(TV) Ty's Boston Globe Review of Monday's Show

["Leo Casey" <LeoCasey@comcast.net>]

I'm having e-mail trouble so this may already have been posted; 

I don't have a link so here the whole review (IMHO a great one).

....................................................................

 

Revamped, rejuvenated Television tuned in at Paradise

 

Burr, Ty. Boston Globe [Boston, Mass] 14 May 2014: B.14. 

Music Review 

 

TELEVISION 

 

At: Paradise Rock Club, Monday 

 

Whether leading the legendary CBGB-era outfit Television or going solo, Tom
Verlaine has always seemed the most reluctant of rock stars. He's a guitar
god who favors exploration and odd timbres over ax wankery, a singer who
mutters, a frontman who shuns the spotlight. 

 

Yet there he was, all smiles Monday night at the Paradise as a revamped and
stunningly confident Television played one of the tightest, strongest sets
this longtime fan has seen. Tom Verlaine is happy! Surely the end times are
upon us. 

 

The secret, perhaps, is that the band's "new" second guitarist Jimmy Rip --
Verlaine's solo foil for decades but only part of the group proper since
2007 -- has finally exorcised the ghost of Richard Lloyd, the original
Television member whose relationship with his majordomo was always spiked
with rivalry and weird vibes. Verlaine seemed relieved to dispense with the
head games: If Rip's playing lacks Lloyd's molten lyricism, he's an
inventive soloist and a consummate professional, and the long, modal
two-guitar freakouts that always separated this group from their punk peers
-- and that ensured they'd remain a cult band and a critics' favorite -- are
in good hands. All four of them. 

 

Well-rehearsed and angst-free, Television spent the 90-minute set rummaging
playfully through its back catalog. The band touched on longtime concert
staples ("Prove It," "Venus de Milo," "Little Johnny Jewel") and unexpected
treats ("Guiding Light" from 1978's "Adventure"; the unrecorded early-'70s
rarity "I'm Gonna Find You," which sounded like a lost James Brown ballad).
Verlaine sang his cryptic lyrics with rare clarity and power, and if he
delegated much of the early soloing to Rip, his gift for elegant, astringent
noise eventually burst free. 

 

Bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca are still this band's power
source, and Ficca especially got to shine on "Persia," the orientalist jam
that Television has been playing for years in concert but still hasn't
gotten around to recording. (Rumors of a new release remain just that,
although the band has more than enough material.) 

 

The audience consisted of the usual contingent of graying late-period
boomers but also an inordinate number of under-30s, remarkable given that
Television hasn't released a studio album since 1992, and proof of the
band's growing status as uncategorizable alt-rock founding fathers. The new
fans were rewarded with a version of Television's best-known song, the epic
"Marquee Moon," that kept every promise this idiosyncratic band has ever
made, Verlaine's spidery fingers bouncing up and down the fretboard as he
conjured groans, wails, sirens, and church bells. No one has ever sounded
like him, and no one ever will. 

 

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @tyburr. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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