(TV) Christagau for the Road

["Casey, Leo J" <CaseyL@VOLPE.DOT.GOV>]

Whether you like him or hate him, Christagau can be pretty funny 
(e.g., see Tom Petty, Dire Straits, The Eagles, Boston, or Jeff Beck) 

all his reviews at:   http://www.robertchristgau.com/cg.php  
http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/web/grades.php
	Leo
The Blow Up [ROIR, 1982] 
{Leo NOTE: AT TIME OF REVIEW ONLY LO-FI CASSETTE VERSION AVAILABLE}
"John Piccarella and I annotated this eighty-five-minute tape because guitar heroes like Tom 
Verlaine and Richard Lloyd deserve a heroic live album. While the more word-heavy songs worked 
better in the studio, on the likes of "Foxhole," "Prove It," and "Marquee Moon," ahem, "Verlaine takes 
off in directions that even he probably didn't anticipate, indulging a lyrical wanderlust he never permitted 
himself when he had time to think about it. And Lloyd, always constrained by the necessity of getting his 
solos and rhythm riffs just right in the studio, goes nuts here--what he wanted to express on `Satisfaction' 
was so beyond his chops that he would regularly unwind his bottom E string, twist it behind the neck, and 
tense the guitar like an archer's bow, producing the unearthly noises preserved for posterity on this cassette. 
You also get two other key covers and a definitive "Little Johnny Jewel." But the sound could have been 
brighter--cf. Arrow, the bootleg disc where I first encountered the finest of these performances. And so, as 
with so many ROIR cassettes (and commercial tapes in general), audio makes the difference between a laudable 
document and living history. "   B+ 

Television [Capitol, 1992]
"I prefer the more rocking, songful old Television, but it's a tribute to Tom Verlaine's conceptual restlessness and 
force of personality that in a world where alternative guitar means making noise or mixing and matching from the 
used bins, these four veterans have regrouped with a distinct new sonic identity. Droll, warm-hearted, sophisticated, 
cryptic, jazzy yet unjazzlike, they sound like nothing else--except, just a little, old Television, mainly because 
Verlaine has ignored the Lloyd Cole jokes and refused to alter his voiceprint."     B+
--------------
To post: Mail tv@obbard.com
To unsubscribe: Mail majordomo@obbard.com with message "unsubscribe tv"