television: classic or dud? search and destroy

Search - all of MM. And I've always loved "Ain't that Nothin'" from Adventure.

I refuse to destroy anything.

Sundar - CONVENTIONAL guitar solos!!! CONVENTIONAL?

As recurring soundtrack to Anne DeMeulemeester fashion shows pretty good though, somehow.

SEARCH: MARQUEE MOON and BLOW-UP

DESTROY: all Destiny's Child discs. This is real music.

Patti Smith *WISHES* she produced anything a tenth as good as Television. To paraphrase Lydia Lunch, Patti Smith wasn't anything but a barefoot hippy.

Search: "Venus", "Foxhole", "Elevation", "Marquee Moon", "Little Johnny Jewel"

Destroy: not much actually, "Torn Curtain", most of that 90's album

In a more general NY "punk" sense:

Search: The Dolls, the Heartbreakers, the Dead Boys, the Ramones, the Testors

Destroy: Suicide just cause they sucked, the Talking Heads for prefiguring the Dismemberment Plan and for sucking, Richard Hell and Patti Smith for being sucky poets, Tom Verlaine for naming himself after a sucky poet

As far as Reynolds' points about US vs UK punk, they certainly are different (US punk dreams in color, UK punk in black and white), but any preferences I have generally depend on my mood at the time.

Destroy? Maybe we could lose 'The Rocket'.

Destroy: I don't care as long as you don't lay a hand on Beyonce.

So what are Destiny's Child supposed to be, exactly? It comes on the radio, and they sell it on CDs, right? Tones and rhythms and stuff coming out of the speakers etc.?

I think Thomas Pynchon writes much better books than lots of other authors but I don't deny that they write books too...

crankily,

perhaps i should've taken up the guitar rather than have wasted my time with my studies and such (i mean, where the hell have they gotten me, except into debt?). then maybe i would've gotten this album and it would all make sense to me and i would be saying things like, "yes, richard lloyd really was the genius of the group, do track down his second solo album as it is sadly overlooked, an absolute GEM, if i may so."

so, DESTROY: television, but not until that 70s show is over.

and, hell, suicide while you're at it too. i distrust any cbgb's band i can't envision doing a cover of "baby, i love you" and meaning it, maan.

Destroy: all that crap in between the solos.

In general: interesting how emotions flare up as soon the 70s Noo Yawk scene is made a subject of discussion.

To call Television musos is a bit like calling John Coltrane a muso, i.e. totally meaningless, and doubly so when you're trying to invoke some long departed spirit of punk/pop mistrust for noodling. The economical frenzy they play with sends shivers down my spine.

And to say that UK punk was in essence more political than its US cousin seems to me risible - in what way was giggling about spitting in Glen Matlock's pint an act of political rebellion? Grow up!

Search - the interplay between Verlaine's lyrics and his beautifully complimentary guitar work.

Destroy - the cloth eared naysayers on this thread (er.. not literally, obviously ;-))

As classic as classic can possibly get.

THE TELEVISION THREAD: I live in NYC, Television's home, right next to The Strand bookstore where Tom Verlaine used to work (and still shops). Television were a truly great band. If you disagree, well then fine...but you're wrong.

THE I LOVE MUSIC BOARD: Killing Joke sent me.

Generally wanted to like TV more than I do: cuz they were called "cerebral" as a diss, and I wd always ALWAYS defend such.

The links for me are in the wish to produce a kind of clear, clean, layered sound - Kraftwerk fit in here too - which is also somehow detached and upmarket (the worst thing about Marquee Moon is its horrible cover - much better to have put them in suits). It's hard to explain but they do seem to me to fit together and feel somehow similar. The interplay on Chic productions between the string stabs and cuts and the bass and guitar feels a cross-genre-tracks cousin to the guitar architectures on MM.

Rhythm and repetition come into it too, as Mark says. And as someone whose never been to NY I love the idea of it as a city which includes both TV and Chic - and yeah, Chic says fantasy New York to me, as does TV.

Obviously Chic are better, if only because they're so emotionally affecting at the same time as being so austere in some ways. But Chic are better than almost anyone, so that's hardly saying much.

Side question - are Chic the most rockist disco group?

It’s all to do with disco and the virulence of the anti-disco campaigns of the time. This was both an American thing (Rolling Stone’s "disco sucks" campaign) and, until Danny Baker started writing for the weeklies, a commonplace of punk journalism in Britain. Some ‘new wave’ bands allowed disco to influence their work, Television didn’t.

I don’t find Television’s sound glamorous – and glamour one of the important 70s aesthetic. The sound is too historic, too angsty, too nasal. They sound like country boys up in town for the night – not a bad quality of itself (that was always the delight of the Stooges as opposed to VU) but certainly a very different quality to Chic who literally strolled out of Studio 54 at 3am and began recording.

The other major difference is in their attitude to the studio. There is a mystique about the idea of Television as a live band (and how it was never caught on record) – which like all such things says more about the weakness of the recordings than anything else. There is no such mystique about Chic (or Kraftwerk for that matter) because they were clearly absolutely fantastic in the studio.

Personally I feel that Talking Heads and Blondie were the obviously brilliant CBGBs bands (with the strongest interest in disco incidentally); and Jayne County is the maverick I care about. Television have always had a slightly hip, rock critic discovery cool, but so what.

Danny Baker and the discoboys: well, krautrock-aesthete Angus Mackinnon did the FIRST EVER Moroder-as-auteur piece in NME years before Baker even started writing; and Penny Reel followed up with his 'By the Rivers of Babbacombe' Boney M celebration. Maybe these were anomalies: to me, these writers were the secret heart and mind of the paper, 78-80.

The point abt live vs recording is quite right. Tho I don't necessarily think Luc's nostalgia shd be ruled OUT as a part of the argument, it shouldn't begin and end the argument, as per old-skool rockism ad nauseam.

What I'd want to rescue TV for is their, erm, Superb Angular Glacial Chilliness (who did the hell did THIS before them?): except I don't just think there's ENOUGH of it.

However I don't think doing something first matters that much. I have problems with notions of absolute originality - origins discussions too easily become battles about authenticity.

Chic qn - we've got a Chic thread so we may as well use it.

(Chic as most-rockist disco 'cos Rodgers was a hard funk guitarist, ditto Edwards on bass, and that interplay was their music's foundation rather'n beat and/or vocal-melody focus of "trad" disco?)

Guy, I always felt agressively dismissive attitudes to other people's taste was part of the rockist pantheon... Maybe Baxendale claimed it back for pop? -and therefore people (like you) who can spell irredeemable properly ;-)

i put on _adventure_ again. aside from "glory" and "days," it was worse than i remembered. i was going to make the tom petty comparison but guy beat me to it. i certainly didn't hear much supreme angular glacial chillness. just like something the local classic rock station would put on when they wanted something lighter. executed with greater proficiency of course. _mm_ might be better though. don't remember it being too different.

but tom verlaine is just beautiful on the cover.

dr c: yeah, pretty conventional. perfectly executed in a conventional way.

at the root of my distaste for television, slint, and _daydream nation_ might be a distaste for elaboration in traditional ways, i.e. either through elaborated melodies or through large-scale structural constructions esp in a climax/release kind of way. whereas, and this makes some sense looking at my 40-records list, i do like things that innovate by taking the most basic musical elements and approaching them in a new way. this is central to both punk and minimalism. thus, when sterling said _daydream nation_ was when sonic youth stopped being punk, he might have been onto something. it's the album where they construct songs that are more structurally ambitious in a traditional way, e.g. the different melodic sections to "candle" and "cross the breeze." this is all quite broad and leaves some things unexplained but it makes sense to me right now.

Stravinsky was accused of writing "sewing-machine music" by a hostile critic. He loved the phrase: adopted it. Exactly, exactly, is how he responded.

New York Rock-rhythm as a thing-in-itself comes in two forms: the loose pulsar stuff — Elvin Jonesy/Keith Moon-y/Mo Tuckery bulbous flowing in and round a pulse (Dolls, Patti, S.Youth) vs the super- crisp, crystalline exact clock-precision Billy Ficca got from where? Sewing machines is where.

(Bangs and Bangsy-types called those guitars — replayed in the Voivoids, R.Quine against I.Julian – "switchblade interplay" and such, which is just more and unhelpful nostalgie-de-boo rimbaudism: switchblades is macho, and none of the above are pre-eminently macho)

More machines: less emotion. No precedent in rock (VU with Nico not a good call, because while she's somewhat angular, esp. visually, they are soft and fuzzy behind her — hard and fuzzy elsewhere, obviously, w/o her). Precedent, yes, out of rock: Stravinsky, the man who infested the [anti-romantic] classical canon with his own exacting modern-texture ear. For example (to get the dogs out): Verlaine is the only player (on any instrument) who ever HEARD Coltrane, as opposed to merely hearing Coltrane's (finer) feelings, and mimicking those.

How much of the above is actually THERE IN THE RECORDED GROOVE? Not enough, plainly.

PS: PiL and Chic — well, PiL have NEVER had a decent drummer. (Not sure if this holds — Who was the drummer on Rise? — but PiL when PiL were PiL never had a decent drummer.)

the drums on _flowers of romance_ are *incredible.* i'd say more but i'm still dumbfounded.

re precision: i guess. i mean, isn't most of what's on the radio played pretty fucking precisely? what makes television any more mechanically precise than boston?

A drummer with a very distinctive style who had a strong influence on my drumming aspirations at the time (along with Chic's Tony Thompson and the Banshees' Kenny Morris).

PiL and Chic — well, PiL have NEVER had a decent drummer. (Not sure if this holds — Who was the drummer on Rise? — but PiL when PiL were PiL never had a decent drummer.) (mark s)

Probably true when it comes to any attempt at funk or disco, but the simplistic rock drumming (a kind of copy of Paul Cook) on "Public Image" is great.

Marquee Moon is so perfect that it hurts to listen to it.

Marquee Moon hooked me for about a week. i had an mp3 of "guiding light" on my mom's computer when i was in high school. sometimes it would come up on shuffle and i'd be stoned and half-asleep on the couch and unable to figure out who it was. good times.

I can't listen to it now.
I had a roommate whose bedroom was adjacent to mine. thin walls, and he played it constantly. that and the 3rd & 4th talking heads records. gaaaah. i also don't like brian eno's pop stuff because of this guy.

Yeah, I don't know what the fuck I was on about 7 years ago. (I'd never even heard MM until 2 years ago so that was all based on the other 2 albums but even they're good. MM is absolutely great though.)

(That might be the old ILM post of mine that I agree with least but there are a bunch of bad ones.)

(Perhaps it would help if you played guitar.)

haha, perhaps.

'Marquee Moon' LP is overrated

I started this thread. I was a doofus. But still the only tracks that do it for me are Guiding Light and Prove It. (I've overplayed Venus de Milo). I am always disagreeing with you roxymuzak.

Not as much as Bo Jackson Overdrive (or worse, the 'nebb).

I had a roommate whose bedroom was adjacent to mine. thin walls, and he played it constantly. that and the 3rd & 4th talking heads records. gaaaah. i also don't like brian eno's pop stuff because of this guy.

:-( Did you live with me last year? What a shame to have these albums ruined for you!

'torn curtain' is so amazing.

can definitely see how it'd be annoying if heard all the time though!

search: that 'live at the old waldorf' boot that rhino handmade put out in some ridiculously limited number a few years back; i think you can get it off itunes now if you wanna buy.

yessssss, the live at the waldorf disc is positively mindbending. also it is super-crunchy. when i interviewed richard lloyd a few years back, he said this: "That's the chainsaw heavy-metal version of the band," he jokes. "We were playing Ampeg V-4 amplifiers on that tour. They were the size of a fucking house! Keith Richards talked us into using them. The Stones were using those outdoors for stadium shows, and we were playing indoors for 500 people!" i've gotten heavily into television bootlegs over the years -- there are a ton of them! it's pretty fascinating to hear the pre-Marquee Moon recordings that show how the band developed the songs into the perfect versions that are on the album.

I also have a knee-jerk "turn it off!" reaction to Marquee Moon from overexposure. It's too bad. But I wouldn't mind hearing Adventure some more.

I really should have got that "waldorf" disc when I had the chance!

yeah, it is really silly that they put that out in such a limited format ... i think it was rhino handmade's fastest sellout ever. and it's a pretty vital addition to Television's scant discography. but i guess you can get it via itunes or other more nefarious means ... just google it.

huh.

interesting, will have to check it out.
other extracurricular activities: http://www.cereghinosmith.com/

Did y'all catch that they have finally committed "about 10 tracks" to tape with another session in the offing? Apparently Jimmy Rip has been pushing everyone to get the new album done.

My twenty TV and Verlaine tracks.