(TV) Late and short

[Jesse Hochstadt <Jesse_Hochstadt@brown.edu>]

Well, I've just caught up with the past few days' posts and am 
leaving in a couple of hours for yet another academic conference 
(though this one's only in Cambridge, MA), so I've no time to say 
anything extensive about last week's shows. But here's a few short, 
quasi-random comments. The shows were, as everyone said, great, with 
Wednesday's particularly outstanding.

On "Marquee Moon," both nights Billy did something I don't recall him 
doing before: adding an appropriate cymbal crash just after "I 
recall/ Lightning struck itself." Or have I just never noticed this 
before?

At both shows Tom found it amusing, at one point between songs, to 
fiddle with his volume and perhaps tone knobs to create a repetitive 
swelling and dying out of what sounded like amplifier hum to me. At 
the second show he said it was a new song and gave it some silly 
title. Anyone remember what it was?

I really enjoyed the new material, including "O Mi Amore," which was 
new to me. If the "I Could Sleep All Day" song doesn't get recorded 
somewhere, there's no justice in the world. Hopefully that 
"somewhere" would be a new Television album, but I'm not holding my 
breath.

On Wednesday night I brought along two friends who didn't really know 
the band, one of whom hadn't heard them before at all. Both made a 
comparison that would never have occurred to me: they said Television 
reminded them of Robyn Hitchcock/The Soft Boys. I think the reference 
was more to the surreal lyrics than the music (where I really don't 
see the connection, except perhaps a rather broad one). But to me Tom 
uses surrealism to set an atmosphere, whereas for Robyn Hitchcock it 
often seems to be an end in itself. I'm not a big Hitchcock fan, 
however - though I do love "Wey-Wey-Hep-a-Hole."

That's all I have time for right now. It was nice meeting other 
listmembers at the shows (and at Old Devil Moon beforehand). 
Hopefully we can do this again in the not-insufferably-distant future!

- Jesse
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