Re: (TV) The best American band from the '60s?

["Rex Broome" <rexbroome@gmail.com>]

Please forgive (delete?) what's going to be a long post-- I just got back
from playing a gig and am still a little amped up-- but this was fascinating
news to me for strangely personal reasons:

On 5/9/06, Russ Van Rooy <russvr@pop.nwnexus.com> wrote:
>
> Easy now guys....
> I listened and I actually could here several similarities. That said, it
> means jack about whether Love was an influence on Television or not. I
> always thought Neil Young was an influence on Verlaine and Richard Thompson
> too. Turns out that Verlaine disliked Young greatly until he heard "Cortez
> the killer" . Until then, he just didn't get why people liked Young.


Now, I rank Verlaine and Young among my 5 favorites artists, and have for
almost as long as I've liked rock music.  Like a lot of people, my primary
tastes were set quickly and at an early age.  I grew up hearing my dad's
band, which started as a folk group in '63-- I was born in '71, so I
remember them mostly as an electric 4-piece, gtr/gtr/bass/drums, doing old
folk songs and country covers.  But I was also an intellectual dweeb so I
wanted "smart" music.. but smart music that sounded earthy like I was used
to.  So not surprisingly the first band I truly loved was REM.  And within
months of first hearing them, and reading everything I could about them, I
followed the trail of influences to the CBGB's scene and fell in love with
Television.  Thank you Pete Buck, you have always dropped the best names in
interviews.

And within months of that, on a very very boring scool bus trip, I popped
the casette dub Neil Young's DECADE that a friend had given me into my
Walkman, expecting little.  I was falling asleep with my headphones on when
"Cortez" came on, and I slowly roused myself because I felt like I was
hearing the perfect music of all time, which sounded like my dad's band
doing a Television cover.  So I came to it ass-backwards, but very quickly
became totally obsessed with Neil.  Because of Tom.  So it is really
interesting to me that the same song was what caught Tom's own ears!

I like Love a lot.  There are bits on "Forever Changes" where there are
dueling lead guitars which might be viewed as precursors to Television, but
they sound to my ears to have been played at separate times as part of the
studio experimentation on that album... the earlier Love records that sound
more like Television in that they sound like a 4-piece band sound less like
Television in practice.  If that makes sense.  So I hear the connection, and
yet I don't.  Love is pretty great, but if they don't have much to do with
TV, I can still enjoy both on their own merits.

Okay, that's all for now.

-Rex
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