(TV) Television's 4th?: the New Songs / the Unknown Unknowns / Reading Music / Piano

["Casey, Leo J" <CaseyL@VOLPE.DOT.GOV>]

Dennis wrote:
>Maybe Television will come out with a smoking 4th record someday.


I've been re-listening to 2003 cdr-s that have the "new" Television 
songs.  I was too harsh in my initial assessment; they're stating to 
grow on me (like the fact it appears the words "Pop, Pop, Pop have 
been dropped from "Balloon".

There's an unknown (titled) song that is very beautiful (I think 
someone in a seed description even described it as 'lovely'. 

At the March 24 Boston show, they played this unknown song as an 
encore right before "Psychotic Reaction" --but after only about 
90 seconds they went right into Psychotic.  Maybe TV thought it was 
too low-key/slow for an encore, or because Boston audience 
appeared[?] restless, or their equipment woes made them drop it? 

This unknown song was played in its entirety at both recent NYC shows. 
It's about 6:40. There are 2 or 3? Carried Away cd-rs with this song on 
it.  The best version is on  "Wildly Impassioned Delight" July 22, 2002, 
SF Great Amer. Music Hall (one of the others is "Postcard From London", 
June 20, 2002, Meltdown Fest (may not have its lyrics yet).  

Old topic: It was from a very old interview (early 1980's); Verlaine was 
marveling to the interviewer about some Ravel sheet music he (TV) had 
found and bought in a used music store.  While discussing this sheet he 
remarked that he didn't know how to read music.  Possibly he does 
now--my guess is no, as he's more of a feel, intuitive-player compared to 
Richard who is very much more into theory and technique [not saying here 
Richard doesn't play with great feeling!] Using 'feel' in the different 
sense of the word.

Now, I don't think this makes Tom a non-musician.  I was not referring 
in my previous e-mail to people who can not read music versus say some 
recent graduate of Berklee School of Music, who's all technique but no 
heart (apologies to graduates P. Methany, G. Burton, and many and others 
to whom this slur doesn't apply). 

I was referring to someone like Hell while he was in Television 
(someone who literally can not play their instrument. If you're sick 
of my 'Hell's early playing' example, I could recount the bazillion 
Boston bands in 1970s who literally couldn't play. There was one duo 
in particular consisting of a husband and wife, whose name I can't 
recall at the moment, who thought energy, cartoonish-ness, and 
rock equals goofiness, made up for not being able to play.  

Someone mentioned Johnny Ramone---hey, he could play chords! 
(albeit only a few) 

This is probably old hat for long-time MM Listers, but as I remember 
reading an interview in which Lloyd admitted (in a nice way) that 
the music definitely got better when Fred Smith replaced Hell.  

Last but not least, in the 1981 Warner Brs Dreamtime Promotion interview 
with disc jockey Meg Griffin (that I never tire of mentioning :>) ), 
he talks about which instruments some of Television's songs were 
composed on.  I'm 99.9997% sure he said "Ain't That Nothin' " (and 
pretty sure) "See No Evil" were composed on piano!  

Probably shouldn't have ended previous sentence with "!". 
The musicians on who belong to the MM list would probably remark 
that this is very common. So, I am probably a walking definition of 
a non-musician.  

	Leo
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