(TV) Wistful in Northampton: Losin' Grip Pt. 2

["Casey, Leo J" <Leo.J.Casey@Volpe.dot.gov>]

A couple of days ago, I went to visit a friend in Northampton/Amherst about
120 miles 
west of Boston; Northampton's a big college & artist town. A fair number of
musicians 
formerly based in NYC have moved there in the last 10 years or so.   

I have fond memories of seeing a show from Verlaine's 1981/Dreamtime tour at
nearby 
Hampshire College. 

(I mentioned this particular show in a MM post several years ago, but want
to try to 
establish my July 2005 state of mind for what's at the tail-end of this
e-mail.) 

In 1981 the band played in a campus space that was ordinarily used for
photography 
exhibits; small---maybe 30 'by 45' [?], with a ceiling that must have been
only 9 feet high. 
They had to play in one of the corners on a temporary dais about a foot
high; there only 
about 80 people (probably 95% of whom were Hampshire students).

Despite the room's smallness, the sound was almost perfect, and the audience
loved the 
show ---probably in my top three Verlaine shows of all time--and not just
because I was 
standing with my girlfriend a yard from the 'stage'.  Downside:  pretty
tricky to tape the 
show when they're playing 3 feet away from your coat pockets.  In a parallel
universe 
where Television are as popular as Christina Aguilera, there exists a live
recording of this 
show. Howard, I want you to transport yourself there and retrieve it. 

The room's power failed in the middle of a very extended version of "Down On
The Farm", 
but when it came back on about 10 minutes later, the band after returning to
the stage 
impressively picked up in the exact place they had left off! 

Anyways----so what's my point?  
I was reminiscing 2 days ago about this show with my friend as we were in
one of 
Northampton's used cd/vinyl stores that had lots of great stuff.  My friend
tapped me on 
the shoulder and pointed out that one of the 3 vinyl albums prominently
displayed on the 
wall behind the cash register was TV's eponymous solo record. 

Then we went into Dynamite Records, and I noticed they had a collection of
buttons of 
many bands; one of them caught my eye. On it was a reproduction of the same
photo 
of Television that's on the front of some versions of the cd, "The Blow Up"
(the one where 
TV's wearing a funky vest).  So I bought it for 89 cents. 

Why?  Because I just had to liberate it from those other buttons in the
store----all of which 
were considerably larger in size.  The circular Television button was about
the size of a quarter 
(no exaggeration).  Given that the other bands' buttons had diameters that
were about 4 times 
longer, this meant that they were 16 times greater in area!  It was just one
more metaphor for 
the band's relative obscurity; a couple of times during my long drive back
to Boston I thought 
about how even buttons of Television get no respect!  :>)

	Leo
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