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Television - 20 June 2005
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- Subject: Television - 20 June 2005
- From: Andrew F Wilson <andrewfwilson>
- Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 00:35:41 +0100
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Television
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
By Adam Sweeting
The Guardian, Thursday, 23 June 2005
It always seems incongruous to hear people citing Television's 1977
album Marquee Moon as a "major influence" because it's so
extraordinary that nobody else has ever been capable of creating
anything like it. At a time when the punks were preaching anarchy and
insurrection, Television were making cerebral, crystalline art-rock.
When incompetence was highly prized, Television laid on a display of
the utmost technical expertise.
As for Tom Verlaine, he was, and remains, the ultimate un-frontman.
Tall, pale and slender, he can get through an entire performance
without betraying any awareness that there's an audience in the house,
though tonight he was comparatively gregarious, and managed a couple
of muttered asides.
The notion of a band built around twin lead guitars has usually meant
the harmony-rock clichis of a Thin Lizzy, but Verlaine and Richard
Lloyd created something infinitely more nuanced. Here, Lloyd's guitar
was the louder in a lopsided sound mix, so it was impossible to
overlook the amount of ground he was covering. Crisp, crunchy chords,
dextrous fills and torrential Van Halen-style solos tumbled from his
fingers. Verlaine added colours and counterpoints, or would take his
cue from something Lloyd had just played to spin off a solo extending
the thought upwards and outwards. Drummer Billy Ficca and bassist Fred
Smith were both bedrock and safety net, alert to shifts in tone while
keeping the quartet's structural integrity intact.
In a performance dominated by lengthy instrumental passages ranging
from skittering funk to Arabic scales, Venus De Milo, Prove It and a
cascading See No Evil were as brief and poppy as it got. Marquee Moon
was its statuesque self, flashlit by Verlaine's fractured playing.
Patti Smith joined them for an encore, performing her own poetry while
the band snaked bluesily behind her. For all Television's qualities,
it made you pine for the extra dimension a commanding frontperson
could give them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/story/0,,1512266,00.html
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Also, see here for a parody Meltdown poster:
http://www.lnreview.co.uk/music/005123.php