No. This is not my long awaited op-ed about the evils and perils of TV. This is to announce (or need I say brag about my acquisition of tickets, seeing as there are only a few left) the seemingly out-of-the-blue Television show at the Georgia Theatre. Word is that they are only playing three shows in North America, and they will all consist of playing their pinnacle album, Marquee Moon in its entirety. This is a once in a lifetime show, and one that I never thought I would be able to see.
People tend to lump Television in with the Patti Smith/ Ramones/CBGB crowd. They did grow out of that scene, but geography was about the only thing they had in common with those other bands. The sound is timeless. When I first listened to their '78 debut, I thought it sounded more modern than anything new stuff I was listening to at the time. The groove was so complicated and yet so soulful. The guitars had a distinct but familiar interplay. I was smitten. It's a shame that Richard Lloyd won't be playing with the group, but Verlaine is the main component of the group. It would be a bit like seeing Hendrix at the final show in Berkeley with Billy Cox on bass. Yeah, it wasn't the Experience, but it was fuckin' Hendrix. Verlaine and Jimi are kindred souls of the musical world. It's hard to say what would have happened had Hendrix carried on into the 70's and 80's, but odds are, by 2013, he would be working the nostalgia circuit coming to an outdoor amphitheater near you.
This isn't trying to be disrespectful of Hendrix. He is and always will be the greatest and most groundbreaking guitar player to ever grace this planet. He singlehandedly changed music forever and continues to this day. But he existed in an intersection of both time and space where guitar technology, culture, drugs, his songwriting and popular music taste all aligned in a glorious three or four year harmonium. Had Hendrix lived any longer into the 1970's, the world would have combusted. Or, more likely, he would have innovated himself into obscurity. He would have gone the way of Clapton in the 80's and 90's. Maybe even the wretched path of Steve Winwood. He would have been on the forefront of synths and drum machines just because that was how his brain worked. Once technology had let him off of his leash, he would be free to delve into projects and ideas that the world wouldn't have been ready for. He moved quicker than most musical minds, there was just a brief period in the beginning where we could catch up to it. Hendrix's music, though, has the benefit of being frozen in time.
Verlaine does not have that luxury. And his time of alignment was shorter. But where Hendrix took the blues, soul, fuzzed out guitar and LSD, and morphed them into the Experience, Verlaine took punk, avant-garde, minimalistic production and literature and turned them into Television. Critics at the time were hip to the importance of their sound, but they only really rose to attracting a cult-following for a brief period. Television broke up and got back together a few times over the years, but none of the members garnered much more attention. Verlaine went on to create several albums that stumbled into the 80's, but they got bogged down in the production standards of the decade.
On some level, it's sad to see an act rehashing an old album on tour, but at this point in Television's career it's a healthy way to look back at the unrivaled piece of art that came together in 1978. Creating an album at the caliber of Marquee Moon is worth a lifetime of achievement. It was and still is something larger than the band. If you can catch one of the shows in this country, please do. It will certainly be a high point in your concert-going career.
