a reading he was doing with Ron Padgett, and on the postcard he said, “Ron and I hate each other as only best friends can.” And then, when that thing happened with that split, it just, it was final. When I would see him, I would invariably come away thinking, He just rubs me the wrong way. Even though he was my best friend, and in lots of ways we had more in common than anybody else in my life. Those are the most impressionable years; they’re when you’re forming, and, if you shared that experience with someone you’re with constantly, it’s eternal. It doesn’t go away. So I still have that feeling of brotherhood with him, even though I couldn’t stand being in his presence. But there was a funny thing that happened right after he died. There was this little book about graffiti at CBGB, and I wrote an introduction for it, and, within the first couple of days after Verlaine died, I’d be looking for references to what happened, and I came across this tweet, which the editor of the book who approached me to write the intro tweeted. When he was doing this book, he first approached Verlaine to write the intro, and Verlaine demurred, but said to him, “I can’t stand the guy, but you gotta get Richard Hell.” [Laughs.] And that gave me a really good feeling. Because it was the same for me, about him.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/how-richard-hell-found-his-vocation

aw damn.