Who ?

Describing as “democratic” a band where the two guitarists appear to hate each other and trade off solos, but are, in the end, working together in service of the exact same project, is quite apt if we are using American Democracy as the benchmark.

More than anything else, doesn’t this validate what Frank Zappa said about music critics?

Verlaine never let Lloyd write any songs for the band. Earlier, he cut all of Richard Hell’s songs one by one until Hell quit, to be replaced on bass by Fred Smith (no relation to Fred “Sonic” Smith from the MC5, who married Patti Smith).

Hardly a democracy.

Richard Hell wasn’t much of a bass player and his songs were crude, but his cheekbones outclassed Verlaine’s. He had to go.

Bought Marquee moon on Christgau’s advice.

Sounded like manic-depressive Talking Heads.

Best of 77? Gimme a break.

https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg70/lists.php

https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=television

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/the-big-lookback-tom-verlaine

https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/list/decade70.php

Hell with Marquee Moon. I prefer Killing Moon by the band with the stupidest name.

…and later on, according to Walter Lure, Johnny Thunders kicked Richard Hell out of the Heartbreakers (no relation to Tom Petty’s band) when Hell tried to pull a Verlaine in that band. Nobody pulled a Verlaine on Johnny Thunders, cheekbones or no. The Heartbreakers junkied themselves into oblivion, Thunders died young, and Lure cleaned up and had a successful career on Wall Street. Hell is still around, trading on his cheekbones.

I have heard of Television for years, but never heard any of their tunes. So I just sampled some at YouTube, including Marquee Moon. For me it was Just boring, standard stuff.

Also recommended: Tom Verlaine’s solo work, such as “Red Leaves”

That clip seems to be slightly sped up.

Jazz lost its popularity when the musicians decided that technical proficiency was better than danceability or singability.

I put Marquee Moon on tonight after reading your post to remind myself what the album sounded like and wow, what a great album. The first four tracks are sensational straight out of the box crescendoing with the title track.

You don’t have to have heard them before to acquaint yourself with the sound, you slot right in from the get go.

“content to sit and listen, I’m impressed” – that’s key, I think. You need time on your hands with it on while doing something constructive with your hands, or with a long night drive ahead, the perfect soundtrack to get outside your head. Or, of course, with several drinks of choice kicking back having a chat with some quality mates with the album at a good volume chugging along.

I was first introduced to this album* by Matt Forney when I asked him to recommend me an album while we were online drinking in chat. Matt Forney has great musical taste, btw, funny bloke too. Good on ya Matt wherever ya are now, fair thee well!

Anyway, top stuff, well done Tom Verlaine, to have left this mighty work of art as your mark whatever else you’ve done or didn’t do this is enough, for mine, I hope I could one day do something the same.

Since everyone was talking about Christgau in the Beatles post here’s what he said about Televsion and their debut album:

Marquee Moon [Elektra, 1977]
I know why people complain about Tom Verlaine’s angst-ridden voice, but fuck that, I haven’t had such intense pleasure from a new release since I got into Layla three months after it came out, and this took about fifteen seconds. The lyrics, which are in a demotic-philosophical mode (“I was listening/listening to the rain/I was hearing/hearing something else”), would carry this record alone; so would the guitar playing, as lyrical and piercing as Clapton or Garcia but totally unlike either. Yes, you bet it rocks. And no, I didn’t believe they’d be able to do it on record because I thought this band’s excitement was all in the live raveups. Turns out that’s about a third of it. A+

*I haven’t heard any of their other stuff that I can recall. I started a workbook many years ago to list all the albums I’ve listened to but have slackened off, so don’t have them marked down.

steve, some of these kids on twitter don’t know you used to go to punk shows in the 70s.

time to redpill dasha and anna’s timelines

Not-so-strange bedfellows:

The only place we find equality is in mortality.

https://mises.org/library/egalitarianism-revolt-against-nature-0

“The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, and Television. They didn’t actually have much in common, ”

Sure they did. They were all bad. All overrated. All over promoted for suspect reasons. You can throw the Cars and the Clash in there as well.

Introduced to Television @ 16 from reading a review of Marquee Moon in my older brother’s stash of Penthouse magazines in 77. Tom Verlaine took his name from the French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine.

Verlaine is another one of those guitarists who seems to have very little if any blues influence in his playing. I think my original view that they were pretty rare (could only think of Richard Thompson and Jorma Kaukonen) was a result of Boomer astigmatism – such guitarists are actually pretty common in the post-punk era (Marr, U2, Vini Reilly), and there were more than I thought in the pre-punk era, from Neil Young (like the solo in Southern Man) to Roger McGuinn in the Byrds.

Notice in this video that desirable femininity hasn”t changed an iota since 1964 Bardot.

Described as the anti-Ramones, but the only reason this band has even a sliver of relevance in rock and roll history is because of their vague association with the Ramones.

And why couldn’t you dance during the long solos? Did the rest of the band stop playing, and did the beat fall apart?

They grudgingly traded off long solos, which at age 19 I didn’t much like. I wanted to get up and dance. [e.a.]

Steve, at the time, what was your opinion of disco?

Steve,

Start a band. By the time your 75 you could have your first album.

I’m not joking

You could do as good as the Eilish guy (every song sounds the same)

I admit I had never heard of this band, nor heard a single song by them. The other three I assume basically everyone has heard of. Television must be one of those bands sort of like Velvet Underground – people claim to be fans of them to show how sophisticated (and pretentious) they are. But in reality they were not very popular.

Lost their guitars temporarily and had to borrow Blue Öyster Cult’s guitars for this show at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco. The results are glorious. This is the opening track. Dig the suitably lispy introducer. (You can play the whole concert if you click on Youtube’s “Play All” function.)

(Blocked on Unz because of course some truths are too terrible to be told. Click “Watch on Youtube” … should work).

OT: George Floyd Effect to their doom: https://www.foxnews.com/us/three-former-texas-high-school-athletes-dead-police-chase-ends-fiery-crash-report

Three of Africa’s best athletic specimens too.

The name was unfortunate, because post-Internet, searching in a search engine for Television “Television live” or “Television music ” would get you beans.

Tom is one of the guys who belongs on the Mount Rushmore of punk, along with Pattie and Dee Dee and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

If you accidentally kicked that teenage guy who was passed out drunk on the floor of CBGB circa 1981, it was probably me.

Two girls ride on the Blue Line.
Two girls walk down the same street.
One lost her sweater, just
Sittin’ on the train,
And the other lost three fingers at the cannery.
Everything’s so easy for Pauline.

Guess which girl I identify with.

Richard Hell played bass, and his conflicts with Verlaine (which focused on Hell being spastic on stage, which Verlaine saw as both undignified and as taking away the audience’s attention from the music) led to his leaving Television in 1975 and eventually founding Richard Hell and the Voidoids, whose most famous recording was Hell’s composition ‘Blank Generation,’ and had been written while Hell was in Television.

The second guitarist in Television who traded such beautiful solos with Verlaine was Richard Lloyd.

Verlaine and Hell had become friends in exclusive boarding school. So their conflict was long brewing, starting even as they had been drawn to one another by musical desires. Hilly Kristol, the Jewish owner of CBGB, was rumored to have said that the feud between Verlaine and Hell, who also were both Jewish, was Verlaine as the Jew who cared deeply about art and Hell as the Jew performer who cared most about shocking the audience and then about living the life of the wild artiste.

I think you could lump those four bands together as “Art Rock” but, no, not punk rock. Dead Boys, Richard Hell, sure. But a wink-wink rockabilly band doing Sweet covers? No.

Boy is that a loaded question. Just how much a geek or spaz was young Steve?

Boomers were the first truly homosexual generation — Gen Z is the next, it makes sense why punk resonates with both so deeply. Was not at all surprised when I learned that that my Gen Z nephew (who I reported to the FBI for attending Jan 6) enjoys that faggy racket.

Well….. be as it may, it’s better than rap.

Ah, to be young and at CBGB again.

My fav Television song (Glory).

I recall disliking Television when they arrived. I listened to the video you dropped and now I can articulate why: lame songwriting. Here’s a song that’s 100 times better than Television by a punk band from Australia, The Saints:

That’s what my wife asked me.

Steve, at the time, what was your opinion of disco?

What kind of question is that? What are you, Joe McCarthy?

… is was once quite apt…

Fixed it for you.

Bought Marquee moon on Christgau’s advice.

Boy, how many times do I have to tell you:

CHRISTGAU HAD NO TASTE. HE WAS AN URBAN RUBE.

“Jazz lost its popularity when the musicians decided that technical proficiency was better than danceability or singability.”

No, jazz lost its popularity when the musicians decided that technical proficiency was better than listenability.

You really can’t do much dancing per se to this jazz classic and you can’t really sing it but it is supremely listenable.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zPgh7nxTQT4&feature=shares

…to be replaced on bass by Fred Smith (no relation to Fred “Sonic” Smith from the MC5, who married Patti Smith).

Or the founder of FedEx. Whose father, also Fred, founded the Toddle House chain, where you paid on the honor system. Imagine that! It’s been gone for sixty years.

I once read an article that the combination of Fred and Smith was the most common in America, Smiths apparently avoiding John. There was a big get-together where hundreds of John Smiths got to meet one another. They all wore numbers.

I actually bought one of Television’ albums at the time. Can’t remember which, only a very vague memory of the opening track.

In my rather very informed opinion, if somebody says “I don’t like Television, Patti Smith or the Ramones” then that is sort of Slovenian for saying “I have no taste and deserve to be shot on sight or maybe eaten by wild dogs.” For the record, I almost WAS once eaten by wild coyotes outside a Paiute Indian reservation in northern Nevada, so…. ya never know, do ya.

God rest ye, Tom. Kick Patti in the shins when the opportunity arises.

If you didn’t fall out of your chair after hearing the first ninety seconds of “See No Evil” then go play somewhere else.

I admit I had never heard of this band, nor heard a single song by them. The other three I assume basically everyone has heard of. Television must be one of those bands sort of like Velvet Underground – people claim to be fans of them to show how sophisticated (and pretentious) they are. But in reality they were not very popular.

Read this. VU was highly influential on other bands over generations, Television, OTOH, was strictly a me-too lightweight band. Forgettable. Inconsequential.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20131125-do-the-velvets-beat-the-beatles

My small contribution to this post: the band name ‘Television’ is based on Tom Verlaine’s initials.

The music of one’s adolescence and young adulthood is the soundtrack for the rest of their life.

This creates difficulty sharing music after time as the emotional impact that resonates is so age dependent. It is very rare for someone to take a deep interest in previously unfamiliar songs when they first hear them in middle age.

You can sure hear The Velvet Underground on this one.

If not for Verlaine’s vocal, with the right promotion it could have been a hit single.

My favorite cut of theirs was See No Evil, which kicks off the album. Once I was killing time in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) and heard it on in the store as I walked in and I thought what is that again, until the lyrics kicked in and I was like, oh yeah.

I heard a live bootleg once and that did seem to suggest part of the appeal was live.

I liked some of Verlaine’s solo stuff; I think Flashlight came out when I was working at a record store. Nothing earthshaking.

I used to listen to this album until I wore out the cassette so I got sick of it. But then I had put the Stranglers and Adam Ant (his first campaign) on the back burner. Maybe as a result the latter sound fresh (in the context of New Wave era bands with musical chops). Maybe English were more accomplished, the Damned rival Deep Purple and most of their catalog sounds like stuff made by guys with longer hair too.

That was a great album, although I prefer The Cutter from Porcupine.

I sw them live on Pier 84 in 1987 with New Order. Thought nothing of it at the time, but quite the double bill.

Bought Marquee moon on Christgau’s advice.

Taking music listening advice from Christgau is like directing your how-to-become-a-bigger-beast-in the-bedroom questions to the cardinal of Boston.

I am of Steve’s generation. The Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie I certainly remember. I even went to a Blondie concert. Even worse, I can recall where I was when I learned of the death of Sid Vicious ( call me an old saddo ! ).

But Television, Tom Verlaine ? Never heard of them until Maestro Steve mentioned them just now. They must have been world famous in the San Fernando Valley or something.

PS. No doubt about it, Vicious was the world’s worst bass player. When the Pistols performed live, they always had at least one extra bass player drafted in. They would surreptiously unplug Vicious ( he was usually too zonked to notice ) and the session player(s) would play instead.

The really great Television song was “Friction.”

That said, “Marquee Moon” is a marvellous piece of structured ensemble playing. Structured ensemble playing was hardly the sound of 1977 of course.

The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, and Television. They didn’t actually have much in common

One thing they had in common was that they were all Americans who got their start playing at the CBGB in 1974/75 (well, David Byrne was born in Scotland, but he grew up mostly in the states). I think by the mid-70s, a lot of American musicians—and rock critics—were fed up with British dominance in rock, which had lasted about a decade by that point. Some of the enthusiasm for these four homegrown New York City bands may have reflected “concentric loyalties,” which were very much a thing in punk culture generally.

Of course, The Ramones and Television notably sang with cheesy British accents, maybe a self-conscious nod to the British Invasion bands aping American accents and mannerisms in their early years. Plus, Verlaine became interested in rock after being impressed by the interlocking guitar parts on Rolling Stones songs. Rock music (distinguished from rock and roll) was a transatlantic dialog.

Fun fact: when the Beatles were rejected by Decca in early 1962, one Decca exec explained the decision by saying that “guitar groups are on the way out.” It may have been meant as a polite excuse, but if it was a serious prediction, it was about 40 years early.

Why would someone buy an album from reading a Robert Christgau review? Every review of his I’ve ever read was more or less disdainful.

Guy never heard of Hot Tuna.

I seriously doubt that the Sex Pistols had a backup bass player live. They weren’t that organised, and on their American tour the worse they played the better Malcolm McLaren liked it, probably. But it’s true I think that Sid Vicious played on almost none of their records.

Did you ever see Joey Ramone in person? The guy is not only odd looking but 6’6.

You could spot him in a crowd of 20k easily.

The Ramones blew chunks; had a group skill set that was below KISS. The Romanes were a novelty act beloved by atonal hipster punks who are now mask/booster/trans/Ukraine fanatics. The Romanes were so lame I could’ve played lead.

The Talking Heads were inventive and fun whilst Blondie was an above average disco act (that Giorgio Moroder soundscape makes the Cuban/Columbian/Miami coke wars of the 70s and 80s seem kinda romantic).

But it was Television and the guitars of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd that had tremendous influence with the post punk/new wavers of the synth-saturated 80s who picked up their guitars again and began channeling 60s psychedelia and the best of the punk sensibilities of the late 70s and early 80s. Matthew Sweet, a tremendously talented singer/songwriter/instrumentalist that arrived on the LA scene in the early 90s after a brief stop in REMsville Athens, Georgia, hosted Richard Lloyd’s guitar on his best albums.

Listening to Marquee Moon now I hear Mike Campbell tones. The three guitarists — Campbell, Verlaine, Lloyd — landed at the same time in the late 1970s. I’m rambling now so I’ll stop.

RIP Tom Verlaine

Boomers were the first truly homosexual generation — Gen Z is the next, it makes sense why punk resonates with both so deeply. Was not at all surprised when I learned that that my Gen Z nephew (who I reported to the FBI for attending Jan 6) enjoys that faggy racket.

The Christian conservatives were right the whole time.

Following generations will be 50% and eventually 100% gay.

No one will have children and the US will become a homosexual version of Mad Max.

Bands of homos will drive around the lands in search of victims.

Thanks a lot punk rock and 80s music. It all started when men put on makeup.

“It is very rare for someone to take a deep interest in previously unfamiliar songs when they first hear them in middle age.”

My “rare” qualities have mostly made my life more difficult. But I thank God I’m that rare person who’s now deeply interested in music unknown to me in my teens.

Thanks for your appreciation of MM, one of the greatest albums in rock. I wanted to add that when I saw the movie of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, and John Cusack’s record store owner starts with his incessant top 5 lists, opening with “Top Five side one, track ones [on LP, natch],” his number one leadoff track was “Janie Jones,” from the Clash’s debut eponymous LP (UK edition; the US version had a completely different track order).

I kept waiting for Cusack (or maybe Jack Black’s character, whose musical taste was slightly more adventurous) to say, “See No Evil,” from Marquee Moon. Nick Hornby could hardly have objected.

“Richard Lloyd”

Played on Matthew Sweet’s early to mid 90s albums. Created stellar melodic and pop rock with Matthew. Looks like I’ll be listening to 90s music for the next 48 hours. No tragedy: the 90s was the last great decade for rock before the rap/hip hop psyop destroyed pop music.

That looks like every apartment I ever had in NYC.

Music doesn’t work that way.

If you’d never heard your favorite song before and just sampled it now, you probably wouldn’t like it as much. Familiarity is part of the appeal.

I don’t think Television ever got any radio airplay anywhere. You learned about them the some way that the previous decade or so you learned about The Velvet Underground and The Flying Burrito Brothers: you read rock writers who refused to settle for anything like the ‘hits’ and you paid attention to what other musicians and writers said.

The big difference between the two bands that started in the later 1960s and Television is that the former pair both inspired a huge line of later bands and singers and songwriters, while Television seems to have had minimal influence in inspiring new bands.

Steve, I think, really likes New Order. I much prefer Joy Division, which sold almost nothing compared to New Order. In case you do not know, Joy Division’s lead singer and lyricist, Ian Curtis, hanged himself. He’d suffered increasingly from severe depression that was linked to rapidly worsening seizures that the British socialist medicine could not control at all. The 3 surviving band members added a local chick they knew well as a competent musician, and called the new line up New Order. New Order then slowly moved from harder edged post-punk and New Wave into techno dance stuff that sold very well.

But Joy Division has inspired far more later bands, musicians, and songwriters than New Order has.

I bought Marquee Moon at the height of my post-punk obsession. I loved The Fall and Joy Division and that sort of thing, but Television did nothing for me. All the rock critics seemed to love it though. 🤷

“blues influence”

You’re point is above average: the post punkers pretty much wiped away the influence of the 60s and 70s mainly British acts who prayed at the altar of black blues. Of the biggie Brits, only Pete Townshend seemed to not want to wallow in that ghetto. Blues is monotonous. It’s abuse of the sacred six strings.

My small contribution to this post: the band name ‘Television’ is based on Tom Verlaine’s initials.

His real name was Miller. He was a Jewish preppy who took his stage name from an obscure (to Americans) decadent Parisian poet.

In his favor, Paul Verlaine did shoot a slave trader– his soetimes-lover Arthur Rimbaud.

Hilly Kristol, the Jewish owner of CBGB, was rumored to have said that the feud between Verlaine and Hell, who also were both Jewish,

Any relation to Irving Kristol, and thus his spawn Bill?

Everything discussed on Unz reaches this point, more or less quickly.

Every. Single. Time.

In the last “chapter” of Naked Lunch, Lee shoots two narcotics cops, Hauser and O’Brien. Later he calls the bureau and asks about them. A Lt. Gonzales answers, says he’ll connect Lee to an Alcibiades, and Lee muses to himself “I began to wonder if there was an Anglo-Saxon name left in the department.”

Television (one of the best band names ever) were great, but only for about five minutes. They had two albums and were done. The entirety of their “influence” is in those two records, and nothing Tom Verlaine ever did afterwards mattered, though he did put out one more great song in “Postcard from Waterloo.” But that’s it. A flashy flash in the pan, but at the time a unique guitar sound that was something new under the sun. Their 1992 “comeback” album was just ok, and it didn’t matter a lick.

Marquee Moon never even charted in the U.S. They were a classic cult band, beloved of rock critics, “difficult” but not TOO difficult (try James White and the Blacks if you want too difficult), with evocative, symbolist type lyrics that meant nothing and everything. “Broadway looked so medieval” is cited over and over by critics, because… why? Is it a smart lyric? Or just stupid and meaningless? Like:

I remember how the darkness doubled
I recalled, lightning struck itself

Mmmm kay. Granted as an ardent wanna be punk at age 19, that all seemed to mean something important. But it’s really just twaddle. There’s definitely an element of classic Jewish shysterism in it all, forever playing the con on the rubes. Still, I really like Marquee Moon.

Was Verlaine the best Jewish rock guitarist of all time? Yeah I know, Mark Knopfler, but is he even a rock guitarist?

PS – Died after “a brief illness.” Ok then.

One of the weakest songs on David Bowie’s Scary Monsters album was a version of Tom Verlaine’s Kingdom Come. ( Though the original was even weaker).

mike, mike, mike. i saw the cars in my clubbing days, and they were just goofy fun then that doesn’t much hold up now. but there are 15-20 clash songs i still put on my head phones at the gym. art school posers? yes. still some great music. the most critical thing i can say is that punk/postpunk had to be experienced when it came out to be truly enjoyed. for the most part, the only times my kids liked stuff i liked, is if it had been seeded into some teen tv show they were watching at the time. my daughter loved ‘white rabbit’, and was embarrassed by how much better the original ‘teenage kicks’ was to the pussified version that some soy boy came up with later, both run into as the sound track for a tv show, but i would say that maybe the kids liked 1 of every 10 or so songs i played, the rest they found annoying.

his soetimes-lover Arthur Rimbaud

not to be confused with john rambo.

Over the years, I’ve listened to VU and Lou Reed a lot more than the Beatles. Lots and lots more.

Fred’s wife, Patti Smith, (who of course was already named “Smith”) was later prone to be confused with Patty Smyth (pronounced with a long ‘I’) of the band Scandal. At the time she was living in Detroit (actually St. Clair Shores) with Fred, there was a local fashion designer named Patti Smith who, reasonably enough, refused to alter her name in any way, so people were prone to go to one Smith event or opening expecting the other Smith.

This comment thread is bit of a depressing read, thought this lot would have more cultural appreciation for a band like Television despite the obvious political leanings.

I forget where exactly, but I once saw Steve Forbert described as kind of a litmus test of your interest in folk music. If you’ve heard of him you’re probably more interested in that genre than the average man on the street and his music will likely appeal to you. He could even become your favorite artist. If your interest is surface level, it may not resonate.

Tom Verlaine is (was) kind of the Steve Forbert of indie and post punk in that sense. It’s not the kind of stuff I’d play for friends who don’t already have some appreciation for off kilter and slightly jazzy minimalist rock music but for those of us who love that kind of weird stuff, Television is on the Mount Rushmore of artists that operate in this space. The songs are generally not immediate, but once you get past the quirkiness the songs are teeming with fantastic guitar riffs, great melodies and a sound that influenced so many bands that came after it’s hard to appreciate how unique they were in their day. Musically and culturally, particularly in NYC.

The first record is an all-time classic. Adventure has some ok moments but the production was less raw and killed the vibe. Their eponymous 1992 comeback is an underrated and more adult version of the band. As for the solo stuff, it’s hit or miss but lots of flashes of brilliance. Check out Kingdom Come from his 1979 solo debut, possibly his catchiest song and later covered by Bowie.

Following generations will be 50% and eventually 100% gay. No one will have children and the US will become a homosexual version of Mad Max. Bands of homos will drive around the lands in search of victims. Thanks a lot punk rock and 80s music. It all started when men put on makeup.

My 1972 Corgi UK paperback of William Burroughs, The Wild Boys, blurbs thus:

Adolescent guerrilla packs of specialized humanoids are routing the forces of civilized nations and ravaging the earth. When wholesale slaughter erupts, the battle continues underground where the survivors evolve into The Wild Boys, hordes of pitiless homosexual warriors who move in and destroy the cities.

Burroughs was a great influence on Bowie, circa Diamond Dogs, so the makeup part checks out.

The Television song you linked to is one of my favorite songs. A friend played it for me in our college dorm right after it came out. I had one college friend who thought New York was the center of the punk universe and another who thought it was London. The first one played me Television, Blondie, the Ramones and the Talking Heads and the second one played me the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Elvis Costello and the Damned. They both made the trek to their musical Meccas. The first one met Patti Smith on the sidewalk in New York and got a hug from her and the second one was surprised when he was talking to someone in a bar in London and Johnny Rotten walked up to the guy he was talking to and joined the conversation.

“Lure cleaned up and had a successful career on Wall Street. ”

Fordham graduate. Good for him.

“Hell is still around, trading on his cheekbones.”

Has a daughter, grown by now, with the great Patty Smyth I believe.

video not available … what was the title?

Eilish is a young woman

I remember it being a convention of James Smith’s. This was back in the 70’s IIRC.

“Verlaine and Hell, who also were both Jewish, was Verlaine as the Jew who cared deeply about art and Hell as the Jew performer who cared most about shocking the audience and then about living the life of the wild artiste.”

From the seminal punk memoir done by John McCain’s daughter Please Kill Me:

https://pleasekillme.com/everything-combustible-conversation-richard-lloyd/

do a search on the word “faith” to read an interesting passage on how controlling Verlaine was.

Lloyd I assume was not Jewish (and had equal cheekbones, and better overall looks).

The story in “Venus”, sung by Verlaine, is a good example of the veto power that Verlaine had:

Then Richie, Richie said
“Hey man, let’s dress up like cops, think of what we could do”
Something, something said “you better not”

MISTER SAILER MAY I REMIND YOU THAT YOUR ANSWER WILL BE ON THE PUBLIC RECORD

Music doesn’t work that way.

Familiarity is part of the appeal.

Only for people with “low openness to experience”, perhaps in combination with low total experience (i.e., hasn’t heard much music).

For others, no, regarding unfamiliar music, specific familiarity is not required for an adult who has heard many different songs, to judge. If you know what you like, qualitatively, you know, whether your tastes are broad or narrow.

Do you judge the physical attractiveness of strangers the same way—personal familiarity?

Eilish is a young woman.

Billie Eilish played at a Texas music festival one time in front of a bunch of old people and they were expecting a guy. When she came out, they were disappointed. They had her confused with Billy Idol.

It was The La’s 1988 “There She Goes”, got to about #50 when released but since considered one of the truly great pop records. Great guitar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_She_Goes_(The_La%27s_song)

“Blues is monotonous. It’s abuse of the sacred six strings.”

It’s interesting that by far the greatest white blues musician was a (paranoid – perhaps drug induced) North London Jew. But you can’t call what Peter Green(baum) does abuse. The spaces between are as meaningful as the notes.

The music of one’s adolescence and young adulthood is the soundtrack for the rest of their life.

Not in my case … I have sworn off a lot of punk, pop, singer-songwriter stuff, “rawk” like Rolling Stones and even Beatles. As I have become more red-pilled. Introspective, “woe is me”, “I am so angry” etc. music seems feminine, pathetic to me now.

But I’m still a huge music fan. In addition to stuff like Television that still sticks with me intellectually (As well as at a pleasure-center), I discovered in the last 5-6 years two or three genres that I had totally missed from the 1980s to 2010s. There is still a lot of great music out there. But generally speaking, “pop ate itself”.

I always thought that was an odd choice of name. Like De Niro’s character in Once Upon a Time in America, a Jewish gangster named…Noodles. It made the tragic love scenes somehow less tragic.

“We can never be together… Noodles.”

Point of privilege, point of personal privilege!

OT — The Pentagon confirms what Victoria Nuland has already confirmed. The Ukraine was sacrificed to deflect deep state blowback.

So Vladimir Putin was right all along:

The US Pentagon released a statement on its official website acknowledging that it has funded 46 Ukrainian biological facilities over the past 20 years…. https://t.co/aUED6bQggG

— Richard (@ricwe123) January 30, 2023

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3057517/fact-sheet-on-wmd-threat-reduction-efforts-with-ukraine-russia-and-other-former/

At 64, you ought to be learning to appreciate Peggy Lee:

I am sort of out of pop now (as I describe infra) but I would probably include the La’s “There She Goes” in my list of The Only Six Power Pop Songs You Will Ever Need.

his sometimes-lover Arthur Rimbaud

not to be confused with john rambo.

Yeah, I was going to make a late-’70s/early-’80s joke about Verlaine and Rambo, but couldn’t think of anything. A real Rambo family owns some crumbling commercial real estate near our lot. It’s temptingly cheap, but for understandable reasons.

Is Rambo a Cajun name? There are white and black ones around Dixie. It can also be Scandinavian; there were Rambos in New Sweden.

It was all sarcasm if that wasn’t clear.

I don’t think it is possible to turn most men gay.

It doesn’t matter if they listen to bands that wear make up. It wouldn’t matter if most men wore make up.

Not any different than putting make up on wolves. It doesn’t change their nature.

If sexuality was truly malleable then most women would have gone lesbian a long time ago. In fact during the 60s there was a left-wing attempt at turning White women lesbian “for the cause” and it completely failed.

“If you’d never heard your favorite song before and just sampled it now, you probably wouldn’t like it as much. Familiarity is part of the appeal.”

That’s certainly not true for me. I’d never heard “West End Blues” till about 14 months ago. I loved it instantly, far more than what I loved then but now recognize as the treacly stuff I listened to in my teens. (Just listened to some CSNY since reading that C passed, no way would I even bother with that now, after hearing Armstrong and the Hot Five.)

Familiarity is part of the appeal of specific songs for most people, I think, what you might call the context of personal history. For me, musical excellence is the appeal; the more of it I hear in a piece, the more bowled over I am by that piece, regardless of when I first heard it.

Cover was actually one I bought. 1984. Pretty good. Maybe his best without Richard Lloyd.

I didn’t realize they’d been playing a lot of the Marquee Moon stuff for years, since ‘74. And Eno even produced some demos of the songs that ended up on the album but Verlaine thought the production too cold. He waited until he got a record deal where he could produce (with help from an experienced engineer).

It does sound more like Eight Miles High Byrds, Coltrane and Ayler, mixed with garage rock ‘60s stuff, than “punk.”

To make it all the more confusing, Richard Hell married Patty Smyth.

And Candy Slice married Gene Wilder.

Was Verlaine the best Jewish rock guitarist of all time? Yeah I know, Mark Knopfler, but is he even a rock guitarist?

What? Not Leslie West?

Nothing special about West’s biography; just run-of-the-mill substance abuse. His more interesting bandmate Felix Pappalardi was shot dead by his wife, with a weapon that was a gift from him.

Finnish figure skating, RIP:

If you’d never heard your favorite song before and just sampled it now, you probably wouldn’t like it as much. Familiarity is part of the appeal.

That was true when I was young, when it took a few spins of a record for it to sink in. But the process sped up over the years. Delving into the “great American songbook” helped a great deal. As did studying song forms. Once you recognize them, it’s easier to adapt to something new.

I saw David Johansen doing his Buster shtick right before COVID, February 2020, at the Carlyle. He did a bit about when the Dolls were getting back together. He joked that he looked through every den in Chinatown but couldn’t find Johnny.

I clicked on the Television “Marquee Moon” to see what all the fuss was about. An alarm on my phone went off in the middle of the song and for several bars I thought the alarm sound was part of the song.

But Joy Division has inspired far more later bands, musicians, and songwriters than New Order has.

Source?

At any rate, this isn’t my impression. Most people in my generation (late X) heard New Order first, later discovering Joy Division through them, or through the Unknown Pleasures T-shirt. New Order enthusiasts tended to be musicians or artists, and they did start bands.

It may be harder to measure this kind of influence now. Influencer bands like the Velvet Underground, the Sex Pistols, the Stooges, etc. appeared and did their work in a cultural environment which no longer exists. The age of interesting avant-garde musical movements largely ended with the rise of the Internet and cheap computers (come to think of it, avant-garde in general ended about then, for probably the same reasons).

Rebellion and innovation are now both inexpensive and popular, and therefore banal, and the splintering of culture means there are few universals to push against, so it has become difficult for musicians to do much of anything interesting in those directions.

On the New Order vs Joy Division debate, while New Order was always ahead of Joy Division for me, I appreciated both. But I may be a minority in that — I think most people tended to prefer one or the other.

To me, Joy Division is simply the youthful New Order, and was always growing in that direction. Ian Curtis introduced the rest of the band to Kraftwerk, and synthesizers and drum machines increasingly featured in their recordings. This guitars-to-synth-disco-dance transition was not at all unusual for artsy late-punk bands, as affordable synthesizers began to appear in the UK.

“Delving into the ‘great American songbook’ helped a great deal[learning to enjoy new songs]. As did studying song forms. Once you recognize them, it’s easier to adapt to something new.”

For me, it was listening to Lieder (mostly Schubert’s). Listening to how crucial breath control, phrasing and dynamics are in Lieder really helped me understand what singers like Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday were doing vocally And Artie Shaw and Louis Armstrong were doing instrumentally.

I really need to delve into the Great American Songbook.

Perhaps you can open an inquiry in the House Un Errican Activities Committee.

They grudgingly traded off long solos, which at age 19 I didn’t much like.

“Marquee Moon” sounds like cacophonous garage-tier Stones. That is not a compliment. MM opening notes and 7 seconds into Interpol’s “Obstacle 1”: two songs have the same ‘base’, but Interpol is in another world.

If you now like guitar solos, (and longer pieces in general) maybe get more familiar with David Gilmour’s work. It seems you missed out on Pink Floyd’s essential oeuvre back in the day. There is time to correct that, although the heavy ‘imprinting’ factor of youth won’t be in effect. Here’s serving-size Gilmour from the aughts:

Sax solo from the same album:

Of course, the above may not take if your personal music imprinting is forever stamped with a dirty/cool ’70s downtown scene affinity.

It sounds deceptively like a love song to a girl but heroin was Lee Maver’s true muse.

The fundamental problem with Verlaine is that he thought he was a singer. He most certainly was not.

ROOF RAISING HOOTENANNY (scaring the hoes edition)

not to be confused with john rambo

https://www.unz.com/ldinh/boys-ii-bums/#comment-1390190 (#70)

(Charitably, I’ll say she sings “rim-boh’d” rather than “hhhrrambo eyes” to avoid confusion with the glaring protégé of Colonel Sam Trautman.)

CRANK IT

It does sound more like Eight Miles High Byrds, Coltrane and Ayler, mixed with garage rock ‘60s stuff, than “punk.”

Yeah, I agree (thanks for the tip on Coltrane and Ayler – I’ll check them out). I don’t understand a lot of the rock categories and what makes something one and not the other, that’s where the specialist critics step in. All I know is if I like a certain types of music I can look up the classification and check out more like that. Well, now Spotify does it all for me and compiles similar style of music after you listen to an album. From there I can like songs I hear and if I get enough of that band in my liked list I can then listen to an album.

I always thought of punk as Sex Pistols or Iggy Pop Stooges stuff. Ramones I never considered punk yet of course they’re classified as punk, and sing about punks like Sheena. I see on wikipedia they are classified as “punk rock” and “pop punk”. I think the latter suits them.

Someone should make a chart of all the musical styles with connections like those ones explain how all the various types of beers are connected branching out from ales and lagers.

And then New Order morphed into a disco band, more or less. As did PiL, even more improbably.

Yeah I always thoughts that DDG number was a great new-wave track, decades late.

Must admit, this is one comment thread I was expecting would have no sax solo referenced in it.

At long last, sir…..

That was a good one. The La’s, as in Lads. He’s a good la’, tha’un.

Do you have room for a top 7 power pop song?

Yeah that might even be in the 6. Septembur Gurls, No Matter What …etc

Ah, very nice pickup!

Funny enough I was thinking about this song a few weeks ago and was going to post an off-topic comment on it in one of my drunken rants.

Thanks for making the connection. Right time, right place, God delivers not but once again.

I love Scary Monsters having first given it a good and proper listen only in March 2022 while on a lengthy holiday. I can safely say it’s my favourite Bowie album, even better than his so called Berlin Trilogy.

Yet, as per usual, Christgau doesn’t rate it:

Scary Monsters [RCA Victor, 1980]
No concepts, no stylistic excursions, no avant collaborations–this songbook may be the most conventional album he’s ever put his name on. Vocally it can be hard to take–if “Teenage Wildlife” parodies his chanteur mode on purpose the joke’s not worth the pain, and if you think Tom Verlaine can’t sing, check out “Kingdom Come”–though anyone vaguely interested has already made peace with that. Lyrically it’s too facile as usual, though the one about Major Tom’s jones gets me every time. And musically, it apotheosizes his checkered past, bringing you up short with a tune you’d forgotten you remembered or a sonic that scrunches your shoulders or a beat that keeps you on your feet when your coccyx is moaning sit down. B+

Insane characterisation of Teenage Wildlife, I can’t fathom that assessment. What a gem of a song, kick arse opening to side 2.

From a comment on Youtube:

Richard Bowie
3 years ago
This is one of David Bowie’s personal favourite Bowie Songs …..this is what David said of it back in 2008……

Teenage Wildlife

So it’s late morning and I’m thinking: ‘New song and a fresh approach. I know, I’m going to do a Ronnie Spector. Oh yes I am. Ersatz, just for one day.’

And I did and here it is. Bless. I’m still enamoured of this song and would give you two Modern Loves for it any time. It’s also one that I find fulfilling to sing onstage. It has some nice interesting sections to it that can trip you up, always a good kind of obstacle to contend with live.

Ironically, the lyric is something about taking a short view of life, not looking too far ahead and not predicting the oncoming hard knocks. The lyric might have been a note to a younger brother or my own adolescent self.

The guitars on this track form a splintery little duel between the great Robert Fripp and my long-time friend Carlos Alomar.

And here’s the kick in the guts, the sad thing I was gonna comment here about, from the wikipedia article on the Verlaine solo album:

David Bowie covered “Kingdom Come” the following year on Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). Verlaine was originally set to play lead guitar on this version; however, Bowie was unhappy with his part and instead used King Crimson guitarist, Robert Fripp.

Oooof! That’s a punch to the guts. Imagine how stoked Verlain would have been to get the call from Bowie “Hey, Verlaine, mate, love yer stuff, I’m gonna cover yer song and want you on guitar. How’s about that? Hey? Hey?!”

Verlaine would have been over the moon and probably practised the shit out of his own guitar part to only, at the last minute be disposed of from his own song like yesterday’s tray of full kitty litter in favour for Robert Fripp. That must have hurt sooo bad. Makes me whince thinking about it.

(Fripp’s guitar on this album is out of this world. He’s the secret ingredient as to why this album is an undervalued treasure. As well as Bowie’s “chanteur mode” of singing.)

Has a daughter, grown by now, with the great Patty Smyth I believe.

In Googling my way down the Patti Smith/Patty Smyth rabbit hole, I discovered that Patty Smyth is currently married to John McEnroe (and has been for decades.)

On the other hand, “Marquee Moon” is a great search term.

I never heard of Television until now. The problem with the guitar solo is that the guitarist isn’t very good. What he wants to do is interesting, but he can’t pull it off. Its like listening to Darby Slick’s solos for The Great Society (e.g., Grimly Forming). Even Grace’s recorder (yes, she played the recorder) on Nature Boy is more competent.

“If you now like guitar solos, (and longer pieces in general) maybe get more familiar with David Gilmour’s work. It seems you missed out on Pink Floyd’s essential oeuvre back in the day.”

No maybe about it. Dave Gilmour is a god. As much a musical genius on guitar as Jussi Bjorling was with his voice or Michael Rabin was on violin.

And Pink Floyd’s music is indeed essential, to me anyway.

Steve, et. al.,

This is completely off topic, but a couple weeks ago one of your commenters dropped a really great Latin quote. It was something like “As it gets closer to the drain, things move faster.” I cannot find that quote anywhere, and I want to use it in my own writing.

Can you or anyone else let me know the quote, and also the commenter?

Tim

For me, musical excellence is the appeal; the more of it I hear in a piece, the more bowled over I am by that piece, regardless of when I first heard it.

Right. Notably, and I base this on past music conversations here with Dave, is that I believe he has a form of music ‘prosopagnosia’. Instead of face-blindness, it’s music-deafness, or musicagnosia, in that Dave can’t readily blind-judge if a song has artistic/emotional merit, so he is swayed over time by tangential factors, which manifests in randomness and error: Does the song seem popular with the right cohort, is the (lady) singer hot and/or entertaining live, what are the artist’s credentials, has the artist in question collaborated with esteemed established acts, etc. These are not reliable clues as to whether a song is good or not: only the listener can judge, and if the listener has musicagnosia, he or she cannot readily judge music.

https://www.unz.com/isteve/two-extremes-of-movies/#comment-5687350 (#155, etc.)

The fundamental problem with Verlaine is that he thought he was a singer. He most certainly was not.

While that’s a problem, for me his fundamental problem was his undistinguished songwriting

I don’t know. I regularly move away from favorite songs, movies, meals, and so on, rediscovering them much later, and I usually find that not only do I still enjoy it but now see something new in it. Less growing apart and more the dashboard gets crowded. But there are songs I do not understand at all, where it seems to me that it must be an in-joke. For example, since somebody brought up the Femmes, “Blister in the Sun.” I don’t understand how that even got written, let alone why you will sometimes hear musicians praising it.

What’s amazing about this is, whereas you’d expect tragicomedy from a female cop or a male midwife, figure skating is a discipline in which from day one there have always been lay-recognizably spectacular performers from either gender.

I find “Pomp and Circumstance” to be a tired and annoying cliché at graduations. It leaves me cold.

But when I hear it on the car radio or in another non-academic setting, it is one of the most moving pieces there is.

It’s the same damn tune!

But back in those days. so-called “prog rock” was around. And it was much better:

There is math in music. Man, I’m so happy that I saw Holdworth live.

Yeah I always thought that DDG number was a great new-wave track, decades late.

I still think Steve should’ve named his dog “Dee Dee” :

https://www.unz.com/isteve/i-got-a-dog/#comment-5291239 (#21)

The best choice I can think of right now is “Dee Dee”—initials of Default Dog, and it also works as a Ramones and Dum Dum Girls reference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dum_Dum_Girls

Dum Dum Girls’ debut album, I Will Be, was released in March 2010 and was well received by critics. Pitchfork described the songs as “genuine earworms, both unfailingly hip and often wonderfully associative”. Dee Dee produced the record with Richard Gottehrer, who had previously worked with Richard Hell, Blondie, the Go-Gos and the Raveonettes.

Having just listened to it again, I think Friction is my current fave. It isn’t the solos so much as the interplay between the guitars, kinda like Down by the River with Neil Young and Crazy Horse. And the lyrics here are more like Coasters detective type song with the Verlaine/Rimbaud thrown in. Guiding Light on the 2nd side is almost sappy Bryan Adams with some Motowny Funk Brothers bass.

“I find ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ to be a tired and annoying cliché at graduations. It leaves me cold.

But when I hear it on the car radio or in another non-academic setting, it is one of the most moving pieces there is.”

Yes, same here. And I have the same response hearing “The Star-spangled Banner” before a sporting event vs in another context. Bored out of my mind in the first situation (even if, as is increasingly rare, it’s sung well), moved to tears in the second.

@verymuchalive,

Great story about Vicious, who often got too far out over his skis due to mistaking notoriety for talent. Sid Vicious was at the same recording studio as Queen, and invited himself into their studio for a look-see. He was ignored. Freddie Mercury was at the piano, noodling out a melody. Vicious loudly inquires, “are you working on another one of your million-selling hit songs, then?” Mercury replied, “we do our best, Mr. Ferocious!”

I don’t understand a lot of the rock categories and what makes something one and not the other,

The style-splitting these days is really getting preposterous. I was looking at this Wikipedia page the other day about Heavy Metal Genres. I do not listen to metal music and I am not interested in it, but I know that metal is renowned for splintering into endless varieties and factions, and I was curious to see just how complex it had become. Wikipedia did not disappoint; the page lists no fewer than 70 subgenres by my quick tally. This is insane.

I would be hard pressed to name 70 different metal songs, let alone 70 bands, let alone 70 subgenres. Who needs that many? Can anybody really keep all this stuff straight? And the important question, is there really enough of a difference here to justify all the ramification, or have the critics and publishers simply gone overboard with the nominalism?

Call me square, but I don’t think any healthy society needs 70 different conceptions of “distorted guitars and wailing.” There is no doubt some symmetry between this and the fact that the society that has this is also insisting upon 57 different nonexistent genders. It is rebellious individualism run amok. It is also indicative that we’ve spent way too much time and energy on this stuff. Society would not be any poorer if we limited ourselves to maybe a dozen musical genres, none of which sounded like a guy with bronchitis trying to shout over a pipe bender.

How did one of the largest egg production plants burn down during a national egg shortage? pic.twitter.com/WhmHmsHzcu

— E (@ElijahSchaffer) January 29, 2023

In America today the tune of the trio from Pomp and Circumstance No. 1 is just as familiar as it is in Britain, but the words are virtually unknown. The tune has become virtually synonymous with school graduation exercises in North America. How did this come about?

Transatlantic involvement with the March began on 28 November 1902, when Elgar’s great American champion, Theodore Thomas, conducted the Chicago Orchestra in its U.S. première at the Auditorium Hall in Chicago. Several further performances followed, but it was not until 1905 that the work was first heard at an American graduation.

With the establishment of the Enigma Variations and The Dream of Gerontius as works of genius, Elgar began to receive many requests from the United States to visit and perhaps conduct some of his works. Elgar resisted these requests at first, but in August 1904, his great American friend, Samuel Sanford, Professor of Applied Music at Yale University, told the 47-year-old composer that he would receive a wonderful reception if he visited the United States. This led Elgar to change his mind and early in 1905 he received an official invitation from Sanford to stay with him at his home in New Haven which he accepted on 17 February. Then, on 15 May, at Sanford’s prompting, Yale University invited Elgar to receive an Honorary Doctor of Music on 28 June.

The Elgars finally left England on the liner Deutschland on 9 June, arriving in New York six days later. Here they were met by Sanford who took them to his beautiful house on Hillhouse Avenue, very close to the main university campus. Sanford was a wonderful host, and despite the hot and often oppressive weather of a New England summer, the couple were able to visit several of the more interesting local towns and villages. On the day preceding the degree ceremony drew near, Elgar developed a dreadful headache but he had recovered sufficiently by the following morning to depart with Sanford for the Woolsey Hall were the ceremony was to take place.

The commencement ceremony itself began with the academic procession that entered the hall to the accompaniment of Mendelsohn’s Ruy Blas overture. There followed a prayer given by the Rev. Dr. Twichell of Hartford and the singing of Psalm LXV. The President of Yale, Arthur Twining Hadley, then addressed the assembly. Following his words, the successful examination candidates, 669 in number, were presented with their degrees.

After this the Meditation and opening chorus, ‘Seek Him that maketh the seven stars’ from Elgar’s Light of Life was performed by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra reinforced by several New York Musicians, while members of the College choir, the Glee Club and a few musical members from the faculty, some fifty in number, made up the chorus. The part of the Blind Man was sung ‘most effectively’ by the tenor, Dr. Charles H. Zimmermann. Professor Harry B. Jepson played the newly installed Newberry organ and Professor Horatio Parker conducted the work. Parker, who Elgar had met previously in England, had taught the young Charles Ives when he was an undergraduate at Yale.

Although there were thirteen other candidates for honorary degrees, Elgar was the only one to be awarded a Doctorate of Music. Now dressed in Yale’s magnificent blue robes, he was introduced by Professor Williston Walker who said: ‘We would ask that Yale do her part to express the admiration of America for his talents and service by conferring upon Sir Edward Elgar the degree of Doctor of Music, already his by gift of the English Universities, and thus do herself the honour of enrolling him among her graduates.’

Following his words, Professors Sanford and Schwab hooded the candidates. The Yale Alumni Weekly subsequently reported that: ‘the occasion was notable not only on account of the many distinguished Americans who received honorary degrees from Yale during the morning, but because of the presence of Sir Edward Elgar, England’s foremost musician … His name was received with unusual demonstration.’

The ceremony concluded with Martin Luther’s Eine Feste Burg and the Benediction before the guests left the hall to Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 played by the orchestra. The impression that the work had on the assembled audience led to its gradual adoption by other prestigious American universities: Princeton in 1907, Chicago in 1908, Columbia in 1913, Vassar in 1916 and Rutgers in 1918. By the mid-1920s it was being performed by many others, and today it is heard at graduation ceremonies throughout the country, both at colleges and at high schools.

The reason for the popularity of the march has to do with Elgar’s ability to invent melodies that convey a complex of emotions. The tune manages to sound triumphant, but with an underlying quality of nostalgia, making it perfectly suited to a commencement that marks the beginning of one stage of life, but the end of another.

https://www.elgar.org/3pomp-b.htm

That would have been a different one. The Freds met sometime in the ’80s or ’90s.

Whenever I saw Rick Sanchez on CNN, I’d recall a colleague with that name who left, and was shortly replaced by another. (Neither was a Richard, by the way.)

RIP Tom Verlaine. Marquee Moon is one of my desert island albums.

Patti isn’t dead.

“It all started when men put on makeup.”

It started with Al Jolson?

Delving into the “great American songbook.” Ain’t that the truth. Stephen Foster:

Right. Notably, and I base this on past music conversations here with Dave, is that I believe he has a form of music ‘prosopagnosia’. Instead of face-blindness, it’s music-deafness, or musicagnosia, in that Dave can’t readily blind-judge if a song has artistic/emotional merit, so he is swayed over time by tangential factors, which manifests in randomness and error: Does the song seem popular with the right cohort, is the (lady) singer hot and/or entertaining live, what are the artist’s credentials, has the artist in question collaborated with esteemed established acts, etc. These are not reliable clues as to whether a song is good or not: only the listener can judge, and if the listener has musicagnosia, he or she cannot readily judge music.

This is a calumny, and an obnoxious one at that.

Sometimes I hear a song and like it immediately, but I don’t think it’s fair to sample snippets of a ~50 year old act and pass summary judgment on it—that’s not due to any deficiency on my part.

And I am not swayed over time by any of the factors you mention; it’s literally the repetition that helps me appreciate good music that I like.

The first time I noticed this was with Beethoven’s 9th, specifically, the Leonard Bernstein conducted version. Obviously, I was familiar with the catchy leitmotif in the fourth movement that everyone has heard in numerous ads and soundtracks. And similarly, the 2nd movement is readily accessible. But it was on my fourth listen that the whole symphony clicked for me. It had nothing to do with Beethoven’s or Bernstein’s looks or credentials, or what others thought about it.

The same was true for me with Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten (which, interestingly to me, was initially panned by the NYT reviewer). If I were simply responding to the sorts of cues you suggest, I would like all of his other work too, but I like some of it (e.g., Monsters of Grace) and not others (e.g., Einstein on the Beach).

There also seems to be a bit of projection by you here and in the thread you link to, suggesting I would like a band solely because it has an attractive front woman. When I asked you for samples of music that you liked, one of them was by an otherwise forgettable band with an attractive blonde front woman.

It took me a minute to remember where I’ve been seeing this name lately. The indie pop band Alvvays has a nice song called “Tom Verlaine” on their wonderful album that came out last fall.

I found this quote from the singer-songwriter:

I love the Television records and I don’t know much about Tom Verlaine, but I read once an interview that he did with someone, it’s sort of like a notorious one where he wasn’t really giving much. There are some moments on the record where I felt like I was trying to channel a little bit of Television, but this song is kind of independent of that. I thought the final piece of the puzzle lyrically was, “You were my Tom Verlaine sitting on the hood.” I just liked him kind of sitting on the hood, squinting, not approving, rubbing his chin on the hood in a leather jacket. It made sense to me, but I hope I’m not demystifying.

Steve, you wrote a few months ago about the decline in the number of hit songs with key changes. “Belinda Says” from the same album has a key change, and is one of the best pop songs I’ve ever heard. Pitchfork ranked it #1 song of 2022. It has thoughtful, touching lyrics about a girl with an unplanned pregnancy. I even cried a little bit listening to it while on the elliptical the other day.

The title refers to Belinda Carlisle and her song “Heaven Is a Place On Earth”. “Blue rev” is some kind of Canadian alcoholic beverage the youths drink.

There also seems to be a bit of projection by you here and in the thread you link to, suggesting I would like a band solely because it has an attractive front woman. When I asked you for samples of music that you liked, one of them was by an otherwise forgettable band with an attractive blonde [sic] front woman.

Not sure of her hair color– it differs in photos– but Edythe Wright sure was attractive. And she could sing.

https://bandchirps.com/artist/edythe-wright/

“Rhythm Saved the World” (1936) Tommy Dorsey’s Clambake Seven with Edythe Wright and Dave Tough

I saw David Johansen doing his Buster shtick right before COVID, February 2020, at the Carlyle. He did a bit about when the Dolls were getting back together. He joked that he looked through every den in Chinatown but couldn’t find Johnny.

I saw Kinky Friedman at the Fine Line in Minneapolis. He bragged about his Jewish Cadillac, the Yom Kippur Clipper. It would stop on a dime. And pick it up.

He also asked what Jesus said to the Mexicans. Why,

Fortunately, Elgar did much better stuff.

Wow. Where’s Steve? Cat has his tongue lately.

Any song with “love” in the title, just replace it with the word “drugs” and let the fun begin!

Actually, you can replace all sorts of words, even the word “words” … try it in the Bee Gees song. “It’s only drugs, and drugs are all I have…”

Puts an agreeable, comic-tragic cast on the whole affair.

Why do you think Tom Verlaine was jewish?

Nice! Definitely improves some songs: “Drugs in an elevator” .. “I wanna know what drugs is” .. “Drugs is the drug” .. well, maybe not that one ..

Tele–Who?? Is Steve showing his boomer side? Never heard of them, nor has anyone else born after 1973.

And Blondie and Talking Heads “punk”?!?!?!

Which idiot said that?

As someone who was around at the time, I didn’t consider Blondie, Television or Talking Heads to be punk. I don’t think they were dealt with that way in the music industry media. The same with Devo. There was a general flowering of experimentation and a feeling of mutual camaraderie, and common venues, record labels, and audience, but the punk label was fairly narrow to a particular style.

O/T:

Aussie Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Deep Throats an ice cream at the Tennis [Australian Open].

All told, I’d rate “Ashes to Ashes” as DB’s best single. And one of the best-ever songs about H.

Its accompanying video wasn’t bad either.

>James White and the Blacks
Nice, you beat me to it. Pretty much all the Nurse With Wound list is good.

The music press did mention the back up bass player story at the time. So the band must have been using one at least part of the time. But your story about their American tour does sound right. I’m sure Malcolm McLaren would have approved.

100% OT, but this conference is taking place as we speak, at the European Parliament – on the need to dismember the Russian State. I think it’s actually sponsored by Poland’s ruling party, which if true seems to indicate derangement of an order that makes RationalWiki look like SlateStarCodex.

https://ecrgroup.eu/event/the_imperial_russia_conquer_genocide_colonisation

For many who have experienced Russian oppression in the past, the war in Ukraine can only end when the Russian Federation is completely repulsed and defeated. In order to finally remove the threat to peace that the Russian Federation still poses, the international community should seek a re-federalisation of the Russian state.

Tsarist, Soviet or under Putin, Russia has not changed over the centuries. It is driven by the same imperial instincts, repeating the same pattern: conquest, genocide, colonisation, and then seeking a silent acceptance of the status quo, bribing the international community with the mirage of economic cooperation or the illusion of a vast Russian market. It is naive to think that the Russian Federation can remain within the same constitutional and territorial framework. Taking into account the national and ethnic map of the territories of the Russian Federation, we should discuss the prospects for the creation of free and independent states in the post-Russian space, as well as the prospects for their stability and prosperity. The international community has a duty to support the rights of the indigenous peoples who, as a result of Russian conquest and colonisation, now exist within the borders of the Russian Federation.

So it’s not that they were Communists, it’s that they were Russians? Looks as if the Poles are too based for their own good. If they think Russians make bad neighbours, try Somalis. I tried to warn the Canadian/Polish writer Tom Piatek in this vein.
https://www.unz.com/article/how-poland-won-the-war-on-christmas-one-carol-at-a-time/#comment-5743351

It’s a difficult pill to swallow that the Warsaw Pact and Soviet domination may actually have preserved Poland from 1945-1990. Certainly Poland in 1990 was still full of Poles, England not so full of English.

If Poland, as seems to be the case from where I’m sitting, throws itself headlong into America’s campaign against Russia, don’t imagine that there’ll be some kind of reward. No good deed goes unpunished. Should the US win, God forbid, then Poland can expect mass third world immigration*, the removal of Christianity from the public sphere, and all the other blessings of liberal multiculturalism. Indeed the only chance in my opinion of Poland remaining Polish is that Zelensky’s Ukraine is defeated and the US/EU need Poland as a bulwark against Russia.

I am sorry to veer so far off topic, but I feel it’s important if you don’t want Warsaw in 30 years to look like London or Paris.

This conference, which could be (and probably is) designed specifically to worsen relations between the two countries – is just the kind of lunacy that Churchill commented on after Munich (the Poles demanded the Teschen district from Czechoslovakia – after all, if Germany are having a chunk, shouldn’t Poland as well?).

“The heroic characteristics of the Polish race must not blind us to their errors, which over centuries have led them through measureless suffering…it is a mystery and tragedy of European history that a people capable of every heroic virtue, gifted, valiant, charming, as individuals, should repeatedly show such inveterate faults in almost every aspect of their governmental life.”

* there’s a video going round in the UK of Ukrainian refugees in some inner city dump saying – “I thought England would be full of English”

Thank you for confirming that this is Globohomo trying to destroy Russia and not anything else.
———-
OT — Asian intelligence refuted, it must have been cheating on tests all along. Be aware, following story will make you angry.
Why did white supremacy do the following?

MANHATTAN, NY—In a plea deal agreed to with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office in November, the male African-American assailant who killed Than Htwe back in 2021 will only serve one to three years in prison.

Htwe, 58, was exiting the Canal Street station subway on July 17, 2021, with her son for a day of shopping and a visit to a Buddhist temple in Chinatown, when David Robinson grabbed the son’s backpack, causing the mother and son to fall down a flight of stairs.

The 58-year-old mother sustained severe head trauma in the fall and succumbed to her injuries 10 days after the attack. Robinson was able to evade capture for a couple of months.

https://www.asian-dawn.com/2023/01/30/black-man-will-only-serve-1-3-years-in-prison-for-killing-asian-woman/

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/01/27/too-many-muslims-ukrainians-fleeing-war-scared-of-living-in-multicultural-england/

“I came from the best area of Kiev to the worst area of Birmingham”

George’s Newsletter: My Memories of Tom Verlaine https://t.co/E8gBg3gXGh

— George Szamuely (@GeorgeSzamuely) January 30, 2023

1. Badfinger–No Matter What;
2. Big Star–September Girls;
3. Cheap Trick–Surrender;
4. Flaming Groovies–Shake Some Action [h/t to hhsiii];
5. Let’s Active–Every Word Means No;
6. The Records–Starry Eyes.

(Alphabetical order by group.)

Honorable mention:

The La’s–There She Goes;

The Motors–Dancing The Night Away;

The Raspberries–Go All The Way;

Todd Rundgren–Couldn’t I Just Tell You.

Special Power Pop Founding Fathers Veterans Committee Award:

The Who–Pictures of Lily.

The Polish PM attended a ceremony with Zelensky on 11 Jan commemorating the Polish soldiers who died taking Lvov/Lviv from Ukrainian forces in 1919. No mention of the 150,000 Polish civilians killed by the Banderites in 39/40s. Bloodlands.

It’s going to end in tears, I tells ‘ee. Never been to Poland, I think I may go to see it while it’s still there, I hear the Tatras are nice.

Presidents Duda and Zelensky at the Polish military cemetery of Lviv, where Polish soldiers who died taking the city from independent Ukraine in 1919 are buried. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/LxR9ZQyz1G

— (((Amram Leifer))) 🇫🇷🇮🇱🇺🇦 (@amramleifer) January 11, 2023

Deranged East Europeans make the best foreign policy decisions. I’m glad we let them use our institutions to get racial revenge on the Russians:

🧵 A word of advice for all those "realists" among Western elites who oppose support for #Ukraine: Finally, once and for all bury the Yalta mindset. Understand the Russia is no more entitled to a sphere of influence than a gangster is entitled to keep the spoils of a robbery. 1/

— Andrew A. Michta (@andrewmichta) January 27, 2023

Another of Christgau’s punkish favs was New York Dolls. How about Ew York Dolls? worse than Kiss.

https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=new+york+dolls

Cars took the bits and pieces and assembled something more enduring.

I remember Steve Forbert, the one-hit wonder who was hailed as the next Bob Dylan. I think Bob had more than one hit, though.

Now it’ll bring up this thread. Or, it would if the search engines hadn’t demoted unz.com.

Steve thinks these posts will keep him out of the prison work camp come the revolution. Ha!

The trippiest thing is that we could almost go back to the 1980s in NYC now and have an iSteve reunion.

No, the late club owner’s last name is Kristal.

I must be one of the few contemporaries of Steve Sailer on here who couldn’t stand any of these punk/new wave acts. On the other hand, most of you are male, so you were probably more the target audience. The recent Beatles thread got so overwhelming I didn’t bother contributing, even though I wanted to.

Jazz lost its popularity when the musicians decided that technical proficiency was better than danceability or singability.

Nah, Jazz just became old guys’ music. There have been plenty of technically proficient rock stars playing undanceable music.

Jazz did develop a problem with forgetting the adage: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

For example, Moanin’ by Art Blakey is much better without the extended self gratifications solos in this recording:

Wow. Where’s Steve? Cat has his tongue lately.

Out with Lambo, checking out the canine acting academies in Studio City.

Whole Lotta Drugs

I’m all Out of Drugs (I’m so lost without you)

All my Drugs

since I’ve been Drugging You

Living Drugging Maid (She’s just a Woman)

Axis: Bold as Drugs

Somebody to Drug

wow.. this is fun!

If they think Russians make bad neighbours, try Somalis.

Somalia doesn’t bother her neighbors. They’re too busy fighting each other!

There are large ethnic Somali zones across the borders with Ethiopia and Kenya, and Djibouti is half Somali, but Europeans drew these borders, not Africans. There is no annexation movement, as far as I know. Though I did once see a napkin left by a Somali security guard who went on break. He had doodled a map of this “greater Somalia”. Hmm…

Generally, though, any Somali expansionism is expressed via the diaspora.

Why do you think Tom Verlaine was jewish?

The internets told me so. Funny, I could have sworn I saw it on Wikipedia but now it’s gone. But you can see it here:

Born Tom Miller to a Jewish family in Morris County, New Jersey, he moved to Delaware as a child and, as a teen, attended a boarding school where he met Richard Hell (Richard Meyers).

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/01/tom-verlaine-art-rock-pioneer-dies-at-age-73

JFC. The preservation of Poland did not require nor demand nor seek Russian control of its sovereignty. Go walk into a bar in Gdańsk and inform them their nation was essentially “saved” by Russian communism. You’d get deservedly shanked. It was brutalized for 50 years, hence its utter distrust for its eastern neighbor. Poland can remain Poland of its own accord. And in the end, Ukraine’s self determination must be respected by Russia. Otherwise, you’re supporting totalitarianism.

“Thank you for confirming that this is Globohomo trying to destroy Russia and not anything else”

That’s deranged. The fact of the matter is that Russia demands Ukraine, a sovereign nation, to capitulate. Ukraine is a white nation who is free to make its own foreign policy decisions, in this case aligning with NATO. That is freedom of association. That is liberty.

But of course people have to make it about how Ukraine is lousy with neo Nazis and has no agency to justify their support of a Russian oligarch who poisons his opponents and squelches dissent.

I would assume that Rambo is French (and perhaps also Provencal) in origin. I do not see how it could also Swedish or any Scandinavian in origin. If Rambo is a name that was a part of America’s New Sweden (which was a very small place with a small population) I would guess that the Rambos came south from Canada. The same way you got people with surnames like Thoreau and Kerouac in New England.

Somalia nearly succeeded in conquering the Ogaden province of Ethiopia in 1977. The Somali flag in that era had a five-pointed star on it – one point for the former Italian Somaliland, one for the former British Somaliland, one for French Somaliland (Djibouti), one for the Ogaden, and one for the Somali segments of Kenya.

I saw richard hell in a punk bar in richmond va in 1978 (Benny’s) – a true hole in the wall

it was the loudest performance I ever attended

the biker crank only enhanced the experience

That prompted me to look them up. They seem to be a cute older couple.

I’m a purist.

I turned the sound off and listened to Blondie sing.

Is there a way to edit out the guys?

The fight is about the Anglo-Zionist empire determined two take out the two nations that as allies can stifle some of its globalist aims (Russia and China). It was the USA, not Russia, that engineered a coup in the Ukraine too topple an elected leader so the puppets installed could arrange for war at the best of the US.

IT was ‘the West’ not Russia that signed the Minsk accords just to buy time while acting against them and focuing on harming 1 ethnic group living in that Soviet created ‘Ukraine.’

The Ukraine is what its name means: frontier or borderland. Never in history has there ever been an independent nation of Ukraine, accept for these very few years when ‘the West’ demanded that such a nation exist for the imperial goals of ‘the West.’

To prevent nuclear war, Russia needs to take over at least half the territory of the Ukraine, and if the US does not demand to give the rest to Poland, the remaining Ukraine must sign a deal, with the US, Germany France, UK, and the EU also as signatories, that it will. never Jon NATO of=r host any NATO troops or advisors

Best for the world be that all of Ukraine be divvied up: at last half to Russia; a section, including Kiev, to Belarus; a small section to Hungary; a small section to Slovakia; a section to Poland; perhaps a small section to Romania. Each nation that gets Ukrainan territory must then sign an agreement with Russia to not allow their lands to be used in way way to attack Russia, including no NATO exercises. And NO Nato or US or UK or EU bio-labs.

That area must be made a peace zone, not a zone for Americans to bribe people to wage proxy war so its elites can get richer.

Both are fools who dream of ending up with large empires supplied for them by Yankee and Jewish dollars and technology. Each is more than willing to see huge numbers of Ukrainians and Poles dead in order to flip off Russia ands get that empire.

The reality is that as the Bandora history shows, each would be be happy to savage the other in order to enlarge his ’empire.’

Would David Bowie have been relevant without producers Tony Visconty, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp ( also a guitarrist), or musicians like Mick Ronson or Carlos Alomar? A clever one, David Bowie.

Have the Rolling Stones killed.

Agree, there was a label (because everything, everywhere, everytime, must always be labeled) of the moment, “New Wave.”

The big four bands of CBGBs tended to be substantially but not majority Jewish.

Have their been famous rock bands that have been all Jewish?

Beastie Boys.

But it would be really difficult to form an all Jewish rock band unless you were in NYC. If you put Jewishness above talent then the band would just end up gimmicky like the typical female rock band.

My friend in high school had a band and they always had a hard time finding a decent drummer of any race. They pretty much quit because they hated the drummer. Rock vocals are also hard to find. I’ve watched quite a few bands that had talent but the singer ruined it. So if you set out to find all Jewish members it only takes one weak link to ruin it. You can kinda hide a bad bass but not drums, vocals or lead guitar.

In general, Jews are surprisingly uncool in rock despite being a substantial proportion of the leading rock journalists like

Plenty of rock leads have been Jewish. Slash is Jewish.

Mosty of a numbers issue for all Jewish bands.

Those bands are not “punk”. They are “New Wave”. Too melodic and singable for punk.

Punk has a lot of screaming/talking, vice singing.

Like Minor Threat:

And I gather Poland are going to double the size of their standing army. Daft ducks.

If you live next door to a heavy type, say a member of a motorcycle club, and he doesn’t give you grief, why announce a village meeting on “throwing Dave out of his house” followed by ostentatious weight-lifting sessions in the garden?

(Sorry, I’ll get back to guitarists now…)

This is a calumny, and an obnoxious one at that.

My comment doesn’t work that way.

If you’d never read my comment before and just sampled it now, you probably wouldn’t like it as much. Familiarity is part of the appeal.

Seriously, though, you had a hot take :

Music doesn’t work that way.

… and at last count no commenters agreed with that, but four regular commenters disagreed with you in detail, after having seriously considered your bold assertion. That doesn’t mean you are automatically wrong, but your belated defense is weak and sidesteps the subject:

it’s literally the repetition that helps me appreciate good music that I like.

The first time I noticed this was with Beethoven’s 9th

The same was true for me with Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten

That’s nice, but it should be obvious that the topic here is modern pop/rock music, not symphonies or long-form jazz or whatnot. Those are different categories, and cannot be judged as readily as individual pop/rock songs (or albums of the same, given proportionate time per song).

Pink Floyd, as mentioned above, could be a hybrid—‘radio-friendly’ songs plus long-form ‘concept album’ compositions. Even for the latter, one non-distracted real-time album run through should be enough for a listener to determine if they want to hear it again (sometimes immediately).

When I asked you for samples of music that you liked, one of them was by an otherwise forgettable band with an attractive blonde front woman. [e.a.]

NTTAWWT 🙂 We also like hot brunettes, see Dum Dum Girls. And ‘redheads’, see ’90s Miki Berenyi. 😉

If you’re talking about the cheeky song “Very Online Guy” by Alvvays, I recall you correctly praised it (in a since-deleted tweet) as being “catchy” and having “clever lyrics”. But I’m not sure how many replays it took you to determine that…

It was something like “As it gets closer to the drain, things move faster.”

A gravity powered vortex.

Vortex – What can you do with that?

https://www.instructables.com/The-Hilsch-vortex-tube/
http://amasci.com/amateur/wirbel.html

1. Richard Lloyd was the better guitarist in Television — his playing makes the MM Lp.

iSteve-y goodness: Lloyd was a Stuyvesant High student (not a graduate though).

2. The cool cover photo was taken by Robert Mapplethorpe — a color photo (out of character for the usually b/w Mapplethorpe) that was then put through a then-new COLOR XEROX machine.

3. Richard Hell’s real name is Lester (not Richard) Meyers — why didn’t he just change his first name to “Bristol”? .

“Blank Generation” is the title track of Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ 1977 debut album Blank Generation. A rewrite of Bob McFadden and Rod McKuen’s 1959 record “The Beat Generation”

There’s no accounting for taste.
Hint: Not every band can be as original and cool as George Martin, er, I mean the “Beatles” (chuckle).
These bands were fun, and somewhat creative.
Mostly fun.
Pop music is a plastic product.
It’s as genuine as a whore’s hello.
And I like it.

Cool list, especially the Flamin Groovies and The Records, but I’d kick the overrated Big Star and Let’s Active and arena rock Cheap Trick off the list and put in SVT “Heart of Stone”, The Nerves “Hangin On The Telephone”, and The Plimsouls “A Million Miles Away”

California had the best American Power Pop bands for some strange reason….Nerves, Groovies, Plimsouls, SVT, Greg Kihn, Clover (the band backing Elvis Costello on his debut album), hell even the Go Go’s.