Re: (TV) Television: the name - and other stuff

[Jesse Hochstadt <Jesse_Hochstadt@Brown.edu>]

Lots of interesting stuff on the list recently (though I also didn't 
get digest #826, so if anyone cares to forward it...). Mark, please 
_don't_ take it off list! Some of the most interesting commentary on 
what makes Television's music Television's music that I've read in a 
long time. FWIW, I agree with you on the question of whether 
Television's music is melodic enough to be popular; I'm surprised 
that Leo doesn't agree or get the point. There are only a few 
Television songs that I find myself singing to myself, and they are 
the ones that people have named as melodic, especially "Glory." One 
of my favorite solo Verlaine tunes, "Song," also strikes me as quite 
melodic, although there are pauses between the vocal lines that make 
it a little difficult to sing. (Has anyone here besides me had the 
experience of casually singing a song alongside a friend or friends - 
I'm just talking walking down the street here - only to find that 
when a pause comes, they jump ahead to the next vocal line rather 
than allowing as much time/rhythm to elapse as should be there? I'm 
never sure if it's because I have a better rhythmic sense or vice 
versa - though I tend to side with me.  8^)=  )

The "Tom Verlaine is to McCartney or Bacharach as Mozart is to 
Salieri" comparison is somewhere between hyperbole and nonsense, Leo; 
it reads to me as reflecting a need to bolster your musical hero by 
putting down the heroes of others. Tom, for the most part, strikes me 
as playing a different game from Paul or Burt; he doesn't need to be 
the ne plus ultra of musicians to be great at what he does. Certainly 
Bacharach's tunes are very melodic, and I've often read that his 
music is actually quite sophisticated and difficult to sing - it's 
just that Dionne Warwick (his foremost interpreter) made it _sound_ 
simple.

As for Television's songs not being adaptable to other instruments, 
Mark, I'd note that the Kronos Quartet did a string arrangement of 
"Marquee Moon," though I think it's missing much of the magic of the 
original and doesn't substitute much of anything in its place. Bowed 
instruments just don't have the percussive attack of electric 
guitars, so playing the song on them tends to emphasize the melody 
and weaken the "riffishness" - so this example may just buttress your 
point. (I've never heard the Kronos version of "Purple Haze," but I 
suspect it suffers from similar problems.)

But I'm really writing to respond to what Ray wrote:

> don't forget Beatles was deliberately mispelt Michael....and it's still one
> of the best band
> names ever imho

I think the Beatles (a semi-obscure pun on Buddy Holly's Crickets, 
among other things) is not a terribly good name, but it's an 
excellent example of how names aren't that important and good music 
can rewrite our impressions of what might strike us in the abstract 
as poor names. This occurs in other media as well. My favorite, if 
somewhat strange, example is how comics fans like myself can utter 
the words "the Silver Surfer" with a straight face.

I always wanted to start a (preferably rhythm-oriented) band called 
the Beatless - just for the record store filing advantages!

- Jesse
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