The drug of a nation

So the 1970's punk/new wave supergroup reunion I'm actually excited about happens tomorrow -- Television is playing Central Park Summerstage. For free. Hopefully with Richard Lloyd, although I'm very saddened (and a bit disturbed) to learn about his recent health troubles. Although Television only released two records (both of them gems) back in the day, they have been getting together again off and on since '92. But this Central Park hit was supposed to be Richard Lloyd's farewell to Television, so I sincerely hope he's well enough to make it out for at least a couple of tunes. That said, dude's just coming off eight days of intensive care, so I doubt anyone will hold it against him if he decides to sit this one out. Get well, Richard.

Anyway, it's recently come to my attention that a lot of you jazzy/new music types don't necessarily know about Television. They are basically responsible for kicking off the scene at CB's in the 1970's, but I guarantee you they don't sound anything like the speedy, sloppy sound you probably associate with early New York punk. First off, they were all virtuoso players -- Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine are bona-fide guitar heroes, but not in the overwrought post-Jimmy Page shredder mode, or in the proggy, heady Robert Fripp mode either. Both of them found new ways to solo that were less about flash and more about slow burn. But their sinewy, intertwining rhythm parts are really where it's at -- the classic example being the long-short chordal stabs vs. the back-and-forth double-stop sixteenths that open "Marquee Moon." (Did I mention that this song, their biggest "hit," is ten minutes long? Did I mention they are considered a punk band?)

Here are some of my favorite bits from Alan Licht's awesome liner notes for the reissue of Marquee Moon:

Verlaine wanted to work with Rudy Van Gelder, who'd recorded dozens of classic Blue Note jazz records in his small studio in New Jersey. This was perhaps too out of left field for even a CBGB band, so Fred Smith played a bunch of Stones and Zeppelin records for Verlaine and told him the same guy, Andy Johns, recorded all of them.

[...]

Lloyd remembers Andy's introduction to Television's aesthetic:

We got to the studio on 48th St. Andy wasn't there... but the drums were set up -- we were wondering about that. A long time later Andy comes in and says, "Sorry I'm late. I came in early yesterday and set the drums up; let me play it for you." He plays the tape of the drums. All of a sudden out of the speakers comes the John Bonham drum sound, that huge, compressed, smacked sound. Tom shook his head and said, "No, no, no, no, no, you've got to take all that down -- that's got to go. We don't want that drum sound." And Andy was flabbergasted, saying, "I thought you hired me for that. That's my trademark. So what the hell am I doing here?" We said, "We want a dry sound, no reverb, no giant compression -- nice, tight, smaller kit." Andy didn't know what to make of it. We said, "We hired you because you did all these great guitar records and because you're a master engineer." And that kind of softened him a bit. "Oh, it's a New York thing, right? Like a Velvets thing, right?" he said, undoing all the things he had done and starting over again.

[...]

One of the reasons for this is Lloyd's skill at developing written-out solos "that had a melody and a plot... a kind of playwriting." He was also fond of The Beatles' use of double-tracked vocals and wanted to transfer it to lead guitars, "instead of using chorus or delay." So, with his solos already worked out, he adeptly double-tracked them. Andy tried to convince Tom to double-track his solos too, but it was too difficult for Verlaine to remember what he had exactly played, given his spontaneous approach. The enduring quality of the Verlaine/Lloyd guitar teaming is due to the effective contrast of their techniques."

[...]

The song ["Venus"] starts off with a sped-up tango beat and shifts into an almost classical, cascading dual guitar figure that Tom wrote on piano. "I thought two guitars could be the left and right hand of a piano, so that concept was different for a guitar band."

[...]

Marquee Moon closes with "Torn Curtain," perhaps the moodiest song on either Television record. Verlaine's concept was a ballad with "weird chords, because the song before is like a '50s major-chord song and I wanted this contrast. I heard some Stravinsky in the '70s 'cause some guy in a club said, 'God, you guys sound like Stravinsky.' So I went and bought three Stravinsky records for a dollar apiece, and I still had no idea what this guy was talking about [laughs], except for these weird chords."

Interested now? Okay, here is a pretty good video someone has made to accompany the alternate take of "Marquee Moon":

Comments

[Amanda Marcotte]

1.

What I love about Television is they are solid evidence that punk was more an attitude towards music than a specific sound. Now people tend to describe something as "punk" if it has a very specific pop punk sound to it. Which I like---you probably don't so much---but leaves out the entire wave of experimentation that came in the wake of punk rock.

[DJA]

2.

Amanda, you are -- as usual -- totally on point. The early New York punk bands were actually an incredibly diverse bunch. I mean, musically, what the hell do Television, Patti Smith, Blondie, the Ramones, the New York Dolls, the Voidoids, and Talking Heads have in common, other than they all happened to be on the same scene at the same time? Even the occasionally overlapping personnel (Richard Hell, etc.) didn't seem to create much in the way of musical commonality.

You're also right that after the 1970's, what people meant by "punk" narrowed to a kind of aggressively stripped-down hardcore post-Ramones sound, and the more pointy-headed CB's bands like Television and Talking Heads don't really sound very "punk" by today's standards.

But you know where my loyalties lie...

[Dan]

3.

Marquee Moon was definitely a huge album for my own personal music listening habits. I always wondered if their sense of layering and dropping parts in and out owed anything to dub and reggae, since lots of other bands around that time were absorbing similar influences. It's true that Lloyd had an incredible sense of arc and trajectory in his guitar solos. Many of them are sublime, epic even. I discovered them after I had already pillaged the Talking Heads' catalog, and I found their sound to be an interesting and integral puzzle piece in understanding that whole scene.

Enjoy the show Darcy!

[Maggie Osterberg]

4.

I'm jealous as all hell of anyone who gets to go to the show. Television is probably my single biggest influence when it comes to thinking about and playing guitar. Alas, I've had to make do with records and YouTube.

It was a sad day when punk got co-opted into a fashion statement (both visual and musical) and its form ossified into the three-chord shouter we all know. But my oh my, what delights those glorious days of novelty, delight and TV Parties have left us. Hell, even Robert Fripp was part of the scene, along with his oft-hidden sense of humor.

Thanks for the fantastic post, Darcy. It warmed this fan's heart from halfway across the continent.

[anomalous]

5.

My understanding is that that early scene was cligue-y in the extreme, so it’s inevitable that there would be a lot of turf-protection, involving new nomenclature etc., as its influence spread and the number of performers increased, as certain styles asttained commercial success and others didn’t, and as performers continued to break whatever rules were instituted. But there was never really any decrease in the diversity of the music itself, whatever people chose to call it.

[ec]

6.

Um... Television made three records, not two. The third one is just called "Television" and it came out in '92. Worth checking out. The opening tune from the Summerstage show ("1880 or so") is from this record.

[DJA]

7.

Um... Television made three records, not two.

Yes I know, which is why I said "Television only released two records back in the day" -- "the day" in this case being "the golden age of CB's". The band's reputation rests on those two 1970's recordings, Adventure and (especially) Marquee Moon.

The self-titled '92 reunion record is interesting, but it pretty clearly belongs in a different category than the albums they made before they broke up for the first time at the end of the 1970's. It's kind of like The Godfather Part I and II vs. The Godfather Part III. That comparison is a bit unfair to the third Television record, which is not a complete embarrassment like GIII, but you get the idea.