(TV) Old Guitarists Don't Die; They Just Strum Away

[Michael Lee Lim <mllim@itsa.ucsf.edu>]

I hope this hasn't been mentioned already (I'm on the digest). Here's the
NY Times Review. If you go to the website, there is a nice picture of Tom.

Also, I took a few pictures Tuesday with my digital camera. They are not
that good, but if anybody wants to see them, email me off list and I will
send some JPEGs your way.

Mike

Old Guitarists Don't Die; They Just Strum Away

March 21, 2002

By JON PARELES




Television, which reunited for a two-night stand at Irving
Plaza, was the jam band of the punk era. While most of the
bands that converged on CBGB in the mid-1970's set out to
bring overblown 1970's rock down to earth with brevity and
punch, Television, by contrast, wanted an alternative
dream.

Tom Verlaine's songs for the band revolve around the
yin-yang interlock of his own guitar parts and those of
Richard Lloyd: one high and one low, one sustained and one
jabbing, one ethereal and one bluesy. Verses and choruses
hover in between with Mr. Verlaine singing in his
strangulated voice about revelations and mysteries,
paradoxes and romances. The songs drift out of the ether,
toy with time, and then vanish. The band itself is equally
mercurial; it released albums in 1977 and 1978, reunited to
make another in 1992 and did its last world tour in 1993.
Before playing at Irving Plaza it appeared Friday at the
All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Los Angeles.

Its set on Monday night had a sense of leisure that was
closer to Indian raga than to punk. The opening song
stretched to 16 minutes, beginning with Mr. Verlaine
floating three notes over a drone chord, and gradually made
its way toward the patterns of "1880 or So" from the 1992
album "Television." At the end of the set, the music
dissolved back into a drone, and those initial three notes
were heard again.

In between, the band brought back songs from all three
albums, playing them with additional decades of reflection
and tacitly reminding listeners of how much bands like the
Church, Luna and the Strokes had learned from Television.

The band savored the tightly wound riffs of songs like
"Glory," "Prove It," "Venus" and "See No Evil." But it also
followed the guitar solos toward the Middle East, toward
raga, toward spy-movie music, toward 1960's soul, toward
psychedelia. Again and again, it delivered pure
guitar-lovers' pleasures like the abstract chime of a high
syncopated chord notched perfectly above a garage-rock
lick.

Billy Ficca on drums supplied steady, muscular thumps or
jazzy taps and swirls of cymbals; Fred Smith on bass was a
calm anchor, occasionally adding a third line to the
contrapuntal guitars. It was music of camaraderie and
exploration, flickering into being for just a few sets more
before disappearing once again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/arts/music/21ROCK.html?ex=1017737309&ei=1&en=60b123fd4d1b61f7
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