(It’s actually a bit surprising that the renowned critic didn’t find more to like he and Verlaine shared a love of raw garage rock and challenging free jazz.) Thanks to crude audience tapes from 19, we can hear “Marquee Moon” come into its own onstage. “Endless, laborious climbing up in the scales, then get to the top and there’d be a moment of silence and everybody in the crowd would go berserk applauding, ha!” Bangs was likely referring specifically to “Marquee Moon,” which became a fan favorite at CBs as Television began stretching the song well past the 10-minute mark. “hey reminded me so much of the Grateful Dead, just boring solos, y’know,” Lester Bangs complained in conversation reprinted in Richard Meltzer’s A Whore Like All The Rest. But the band wasn’t universally beloved by any means. Television earned a devoted audience during their time as regulars at CBGB. But the abbreviated end, with all involved racing towards the finish line behind Verlaine’s shivering solo, hints at the heights they’d reach in the coming years. As with most of the band’s Hell-era recordings (he left the group in early 1975), it’s a ramshackle thing, with helter-skelter rhythms and barely in-tune instruments. The interlocking puzzle pieces of the song are roughly in place already: the opening guitar’s unmistakable morse code stutter, a thudding bass pulse (played here by Richard Hell) and guitarist Richard Lloyd’s nagging riff (a subliminal nod to the horns on James Brown’s “I Feel Good”). The earliest “Marquee Moon” available to collectors comes from a lo-fi rehearsal tape recorded at Television patron/manager Terry Ork’s loft in early 1974. “It’s a song I used to do on acoustic guitar.” But there’s no recorded evidence of this mellow embryonic version. “‘Marquee Moon’ was written about three years ago and actually it had 20 verses to it,” he told Melody Maker’s Caroline Coon in 1977. Apparently “Marquee Moon” was even less punky when Verlaine first imagined it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |