(TV) Nice Village Voice Article (1979) [Ficca's playing/Yonki Time]

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

This does not exist electronically otherwise I would have 
saved time typing and just sent the web page. 
(It gets quite interesting once you get by some of 
the usual clichis in the 1st paragraph)

	Leo 

(PS:  Keith, Somehow I thought I had already sent this to you many 
months ago for your Wonder site, But I never did.)

The Village Voice, September 10, 1979:  
"Tom Verlaine Wakes Up Dreaming"
by John Piccarella 
Tom Verlaine came to New York like another Bob Dylan, christening 
himself with a poet's name and bringing to urban rock and roll a visionary 
rural surrealism.  His initials became T.V., his band became Television, 
and on the first single, "he's just trying to tell a vision."  He brought rock 
and roll to CBGB, built a stage with his own hands, and helped Richard 
Hell invent punk style.  He collaborated with Patti Smith on stage, on record, 
and in print, and together they developed a psycho dramatic singing style 
and a symbolist rock and roll poetry.   Like both Dylan and Patti he had a 
knack for great lines that suggested both wisdom and evoked dreams, but 
his lyrics were harder to understand because he gave you so little to 
work with.  Since he was also a great guitarist his excesses came in the form 
of long guitar solos rather than surplus verbiage--the words were esoteric 
telegrams.  Taken together, words and music countered obscurity with 
virtuosity and reticence with revelation.  

After whatever happened between Verlaine and Hell, Television was 
all about Tom Verlaine.  And throughout whatever happened between 
Verlaine and Patti, or Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, his music hasn't 
changed much.  "Tom Verlaine" probably isn't substantially different 
from what the third Television album would have been--Verlaine 
striking out on his own is Verlaine doing what he's always done.  
The differences are mostly textural.  The absence of Lloyd makes the 
guitar attack more direct; the absence of Billy Ficca makes the beat 
more direct.  I miss the rhythmic interplay, but Verlaine places his riffs 
against his own excellent rhythm playing so sharply that he almost 
makes up for it.  What they don't make up for are Lloyd's solos.  
In fact, partly because he was the underdog and partly because 
his simple melodicism and brutal sense of tension and release 
were more traditional, even classic, I often found Lloyd more 
exciting than Verlaine.

On the other hand, I don't miss Ficca much.  I always thought his 
jazzy moves were self-serving, overrated, and not tough enough, 
and his persistent overplaying on the cymbals was at times a noisy 
distraction, especially on the album Marquee Moon. Drummers 
Jay Dee Daugherty and Allen Schwartzberg provide the hard beat 
that Verlaine needs without  stinting on subtlety.  While the rocking 
attack here may recall Marquee Moon, I think the album's power is 
in the drumming and in the vocals--Marquee Moon's weak points.  
Verlaine's singing is more relaxed; he's confident enough to fuck 
around, as in the silly Sparks-like falsetto moment in the "The 
Grip of Love", the absurd/magnificent bass-voice backups in 
"Kingdom Come", or the drunken backups, coughing, 
nose-blowing and mundane conversation of "Yonki Time". 
The cracked farm boy rap in "Souvenier From A Dream" 
is like great Jagger: "No Mister, you got to go back to the 
junction about five miles.  I think you've come the wrong 
way. You were supposed to make a right turn." (Plattsburg!?)  

Verlaine's guitar playing is spare, precise and deliberately 
unvirtuosic throughout.  Even the extended improvisations 
on the album's final two cuts, where second guitarists Mark 
Abel and Ricky Wilson provide a foil, are achieved within 
a kind of minimalist stasis.  Like Garcia's, Verlaine's solos 
have always been prolonged teases, indefinitely postponing 
resolution, taking daring circular detours and abruptly 
changing direction, avoiding the note you're waiting for.  
The beautiful solos on 'Last Night' seem to rise and fall 
simultaneously, a tight maze of dead ends miraculously 
transcended, like Coltrane's unaccompanied sax excursion 
on the Selflessness live version of 'I Want To Talk About 
You' with its devastating barrage of false endings.  The 
'Breakin' in My Heart' solo is equally static, riding 
Verlaine's best groove since 'Marquee Moon', gradually 
adding notes to the same riff without going anywhere--another 
Coltrane dynamic. On the same song, and also on 'Red Leaves' 
and 'Kingdom Come' (great track, even if you remember the 
more exciting live Television renderings) Verlaine introduces 
a new guitar hook on the final choruses, pushing near-perfect 
cuts a step further.   

Doing it on his own allows Verlaine to combine the daring of 
Marquee Moon with the care and precision of Adventure.  
I think the lyrics might be his best, although words always sound 
better without a lyric sheet, and the music is undiminished.  All 
three albums open with a tight raw rocker to let you know it's 
new wave, followed by a slower, prettier song to let you know 
it isn't, and then a real solid mid-tempo rocker to let you 
know the 70s are as good as the 60s.  The sides all begin 
with elegant stuff and end with extended tracks that run on 
rather than climax.  And the first sides always end with 
something exceptional.      

But where the long structured solo of  'Marquee Moon' or the 
slow Dylanish organ-against-piano mood of "Carried Away" 
are only remarkable, "Yonki Time" is really an exception.  It's a 
joke, and a smart one.  Musically and lyrically it's kinda dumb, 
but something is happening here.  Verlaine's naive 
questioning--"Uh, what time did you say it was?"--meets 
"Ballad of a Thin Man" strangeness:  "IT'S YONKI TIME!"  
The switch is that Verlaine turns Dylan inside out.  It's Verlaine 
who is Mr. Jones; dropping in on these seemingly downed-out 
incompetents, who actually maintain the song in an amazing state 
of constantly falling apart, he is the one in charge.  The song's 
ridiculous but he's not, even if it's on his record; like another 
Dylan song, "Rainy Day Woman", its reckless humor puts the 
singer's insularity into perspective.

"Yonki Time" may turn out to be one of those novelty songs 
conveniently located at the end of the side so you can flip the 
record over sooner (remember Cream's "Mother's Lament"?), 
but I don't think so.  It's a weird piece  that fits among the things 
that occur most often in Verlaine's lyrics: dreams and the night.  
Verlaine's hallucinatory romanticism is fueled by an unsettling 
awareness of organic chaos, a delirium of the senses, 
" ... some new kind of drug", where the body merges with 
the landscape, events change with the weather, and nature 
responds to experience.   The dream dreams the dreamer, 
but when it's Yonki Time you hold your own, take out 
the garbage if you have to.  The meanings are obscure 
but the stance is powerful, immediate, centered, and 
expansive.  And the impact is like that other event that 
shows up in Verlaine's lyrics--waking up.     
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