Tom Verlaine ...

[uwe]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jan/29/tom-verlaine-television-perfectionist-guitar-genius-always-kept-punk-guessing

His band Television had their Andy Warhol 15-minutes of fame when the English music press gushed over them in 1977 upon the release of their debut Marquee Moon. (Being an item with Patti Smith for a while also helped.)



To my ears they were extremely NYCish, you could hear the Velvet Underground influence, but at the same time you hear a whole lot of Tom Verlaine's music in The Pretenders (especially in Chrissie Hynde's singing) and The Strokes, also in REM. Not so much fathers of Punk (Television were known for keeping their guitars undistorted), but fathers of Indie Rock.

Verlaine's naive, yet questing and sometimes daring guitar playing defied convention (there's two lead guitarists on the album, the one  stumbling on more bum notes is Verlaine  ) and the whole album had the feeling of an elegy that just drew you in.

[slinkp]

Yeah, when they were good they were great. I didn't always love the songwriting but the approach to guitar was influential.

I had a guitarist friend in college who was _obsessed_ with this live version of Little Johnny Jewel. It made a lasting impression on me too.
It goes on quite a journey, more the sort of extended voyage you'd associate with a jam band like the Dead, but with more of an edge to it.

[uwe]

Yeah, that is what Lester Bangs said about them: "East Coast Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service, just even worse".  I always loved his put-downs, he spared no one. Another one of his classic comments was "All Heavy Metal bands sound the same, people say. But that is not strictly true. All Heavy Metal bands sound the same to the unaccustomed ear." And then went on to differentiate quite knowingly between the styles of various bands to end his treatise with the conclusion that within its boundaries Heavy Metal (he used the term loosely for all types of heavy music) is actually quite varied, spawning bands such as Mothers Finest with their funk edge to doom bands such as Black Sabbath.

I guess it's fair to say that "intrepid exploration of the (subjectively) unknown", was part of Tom Verlaine's credo. It's a nice way of saying "not knowing what you are doing, but being inquisitive about it".

[slinkp]

This is one of the songs I really like.



It does that thing where I'm not sure where the downbeat is until the drums start, and then I realize I was wrong about where I thought it was.

[uwe]

Same with me! Counter-intuitive, but fun!