On 11/1/2011 10:34 PM, Leo Casey wrote:
Hi,
I gotta go with Leif and Keith on this.
I'd give 'Joshua Fought The Battle of Jericho' a C to a C- (and an F for
laziness!). I thought the guitar playing and melody wwere dull as
dishwater. It's as if he said: "I ain't gonna give one of my better songs
to
charity; I'll give them another stinker like I did with 'Mistakes' and
'Leaves' for the Japanese Earthquake Relief cd. That nut, Richard Lloyd,
thinks my melodies and playing suck ... well wait until he gets a load of
this one!".
The scary thing is, according to a link Claudia sent this summer, and
which
shows a photo of Television's set-list scrawled in Verlaine's handwriting,
Television played this song ('Jericho') either in Sao Paulo or Porto
Algre,
Brazil in July. Maybe 'live' he re-arranged it a lot. (As a general
rule,
I think Tom should stay as far away as possible from African Spirituals
(or
R& B/Soul) covers; it's just not his thing/world. When you look up the
definition of 'Caucasian' in the dictionary (or internet) it's got a
picture
of a young Tom with his almost pasty, pale, white skin and a gangly bag of
bones. I am not being racist or disrespectful; Tom is just the polar
opposite of black soul music and that's partially a back-handed
complement.)
There's a 74 demo on YouTube called "I'm Gonna Find You" where Television is
attempting to do something bluesy, with pretty dire results. Richard Lloyd
posted that he wrote the music because he wanted to do something is 6/8 time
(He says "6/4" but I'll assume that's just a typo), but I can't figure out
what music was actually written or why anyone would want to take credit for
it. It sounds as though, while he might have wanted to do something in 6/8,
he didn't tell the rest of the group and none of them know that there is a
time signature other than 4/4. They all sound much more comfortable towards
the end of the song when they've abandoned the blues and sound like the
Velvet Underground.
As for "Jericho," I thought his vocal worked a lot better than his version
of "Fever," which does fit your description very well. Maybe that's because
"Jericho" sounds like a traditional song as Tom Verlaine would do it and
"Fever" sounds like Tom Verlaine trying to do a R&B record. I have no
problem at all with the guitar playing on either.
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