(TV) T.V. not lazy afterall; he claims infinite-delay for new album is Rip's fault!

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

I had a strange, crazy day so did not get around to reading the Boston Globe
until 15 minutes ago. I just stumbled across this article/phone-interview
with TV by long-time Globe writer Jim Sullivan for this Sunday night's
Television show at The Wilbur Theater.

 

Per usual, the Globe does not provide free, workable links/downloads to its
articles unless you are a paying daily subscriber (as I am). So, I can not
post a useable link to today's interview; instead I had to do a copy and
paste from the Milton Public Library's portal to the Boston Globe
"Archives". [Hopefully its original formatting won't get mangled by the
List's transmission of posts.]

 

TV talks a bit about guitar parts in mid-late-era James Brown songs. Wasn't
there a discussion eons ago on the MM Mailing List about Verlaine saying
that one of the guitar lines in the song 'Marquee Moon' was based on playing
backwards the guitar riff in James Brown's song 'Popcorn'?

 

I'll tell TV I'll be "seated comfortably" in the 3rd row of the Mezzanine.

 

 

 

 

 

"Prime Viewing For Television's Return: Verlaine Wants Fans Seated
Comfortably" by Sullivan, James
<http://search.proquest.com/bostonglobe/indexinglinkhandler/sng/au/Sullivan,
+James/$N?accountid=46914> . Boston Globe
<http://search.proquest.com/bostonglobe/pubidlinkhandler/sng/pubtitle/Boston
+Globe/$N/46045/DocViewUX/1718278218/fulltext/B1B832BFAA9D4FB0PQ/1?accountid
=46914>  [Boston, Mass] 02 Oct 2015: Section G.1. 

 

TELEVISION At The Wilbur Theatre, Sunday at 8 p.m. Tickets $35-$45.
617-248-9700, www.thewilbur.com

Tom Verlaine wants to see you sitting down. When his classic punk-era band,
Television, returns to Boston to play the Wilbur Theatre Sunday, he'd prefer
that the audience take a seat.

"People don't really go bananas-rock-crazy and throw crap around when we
play," says the low-key bandleader, on the phone from his longtime home in
New York. "It tends to be an old style of listening, rather than partying."

That hardly means there's a lack of power in the band's singular style, led
by a probing, braided, sometimes un-punkishly prolonged interplay between
two guitars. The band, which has played sporadically since reuniting for a
second time in the early 2000s, will showcase songs from its timeless 1977
debut, "Marquee Moon," at the Wilbur.

Verlaine, whose ingrained reticence leads to plenty of "uhh"s and "mmm"s in
a rare conversation, has been frowning on rock 'n' roll recklessness since
he formed the band in 1973, a year before Television helped establish the
legendary New York punk club CBGB. In the early years, he squabbled with
original band members Richard Hell and Richard Lloyd over their tendency to
jump around onstage.

Hell, who went on to be a key figure on the New York punk scene, was nudged
out of the band before the first album came out. Lloyd was involved in the
1992 reunion that led to Television's third album, but left for good in
2007.

The band's "new" guitarist, Jimmy Rip, took Lloyd's place. In fact, he's
been working with Verlaine for three decades, playing on many of the
guitarist's solo recordings. The current lineup also features original
drummer Billy Ficca and longtime bassist Fred Smith.

Rip, who has played with Mick Jagger, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many more, lives
in Argentina, where he's been producing bands for years. If he were around
more, Verlaine says, Television might be a little more focused on finishing
a long-rumored fourth album.

"No mistake, if he were here, we'd probably get more done," Verlaine says
with a laugh. "He's energetic."

In fact, in recent years the band has toured a little more regularly. "A
show every other day for two months is fine," Verlaine says. "We could
probably tour steady for seven months in the States and make money, but it
becomes really grueling. So we pick venues and cities we like."

Verlaine says he's been in talks to reissue his extensive solo catalog,
possibly as vinyl releases with the Fat Possum label. Every 10 years or so,
he says, he notices a new wave of younger people picking up on his music for
the first time.

Of all the great bands that made CBGB -- Blondie, Talking Heads, the Ramones
-- the only person Verlaine sees much of these days is Patti Smith, his
onetime girlfriend. But that's not unusual, he says.

"I would say there was never any real brotherhood or sisterhood among those
10 key bands, other than to say hello. I don't even remember having a drink
with anybody in any of those bands."

Though they're forever linked through their association with the club, in
truth, many of the CBGB bands had little in common. Television is typically
recalled as the cerebral one, the band that bypassed frenzy and distortion
in favor of a kind of majestic poetry. (Verlaine, born Tom Miller, took his
stage name from the Symbolist writer Paul Verlaine.)

But Verlaine doesn't quite think in those terms. "It's not real cerebral,
really," he says of his band's music. "Most of the songs still have six
chords, tops.

"I really like guitar lines rather than chords," he says. "Nothing against
chords, but I like two lines working together, syncopating. Kind of like
what James Brown did. Those songs of his from about 1968 to 1975, there are
some amazing guitar bits. There are actually three guitarists on a lot of
those things when you really start to listen."

Television's thrumming, off-kilter first single, the seven-minute "Little
Johnny Jewel (Parts 1 & 2)," was released 40 years ago across both sides of
a 7-inch single, just like an extended James Brown vamp. And although the
band could hardly be described as funky, in its own way Television has
maintained its commitment to structure and arrangement. If there were one
band that could bring some truth to the nonsense about "dancing about
architecture," it might be this one.

Yet the band often pulls out a raucous cover of the Count Five's "Psychotic
Reaction," one of the real gut-punches of garage rock, as an encore.

"There's no accounting for taste, as they say," Verlaine says.

James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on
Twitter @sullivanjames.

Credit: By James Sullivan Globe Correspondent

Illustration

Caption: Television frontman Tom Verlaine, pictured in 2008. From left:
Television's Fred Smith, Tom Verlaine, Billy Ficca, and Jimmy Rip. Stephen
Lovekin/Getty Images


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