This review is from: Marquee Moon (Expanded And Remastered) (Us Release) (Audio CD)
So much could have been learnt from Television, but if even Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd could never again get within a million light years of what this album achieved (not even by reforming the original line-up) there’s nothing to learn. It was an album that came out of nowhere: Television had been tipped for greatness since 1974 but nothing they did before this album remotely hinted at it. There are not all that many albums that anyone ever calls their Favourite Ever. This is certainly one.
Best guitar-band album ever? I’ve not heard anything better in the 30 years since and as for before, only maybe the best 12 Led Zep & Stones tracks ever would challenge it – and they’re not on one solid single flawless album, are they. (You know, of course, that I wouldn’t have mentioned Jimmy Page in 1977 without spitting, but you grow up.) Otherwise the only reference points would be Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” – the guitar-heavy, Zep-ish tracks; and a few tracks on “The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads” which hint, sadly, at what Verlaine/Lloyd may have gone on to if their guitar partnership had continued to develop instead of dissolving into, well, two blokes with guitars in the same band like on “Adventure.”
Key moments:
Venus, all of it, the most Most MOST perfect guitar song in history;
the moment you nostalgically get, for the 3,000,001st time without tiring of it, that the beat of Marquee Moon isn’t where you thought it was the first time you heard the intro;
the recurring bit in Guiding Light where the elegiac guitar solo sounds like it’s going to burst into a dual-lead Wishbone Ash thing which is an illusion caused by a couple of guitar notes in the backing but still, 30 years later, I hope…;
the first four notes of the solo in Torn Curtain.
I love Little Johnny Jewel, and for that matter The Blow-Up and numerous bootlegs and the so-called Eno demos and the officially-released 70s live albums. But yes, Marquee Moon is the only album anyone actually needs by Television, or needs on a desert island actually. The extra tracks are not much cop – except LJJ of course; and it will never QUITE be the same again as your precious vinyl copy with Nick Kent’s review torn out of the NME in the sleeve – oh, just me? But if you haven’t heard this, do. If you like any kind of rock music you’re very much more than likely to love it.
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This review is from: Marquee Moon (Expanded And Remastered) (Us Release) (Audio CD)
An outstanding electric guitar album that has well stood the test of time, I remember first buying this the end of winter 77, a hard up student in London, after seeing Nick Kent’s review in NME. I asked the record shop proprietor his opinion, he said – yeah, it’s good, his voice is a bit strange though. Let me play some of it for you. And so I listened.
All these years and several formats later I’m still regularly listening to it with that same awe struck thrill I had back then. At the time I was smugly pleased with myself because nobody I knew had heard of them and, still, to this day when people are name checking their favourite albums, this one never gets mentioned, which is a bit strange when you consider that it is unquestionably the finest long playing record ever made.
OK, perhaps a bit over the top there, but let’s get to the facts, just the facts. Television is neither a punk nor metal band. Nor are they prog-rock despite the 10 minute long title track. Garage band? Maybe so, but the musicianship & structure of the songs is at odds with that particular genre although the bare stripped back sound is one of 4 guys playing in a room with most of it recorded in one take. Comparisons are futile, however Television have been the inspiration for many subsequent guitar based acts. That instantly recognisable riff from the White Stripes “Seven Nation Army” is a close derivative of the bass part on “Elevation”. Other bands of note under the influence of, I would say, early REM & U2, Yo La Tengo, the Blue Aeroplanes, Interpol, the Strokes, and probably Kings of Leon. You can also add to that list David Bowie in his “Scary Monsters” incarnation where he does a cover of one of Verlaine’s later songs, “Kingdom Come”.
What sets this band apart from the rest is the inventive twin guitar attack of Verlaine & Lloyd that has not been bettered or equalled before or since, although the Stones circa Taylor & Richards era come close, (Green/Kirwan?) In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if one of their influences had been Mick Taylor, particularly if you listen to some of the solos on the albums “Goats Head Soup” & “Its Only Rock n Roll”. There’s a similar kind of languid fluidity and phrasing to their playing, the solos imbued with both melody and plot.
The interplay between the two (Fender Jazzmaster & Strat.)deviates from the conventional bloke rock swagger of lead & rhythm with infantile solos wrought from the top of the fret board at break neck speed. It is the exact opposite with Verlaine the more spontaneous & fluid, whilst Lloyd has a more considered style with all his parts meticulously worked out beforehand. Along with that haunting bass sound, particularly on “Elevation”, one of the standout tracks for me, and crisp, precise drumming – listen to that clever counter-beat shuffle towards the end of “Friction” – these are “some of the greatest songs ever” (thank you Nick Kent).
However this album is not just about the guitars. Supplemented by plenty of backing vocals in classic call & response style, Verlaine’s voice, nervous, edgy, perfect for these lyrics and these uncertain times – “I sleep light on these shores tonight” – “a whisper woke him up”. Oblique, meaningless, elliptical some have said, there’s nothing of the “my baby done gone & left me”, or the splenetic vitriol of the cartoonish punk bands prevalent at that time, but instead their dark & moody nature adds a rich dimension to the angular spikiness of the songs putting you the listener in a position to imagine a meaning for yourself. “Tears…tears,rolling back the years. Years…years flowing by like tears. The tears I never shed, the years I’ve seen before” he sings passionately on the closing song “Torn Curtain” (of the original release), a tragic ballad of despair, the anguished cry of an inconsolable man lamenting a lost love and contemplating an already doomed future perhaps, and, as he invokes “burn it down…tears, tears, years, years” the music reaches its crescendo, the notes from Verlaine’s guitar cascading with fury & finesse, the sonic, forlorn cry of a hunted whale, and Lloyd grinding out those weird chords amidst the crashing of the cymbals – “when beauty meets abuse”. Astonishing.
This case is closed.
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This review is from: Marquee Moon (Expanded And Remastered) (Us Release) (Audio CD)
Clear proof that’s it best to make one masterpiece and break up because of some strange excuse about Moby Grape. Not strictly true of course since history tells us that Television did actually make more albums and reformed in 1992 for the generally decent “Television”. Yet Marquee Moon is the one that counts. Listening today some 30 years after its release you can still accurately use words like “radical” and “groundbreaking” and apply them without fear or hesitation. Indeed what was fascinating was that when Television unleashed this piece of alchemy no one doubted that a page had been turned and a new chapter of music had opened upon its release. Nick Kent’s brilliant and famous 1977 review in NME delineated this in a sledge hammer prose and carried it with righteous enthusiasm. He argued that –
“Sometimes it takes but one record, one cocksure magical statement, to cold call all the crapola and all purpose wheat chaff, mix’n’match, to set the whole schmear straight … If this review needs to state anything in big bold, black type it’s simply this, ‘Marquee Moon’ is an album for everyone, whatever their musical creeds and/or quirks. Don’t let anyone put you off with jive turkey terms like ‘avant-garde’ or ‘New York psychos’. This music is passionate, full blooded, dazzlingly well crafted, brilliantly conceived and totally accessible to anyone who has been yearning for a band with the vision to break on through into new dimensions of sonic overdrive and the sheer ability to back it up”.
Kent was right, the hype surrounding Television when “Marquee Moon” came out was for once fully justified. Verlaine and Lloyd take guitar music in such totally new directions that you feel Jimi Hendrix could at last rest in peace. The song “Marquee Moon” is a multilayered thrill, it is a construct that builds and builds and you never want it to end. The dueling solos are perfect as is Verlaine`s voice. At one point you feel that the two guitarist might just lose it and bring down the whole edifice but the balance is perfect and the song crescendos crash into the final verse where Verlaine brings it all into a elegantly constructed final shape and form with the words –
“Well a Cadillac, it pulled out of the graveyard. Pulled up to me, all they said get in. Then the Cadillac, it puttered back into the graveyard. And me, I got out again”.
Add to this the wondrous “Venus de Milo”, “See no Evil” and the minor hit “Prove it”, indeed why not name the lot since every song is superb and with this extended remaster you also get the epic and decadent “Little Johnny Jewel” and fascinating “out-take” versions of the albums originals. A minor point is that it would have been nice to see brutal “Foxhole” added in addition which was far and way the best track from “Adventure” the band’s sadly disappointing follow up to MM.
This is the one of the albums of the 1970s along with the Clash’s “London Calling”, Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” and David Bowie’ “Heroes” that will resonate over many years to come. The only album of that era that comes within in a hairs breath of the emotional power contained on Marquee Moon is Joy Division’s dark masterpiece “Unknown pleasures”. That said quite how anyone ever picks up the gauntlet laid down by “Marquee Moon” is completely unimaginable.
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A place in every new wave heart,
So much could have been learnt from Television, but if even Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd could never again get within a million light years of what this album achieved (not even by reforming the original line-up) there’s nothing to learn. It was an album that came out of nowhere: Television had been tipped for greatness since 1974 but nothing they did before this album remotely hinted at it. There are not all that many albums that anyone ever calls their Favourite Ever. This is certainly one.
Best guitar-band album ever? I’ve not heard anything better in the 30 years since and as for before, only maybe the best 12 Led Zep & Stones tracks ever would challenge it – and they’re not on one solid single flawless album, are they. (You know, of course, that I wouldn’t have mentioned Jimmy Page in 1977 without spitting, but you grow up.) Otherwise the only reference points would be Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” – the guitar-heavy, Zep-ish tracks; and a few tracks on “The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads” which hint, sadly, at what Verlaine/Lloyd may have gone on to if their guitar partnership had continued to develop instead of dissolving into, well, two blokes with guitars in the same band like on “Adventure.”
Key moments:
Venus, all of it, the most Most MOST perfect guitar song in history;
the moment you nostalgically get, for the 3,000,001st time without tiring of it, that the beat of Marquee Moon isn’t where you thought it was the first time you heard the intro;
the recurring bit in Guiding Light where the elegiac guitar solo sounds like it’s going to burst into a dual-lead Wishbone Ash thing which is an illusion caused by a couple of guitar notes in the backing but still, 30 years later, I hope…;
the first four notes of the solo in Torn Curtain.
I love Little Johnny Jewel, and for that matter The Blow-Up and numerous bootlegs and the so-called Eno demos and the officially-released 70s live albums. But yes, Marquee Moon is the only album anyone actually needs by Television, or needs on a desert island actually. The extra tracks are not much cop – except LJJ of course; and it will never QUITE be the same again as your precious vinyl copy with Nick Kent’s review torn out of the NME in the sleeve – oh, just me? But if you haven’t heard this, do. If you like any kind of rock music you’re very much more than likely to love it.
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|Elevation,
An outstanding electric guitar album that has well stood the test of time, I remember first buying this the end of winter 77, a hard up student in London, after seeing Nick Kent’s review in NME. I asked the record shop proprietor his opinion, he said – yeah, it’s good, his voice is a bit strange though. Let me play some of it for you. And so I listened.
All these years and several formats later I’m still regularly listening to it with that same awe struck thrill I had back then. At the time I was smugly pleased with myself because nobody I knew had heard of them and, still, to this day when people are name checking their favourite albums, this one never gets mentioned, which is a bit strange when you consider that it is unquestionably the finest long playing record ever made.
OK, perhaps a bit over the top there, but let’s get to the facts, just the facts. Television is neither a punk nor metal band. Nor are they prog-rock despite the 10 minute long title track. Garage band? Maybe so, but the musicianship & structure of the songs is at odds with that particular genre although the bare stripped back sound is one of 4 guys playing in a room with most of it recorded in one take. Comparisons are futile, however Television have been the inspiration for many subsequent guitar based acts. That instantly recognisable riff from the White Stripes “Seven Nation Army” is a close derivative of the bass part on “Elevation”. Other bands of note under the influence of, I would say, early REM & U2, Yo La Tengo, the Blue Aeroplanes, Interpol, the Strokes, and probably Kings of Leon. You can also add to that list David Bowie in his “Scary Monsters” incarnation where he does a cover of one of Verlaine’s later songs, “Kingdom Come”.
What sets this band apart from the rest is the inventive twin guitar attack of Verlaine & Lloyd that has not been bettered or equalled before or since, although the Stones circa Taylor & Richards era come close, (Green/Kirwan?) In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if one of their influences had been Mick Taylor, particularly if you listen to some of the solos on the albums “Goats Head Soup” & “Its Only Rock n Roll”. There’s a similar kind of languid fluidity and phrasing to their playing, the solos imbued with both melody and plot.
The interplay between the two (Fender Jazzmaster & Strat.)deviates from the conventional bloke rock swagger of lead & rhythm with infantile solos wrought from the top of the fret board at break neck speed. It is the exact opposite with Verlaine the more spontaneous & fluid, whilst Lloyd has a more considered style with all his parts meticulously worked out beforehand. Along with that haunting bass sound, particularly on “Elevation”, one of the standout tracks for me, and crisp, precise drumming – listen to that clever counter-beat shuffle towards the end of “Friction” – these are “some of the greatest songs ever” (thank you Nick Kent).
However this album is not just about the guitars. Supplemented by plenty of backing vocals in classic call & response style, Verlaine’s voice, nervous, edgy, perfect for these lyrics and these uncertain times – “I sleep light on these shores tonight” – “a whisper woke him up”. Oblique, meaningless, elliptical some have said, there’s nothing of the “my baby done gone & left me”, or the splenetic vitriol of the cartoonish punk bands prevalent at that time, but instead their dark & moody nature adds a rich dimension to the angular spikiness of the songs putting you the listener in a position to imagine a meaning for yourself. “Tears…tears,rolling back the years. Years…years flowing by like tears. The tears I never shed, the years I’ve seen before” he sings passionately on the closing song “Torn Curtain” (of the original release), a tragic ballad of despair, the anguished cry of an inconsolable man lamenting a lost love and contemplating an already doomed future perhaps, and, as he invokes “burn it down…tears, tears, years, years” the music reaches its crescendo, the notes from Verlaine’s guitar cascading with fury & finesse, the sonic, forlorn cry of a hunted whale, and Lloyd grinding out those weird chords amidst the crashing of the cymbals – “when beauty meets abuse”. Astonishing.
This case is closed.
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|Television – You don’t need eyes to see you need vision,
Clear proof that’s it best to make one masterpiece and break up because of some strange excuse about Moby Grape. Not strictly true of course since history tells us that Television did actually make more albums and reformed in 1992 for the generally decent “Television”. Yet Marquee Moon is the one that counts. Listening today some 30 years after its release you can still accurately use words like “radical” and “groundbreaking” and apply them without fear or hesitation. Indeed what was fascinating was that when Television unleashed this piece of alchemy no one doubted that a page had been turned and a new chapter of music had opened upon its release. Nick Kent’s brilliant and famous 1977 review in NME delineated this in a sledge hammer prose and carried it with righteous enthusiasm. He argued that –
“Sometimes it takes but one record, one cocksure magical statement, to cold call all the crapola and all purpose wheat chaff, mix’n’match, to set the whole schmear straight … If this review needs to state anything in big bold, black type it’s simply this, ‘Marquee Moon’ is an album for everyone, whatever their musical creeds and/or quirks. Don’t let anyone put you off with jive turkey terms like ‘avant-garde’ or ‘New York psychos’. This music is passionate, full blooded, dazzlingly well crafted, brilliantly conceived and totally accessible to anyone who has been yearning for a band with the vision to break on through into new dimensions of sonic overdrive and the sheer ability to back it up”.
Kent was right, the hype surrounding Television when “Marquee Moon” came out was for once fully justified. Verlaine and Lloyd take guitar music in such totally new directions that you feel Jimi Hendrix could at last rest in peace. The song “Marquee Moon” is a multilayered thrill, it is a construct that builds and builds and you never want it to end. The dueling solos are perfect as is Verlaine`s voice. At one point you feel that the two guitarist might just lose it and bring down the whole edifice but the balance is perfect and the song crescendos crash into the final verse where Verlaine brings it all into a elegantly constructed final shape and form with the words –
“Well a Cadillac, it pulled out of the graveyard. Pulled up to me, all they said get in. Then the Cadillac, it puttered back into the graveyard. And me, I got out again”.
Add to this the wondrous “Venus de Milo”, “See no Evil” and the minor hit “Prove it”, indeed why not name the lot since every song is superb and with this extended remaster you also get the epic and decadent “Little Johnny Jewel” and fascinating “out-take” versions of the albums originals. A minor point is that it would have been nice to see brutal “Foxhole” added in addition which was far and way the best track from “Adventure” the band’s sadly disappointing follow up to MM.
This is the one of the albums of the 1970s along with the Clash’s “London Calling”, Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” and David Bowie’ “Heroes” that will resonate over many years to come. The only album of that era that comes within in a hairs breath of the emotional power contained on Marquee Moon is Joy Division’s dark masterpiece “Unknown pleasures”. That said quite how anyone ever picks up the gauntlet laid down by “Marquee Moon” is completely unimaginable.
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|