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Re: (TV) Sour Grapes / Alternate Ver of Television's Founding?



On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 12:30 PM, BlackMonk <BlackMonk@email.msn.com> wrote:

>
>>  Richard could use this to his own credit, because he's so much more
>> versatile than Tom as a player,
>>
>
> That's the second time this weekend that someone has said this. Or you've
> said that twice, I forget. Anyway, I don't see that. His solo albums
> probably cover more ground than Tom's, but as guitarists, I think of Richard
> as basically a blues rock player who experiments with scales enough to make
> things more interesting. On the other hand, while Tom's albums stick pretty
> closely to the Television sound, I think his playing itself covers a large
> range. He started out with a quasi-rockabilly sound, did some Albert
> Ayler-influenced noise playing (a style he revisits from time to time), went
> into a more exploratory, almost jazz, type of soloing (think almost any long
> version of LJJ or MM),  went into a twangy James Bond soundtrack style
> during the 90s, as well as some country-influenced and atmospheric playing,
> and from the recent clips, I'd guess he's developing an interest in
> middle-eastern music, both in his playing and in his sound.
>

Okay, that's very well-laid out.  Maybe it will help me to clarify what I
meant by "versatile", because you've definitely identified a whole lot of
specific direction's Tom has explored there, and it is pretty diverse.
 However, at every turn his variations on these styles sounds totally
Verlaine-like.  There are specific licks on, say, "At 4AM" which sound very,
very "country" in the context of that song, but if they showed up on an
"actual" country song, I'm pretty sure I'd say, whoa, who let Tom Verlaine
in there with all these Nashville cats?

I guess I think of it like this:  if I were doing, say, a film soundtrack
and needed to hire session players for scenes calling for various feels or
styles, and I was lucky enough to have his number, I would call Richard in
to do the roadhouse blues stuff, the crazy slide stuff on the incidental
music, or whatever... just about any lead guitar idiom, I'd be sure he could
nail it and then some.  Whereas I would only call Tom if I wanted some
guitar that sounded just like Tom Verlaine.

(That said, if I was directing the film, I would just plain hire Tom to
score it, and let him do whatever the hell he wanted.  It irks me that
nobody has done this yet... I wonder if Tom has turned down a lot of offers.
 I have no doubt that his existing instrumentals have been used as temporary
tracks in the editing phase of many, many films.)



> My take on how Television's live shows developed on the last couple of
> decades is that, while he's interested in these approaches to the guitar,
> he's not that interested in being a soloist unless he's able to stretch out,
> so Richard took a lot of the solos before he left and Jimmy seems to be
> getting a decent amount of soloing time these days. Plus, Richard and Jimmy
> are good at the fiery blues-rock thing, and that is an exciting sound in
> live performance, especially on the shorter songs.


I'd say that's dead on.


> I did notice that Tom didn't mention Richard's name, but he did point out
> that it wasn't Jimmy playing in the video.
>

I was really interested in the rest of the band's reaction to that.  There
was a bit of low key snickering, I thought, but I couldn't tell if it was
nervous, relieved, or what.  They did not seem appalled, though.  When the
band did that first show in NY without Richard (when he was ill) and Tom
said something barely audible about "our other guitarist can't be here", I
found that rather snooty, but the vibe these days seems more amused and even
playful about the whole thing.  Oh well, he's not an easy guy to "read".
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