The name may have really hurt them on the 1993 reunion CD. Why did they not at lease think up a snappy name for the album? Imagine asking your record store to order "Television's Television"--you'd probably get directed to Blockbuster.
Hey, 1992 - those were the good old days. I didn't even have to order it, any decent record store in London had it as a matter of course. On vinyl, naturally. In fact, I could go out tomorrow and buy a copy (on CD, of course) locally. This is because the British are, in many ways, very cool people (yeah, right!)
Actually, I've always rather liked the fact that the band (or probably Mr V.) always seems to do what would be considered the 'wrong' thing. No doubt they didn't come up with the name Television with any thought that they might be playing together in thirty years' time. Probably seemed like a great idea at the time (and it was). As you say, calling the third album Television is either dumb or wilfully uncommercial and I'd bet on the latter. Or perhaps it was the move of someone who knew that, in industry terms, no-one was actually going to buy it, so what does it matter?
We know that if, tomorrow, Television put out the greatest album ever made (yeah, I know they already did that once) it wouldn't sell enough to show up anywhere near the bottom of the Top 200 either here or in the States. For the same reason that Richard Thompson will never be A Star. Talent, wit, irony, being literate and articulate - these things don't come into it. 'The People' who buy CDs couldn't care less about RT or Television - after all, if they were any good someone would have told us to listen to them - we'd have seen them on TV, wouldn't we?
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