Re: Not NYC-punk / jock / RE: Quite a Statement / RE: (TV) OT: Luna & Dean Wareham

[Rex Broome <rexbroome@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Leo Casey <LeoCasey@comcast.net> wrote:

> >the Stairway to Heaven of 70s NYC punk. Great, yes. But
> > played out.
>
> I could say a lot more, but for now I'll l just go with that the song
> 'Marquee Moon ' is
> *not* NYC-punk, it's about as far away as you can get from that genre.
>

Well, I think that the absurdity of the idea that NYC-punk could even *have*
a "Stairway to Heaven" is the source of the humor, the fact that "MM"
wouldn't be it if there was one is just gravy.

Maybe the first person who said that "Stairway" thing, like the first person
who called Television "the Grateful Dead of punk", was serious, but almost
everyone who's said it since was surely joking.

It's kind of a thing now to claim each new genre has a "Stairway", usually
when someone notices that a song is kind of long.  For example, Catherine
Wheel's "Black Metallic" was called the "Stairway" of dream pop (later
renamed "shoegaze") because it was... long.  Never mind that half of all
other shoegaze songs were also rather long, and that the guitar solos in
"Black Metallic" were basically two guitars playing the rhythm part really
loud for a few minutes...

As a guitar player--either

technique-wise

or/and ability to connote emotional feeling--Dean Wareham couldn't carry
T.V.'s jock strap

(to paraphrase Rod Carew commenting on Reggie Jackson).  :> )

 Or, like as not, literally.


> Not sure what you mean by the phrase 'played out' can you say more (do you
> mean played too
> often)?
>

It's possible that MM had been "overplayed" by the people on this list,
personally, but among no other section of the population is that true!  I've
never even had the opportunity to change the station when that song came on
the radio for the fifteenth time in a week, because I've never heard it on
the radio.  Not even once.  I heard it on a jukebox one time, and not
because I paid for it; on another occasion I did select it on a jukebox, but
I didn't get to hear it because much to my dismay a crappy Velvets ripoff
live band started playing and they turned the jukebox off.  However, I do
owe those guys a debt because they made me form a band because I realized
that my crappy Velvets ripoff band would be a much better crappy Velvets
ripoff band, and I was right.  Still, look what "Marquee Moon" deprivation
can do to a man!


>
> Also, quantity will never supersede quality.
>
> So, what's Luna's equivalent to the album MM's song writing, lyrics,
> poetry, melodies, and
> ideas.
>
> My only problem with Luna is their stuff/sound has a 'sameness' to it and a
> lack of range.
> Verlaine can write play/write something as ferocious as 'See No Evil' and
> as
> beautiful and languid as 'Without A Word'.
>
> However, nothing I can say or write is gonna convince you or anyone in your
> camp.
> So I'll just go with the old sophomoric school yard stuff:  As a guitar
> player--either
> technique-wise
> or/and ability to connote emotional feeling--Dean Wareham couldn't carry
> T.V.'s jock strap
> (to paraphrase Rod Carew commenting on Reggie Jackson).  :> )
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: tv-owner@obbard.com [mailto:tv-owner@obbard.com] On
> > Behalf Of Andrew
> > Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 4:55 PM
> > To: tv@obbard.com
> > Subject: Re: Quite a Statement / RE: (TV) OT: Luna & Dean Wareham
> >
> >  Well Leo, with list activity being at pretty much a ten-year
> > high I just
> > thought I'd throw a cat in amongst the pigeons with that
> > statement and see if
> > we can crash the server... :-)
> >
> >  I'll go further and say that I think that taken as a whole
> > Luna's recorded
> > output is superior to Television AND the Velvet Underground,
> > by virtue of
> > there being so much more of it, most of at least an arguably
> > good standard.
> > There are few bigger fans of Verlaine/Lloyd than I (and I'm
> > wagering they're
> > all on this list) but for all the heights they reached it's a
> > crying pity that
> > there's so damn little of it.  Whenever I have old friends
> > over for drinks on
> > a rainy night they all groan "not again" whenever I put on
> > Marquee Moon.  It's
> > the Stairway to Heaven of 70s NYC punk. Great, yes. But
> > played out. But my
> > friends will all grin and nod like idiots when a Luna album
> > cut like Sideshow
> > by the Seashore comes on. I truly believe that Wareham and
> > Sean Eden are
> > criminally underappreciated as guitar players.
> > Dean seems to be a polarizing figure with many and the haters
> > will all point
> > to his obvious influences and say he ripped them off
> > (Television, the Velvets,
> > the Feelies) or used them to lend some sort of legitimacy of
> > illusion of some
> > sort of NY legacy to his band by having the likes of T.V. and Sterling
> > Morrison play on Luna records.  They may have a point. But I
> > do know that I
> > have only wept in near ecstasy at one band's concerts and it wasn't
> > Television.
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