I Was Hearing. Hearing Something Else.
Once budding guitarists have mastered "Smoke on the Water," "Paranoid," and "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the more adventurous may turn to the iconic riff from "Marquee Moon," the 10-minute title-track to Television's stone-cold-classic debut album.
Of course, it's not really one riff, but two interlocking parts; which is perfectly symbolic of the New York quartet. Built around the nimble-fingered, elegant six-stringing interplay of Tom Verlaine and his dueling foil Richard Lloyd, Marquee Moon is a glorious example of two instrumentalist playing off each other; Verlaine and Lloyd's musical dialogue fluent in the very notion of the electric guitar as expressive instrument.
What's curious about the guitar-hero worship that often comes up in regards to Television is that the band were considered, in their day, punks. Growing out of the same downtown New York scene as The Ramones, Dead Boys, and New York Dolls, Television's original lineup included Richard Hell, and, in 1973, they were the first ever rockband to plug in at the soon-to-be-legendary CBGBs.
That's All I Know (Right Now)
With three decades worth of hindsight, Television don't sound punk at all. Their meandering songs now seem like an obvious bridge between the florid psychedelia of the 1970s and the jangly college-rock of the '80s, with their influence on the entire Dunedin-based 'Flying Nun scene' palpable in every agile lick and taught, hoarse vocal.
Of course, talking about Marquee Moon's historical importance makes it sound far more worthy, less enjoyable than it is. And seems to suggest that the record sounds really 1977. But that's not the case. Listening to it, now, doesn't feel like some mandatory history lesson, but a pure pleasure; their a sense of timelessness at play, here, that only the truly transcendent, often unexpected records have.
It's hard to pin-point exactly why it plays so well, now; there simply something in the way that different parts —Verlaine's keening voice, those fluid guitar licks, the hammered-out block piano chords, the gently insistent bass— relate to each other, existing in some singular space, that makes it sound of no specific time, no straight style. Meaning, from now into the hereafter, Television will continue to sound fresh to every fresh pair of ears that hear them. And, given the ongoing legend of "Marquee Moon"'s signature riff, legions of neophyte listeners loom surely on this definitive album's horizon.
