(TV) Warning! Long & Verbose: Why TV Was/Is Not More Commercially

["Mark G. Ryan" <mgryan@cruzio.com>]

Long posts can take a while to digest.  Leo Casey's on how
Television's music may have effected their commercial success 
was very enjoyable and well worth the effort.  I agreed with
almost everything.  There were only a few bits of feedback that 
I wanted to burp up (in a nice way).

So, please excuse my delay in sending this. (And please be warned: 
it's another LONG post.)

> Many of Verlaine's songs, for instance on "Dreamtime" 
> (but true of all his albums), have enough melodies 
> for two or three separate songs.  E.g., in the song 
> "Mr. Blur" Verlaine starts out with an almost sinister, 
> creepy guitar riff/melody, but then he dramatically 
> shifts to more upbeat Country & Western-tinged, twangy, 
> happy melody/chord (the shift occurs as he sings the 
> lyrics "Very, most sincerely yours"). It is as if 
> there's two separate songs going on at once 
> in parallel. 

I agree that "Mr. Blur" has enough material for two or three
average pop songs.  But does this material include a melody
in the vocal part? 

This may just be a terminological quibble, but I would call 
these vocals "melodic fragments" or "motives", or perhaps
"minimalist melodies". 

It is impossible to define "melody", but at the risk of 
insulting everyone's intelligence I'll toss off a sloppy one.
Melodies are:

	* a self-contained musical idea
	* that fulfills a harmonic expectation, usually by
	  ending on the tonic of the composition
	* and moves mostly by stepwise motion, usually in a 
	  making it possible to sing, hum or whistle by the 
  	  musically average duffer (melodies written for
	  instruments can have more leaps, but must stay
	  within the range of the instrument).

Artificial examples can be constructed that violate any of these
rules and are still singable, or may be melodies in some sense
even though they are difficult or impossible to sing. But such do
not exist in folk or popular music.  I'll just refer to "melody"
and we'll understand I mean "typical vocal melody" or "strong/robust 
melody".

Break too many rules and you end up with the "Star Spangled Banner", 
which it takes an Act of the US Congress to make people sing. (Please 
don't get the idea I'm comparing Verlaine's songs to the "Star Spangled 
Blunder"--he doesn't write bad melodies because he rarely writes 
melodies at all--or minimal ones.  This also is not necessarily a 
criticism, except from the standpoint of marketability).

I'll leave the fine points to any musicologists out there, but like 
the judge said about pornography, "I know it when I see it".

However, in order to see it, it is very important to mute the other 
tracks and just hear the vocal part.   This means you have to actually
try to sing it (or croak it, in my case) or to write a lead sheet. 
Otherwise, you may mistake a melodic fragment or motive for a real 
melody.  I think that may be at the root of the current disagreement.

Melody is one of the main things that separates folk or pop song from, 
say, art song.  Nobody who writes an art song expects it to be popular 
(except maybe "Ave Marie' at Christmas time).  So if some or most 
Television songs do not have fully developed or robust melodies, it 
would go a long way toward explaining the slowness of the public to 
catch on to Television.

Sure, there are pop songs that don't use melody, but these tend to 
have rhythms that are either are pronounced (like rap or techno) or 
complex (like world beat).  This is a gross oversimplification, but 
it's generally true.

> These multiple parts/melodies can cause disparate 
> (and possibly confusing) emotional responses in 
> listeners---take for example the song "Fragile". 
> The song begins with guitar chords that evokes  
> a wistful tenderness, but then these chords are 
> quickly replaced by more aggressive, almost 
> ferocious style of playing. (Note how difficult 
> it is to describe this with the written word, 
> rather than having someone who hasn't ever heard 
> the music have it played for them while one makes 
> one's points---it's enough to make me despair that 
> I don't have the talent to do a proper analysis.) 
 
I totally agree on the complexity of the music, and how difficult
it is to analyze it.  We are handicapped by not having transcriptions 
or being able to post music notation.  But I think if you try to sing 
these songs without the accompaniment, you'll find you'd rather be 
singing, say, "Waltzing Matilda" or "Over the Rainbow" or "This Guy's 
in Love with You" or "Shadow of your Smile" or "Paint It Black". 

Note that in this discussion we have been choosing only Verlaine's 
most melodic songs.  What is the singer supposed to do with "Yonqi 
Time" or "Rocket"?  Answer: take a break, while the rapper or chorus 
of NYC cab drivers sits in.  (I'd like to think of "Yonqi Time" as an 
aberration, except that Verlaine persists in releasing it, even 
finding a place for it on A Miller's Tale").  Then again, even in 
good songs, Verlaine often speaks the lines (i.e., with no definite 
pitch).

I maintain that the classic Television song is completely guitar-
centric.  The riffs and harmonies are central and the vocal part is 
just another instrument.  You could replace the vocals and keep the 
riffs and the harmonies and still have basically the same song.  In 
fact, Verlaine sometimes does this, recycling good riffs with new 
lyrics.  Nothing wrong with this, it just gives an insight into
what is essential to the songs.

This also explains why you sometime read that Verlaine mumbles the
words.  He does mumble sometimes, and sometimes the vocals are buried 
in the mix.  But more usually, the problem is that the the vocal part 
is not that important musically.  Hearing it's like trying to listen
for the third violas in an orchestra.

So one has to ask, why does he bother with singing at all?  The answer
is no surprise to fans: he writes very unsual and sometimes very good
lyrics. 

In short, I wouldn't change a thing (except for leaving "Yonqi Time"
and "Rocket" in the darkest corner of the vault).  But I can' help 
wishing that more people appreciated the difference between Verlaine's 
or Lloyd's guitar playing and the noodling and cat-strangling one 
hears constantly on the radio.

> Jon Pareles articulated some of what I'm 
> trying to articulate when he wrote:  
> 
>   "Verlaine's basic rhythm has been a 4/4 any 
>   Stones fan can dance to, and most of his songs 
>   break cleanly into verses and choruses. (One 

This is key.  This isn't music that relies primarily on rhythm or 
that it breaks the rock/pop mold.  Actually, it might be easier to 
sell if it did: the audience for jazz or experimental music is much 
smaller than the audience for rock/pop, but it is much more tolerant 
of departures from the norm--and especially of lack of melody.

Instead we are dealing with rock music that includes very skillful 
and complex expression of its ideas.

[Pareles continues:]
>   of his favorite devices is to use blue or 
>   modal chords in the verse, then switch 
>   to triumphant major chords for the chorus, 
>   as in Dreamtime's 'Mr. Blur', 'Always', and 
>   'A Future in Noise') ... Although each song 

This is true, but rock songs have been doing these chord changes
since at least the 1960s.

[Pareles continues:]
>   has a specific set of more or less interlocking 
>   riffs, Verlaine doesn't mesh them into 
>   funk polyrhythms; he wants you to hear 
>   the battle of the instruments, the parallax 
>   down-beat (when he called his publishing 
>   company Double Exposure Music, he undercounted), 

Ah-ha!  Exactly: he uses interlocking "riffs". Instead of melody
with harmonizing accompaniment, or theme and variations, he gives
us related and contrasting phrases.  They can be related in
vertical harmonies (intervals between different parts), horizontal
harmonies (spread out chords), inversion, rhythmic pattern, etc.
He develops these phrases in unexpected ways.

[Pareles continues:]
>   and he disrupts any impending stasis with 
>   a new riff or solo or a random plunk. Like 
>   dreams, the songs are buffeted from 
>   within and without; they're not fixed 
>   objects, they're convergences of events. 
>   If that sounds like a notion from jazz or 
>   psychedelia, well, maybe."   

Wow--that's a mouthful.  But it's spot on.  While the verse-chorus-
verse structure may be fixed from the beginning, everything else 
develops organically.  No single part--not even the vocals or 
Verlaine's guitar--is consistently leading. Sometimes it is Lloyd's 
guitar, sometimes is Smith's bass, sometimes it is Ficca's drums that 
lead the music off in a new direction.  Verlaine's genius is to keep
it all within the rock song format.

[Leo:]
> I claim that it is precisely this wonderful 
> richness and tension/battle between the 
> instruments that loses most listeners.

Couldn't agree more!  But...what does this say about melody?  I 
suggest that Verlaine might have difficulty of applying his method 
of composition this in the presence of a strong melody.  I'd be 
interested to hear feedback on this from people that have heard
Television do more live covers.  

I definitely agree with those who feel that the Rolling Stones are
a big influence on Verlaine.  (Sure, they influenced everybody, so 
if you doubt this was a special influence, just take it on faith
for this discussion.)   But the differences are also illuminating.

My contention is that there really cannot be a be a Television version 
of, say "Paint It Black", or if there was, it would not sound like 
Television.  Even though the guitar hook at the beginning sounds like 
grist for the Television mill, after the first verse Mick is in a
melodic and rhythmic straight-jacket that the song never escapes.  The 
melody and the rhythm are completely dominating--there is no room for 
Tom to do his tricks.  The same goes for lots of classic stones songs, 
like "Sympathy for the Devil"--not a particularly strong melody, but 
the vocals dominate except during the instrumental bridge and at the
very end.

I really hadn't realized until I wrote this that you can't put a
thunderous rhythm section behind a Television song without it
imploding. "Jumping Jack Flash" has a flimsy melody, but it's hard
to imagine a plausible cover where the beat wouldn't completely swamp 
Verlaine's and Lloyd's guitar acrobatics.  (But oh my, do the guitar 
riffs at the beginning of "Gimme Shelter" sound like Television!  
Alas--the Stones build it into a massive blues-inspired rhythm freight 
train that is just beyond Television.  Not to mention Mick's demonic 
upper register, which he still had in those days and which Verlaine 
only dreams about. But is it fair to compare mere mortals to Fallen
Angels?)

So maybe they don't rock the Stones in they heyday--who does?
Television's music is more complex both technically and emotionally.
It offers a greater variety of moods and nuances.  It brings something
that is rare in rock, and even in jazz.  The jazz method of theme
and variations--of taking a old standard and playing it through once 
straight then varying it--is able to explore all sorts of strange
harmonic and rhythmic territory, but the melody is always there as a
sort of map to return to.  Not so Television: nothing can be taken
for granted even from the first bars.  Jazz that does not first 
establish a melody is experimental jazz and apt to meet with the 
same problems of audience acceptance as the music we are discussing.  
(This is my impression--I am not a jazz aficionado.)

I'd like to go into detail about one or two Television songs, but this
is already too long and I am probably not competent to do it.   Hope 
I've said something interesting and not too much that is dead wrong.

Mark
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