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(TV) Les Paul & Other Shows/Hypothesizing, Theorizing / 'Our clothes always clean'



Regarding:

>A little bit of me just died inside. Les Paul? Tom?
>>I think it's possible ,if not highly likely, the reporter was snorting
something that night.

There's a 1981 or 1982 interview in which Verlaine is asked if he's been to
hear any
live music lately and what records he's been listening to.  Instead of his
usual
standard interview reply of (and I'm paraphrasing):
'I don't listen to current music---and what little I have listened to/heard of
rock
music in last few years in U.S. or Europe I don't think very highly
of---moreover,
I never frequent clubs'---the the latter comment and isolation caused one
reviewer to
end his pan of TV's WWFTF album by commenting write that " He [Verlaine]
really needs
to get out more.".  Instead he (TV's response in the same Trouser Press
interview)
answered at length by mentioning several used LPs of the Chi-lites [from New
Orleans??], and that he had recently seen four live shows in NYC:  he
mentioned the
following attended shows:  Mission of Burma, The B-52s, Bobby Womack & his
band [who
among other things wrote Stones' 1960s' hit 'It's All Over Now'], and a Les
Paul
show.

He said he liked the Mission of Burma---especially their originality and
their
somewhat abrasive sound-- and The B-52s concerts a lot, but that the Bobby
Womack
show was very disappointing "mostly jive", and he felt ripped off], then he
said the
Les Paul show was also a disappointment although it was more due to the venue
and to
technical/sound problems.  I have NEVER ever seen any reference to Tom playing
a Les
Paul until the Crawdaddy article (although given it was as early as 1975,
maybe it's
possible it was something he borrowed just for that night or was what he used
in his
pre-Jaguar Fender days?).

When I originally read the Trouser Press interview in 1982 I remember that I
was more
than a little surprised that TV would like the B-52s --whom I always
snobbishly[?]
regarded as cartoon-rock and very light (he said their live show was very
humorous)--maybe he was partial to them because the B-52s' lead guitarist,
Ricky
Wilson?? [his last name escapes me at the moment] had played on 1981's
'Dreamtime'.

    Leo

PS:  Somewhat ironically, Verlaine and others argued in the 80s that one
explanation
of why Dreamtime hadn't done better commercially was because it went against
and was
out of step with the then current music scene whose most successful bands had
made a
deliberate move away from guitar-based songs and solos, to a sound built
almost
completely around the use of synthesizer/keyboards.  E.g., Soft Cells'
'Tainted
Love', Dipjche Mode, The Human League, Voltaire Ballet (and to a lesser extent
Joy
Division/New Order, Bauhaus) or other euro-beat, club-dance, electric-pop
groups.

Why ironic? Well some have argued that the weakness of TV'S 1984 album 'Cover'
was
partly due to the fact that Tom had tried to adjust to the times by featuring
a more
commercial sound by using a lot of synthesizer playing (and drum machine) on
this
record--and as we know this record didn't sell either.

Unrelated to all of the above:  Am I the only person who thought the sound
employed
in 'Days On The Mountain' had a lot in common with 'Tainted Love' (albeit the
subject
matter and emotional tone of the two couldn't be more different:  the latter
cold,
cynical, and 'tainted' versus 'Days On The Mt''s  mystical, child-like and
'clean'
theme.

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