Re: (TV) Telling a Vision

[DAYKARAK@aol.com]

I'll wager a guess...let's not forget what the original line-up of Television 
was mainly about: a weird, arty stripped down rock band featuring a guitarist 
and a bassist who were both into poetry and stuck lots of double-entendres 
and other mildly-clever things into the lyrics. Hell's vision of the band was 
based partly on having a ragged, rough, mildly cathartic, mildly 
humourous-yet-intense visual slant. With the actual medium of television 
being kinda ragged and crappy, sometimes violent, sometimes funny, and 
constant flux in terms of not only what's being seen and heard, but also an 
inconsistency in quality of the transmission itself (due to most people still 
getting signals via antenna at the time). Take all those ideas and put them 
right up against what the band was about, what the band sounded like at that 
time, and I think it makes perfect sense. Sure, it didn't make any by the 
time Hell left and Smith came in, and their sound changed pretty drastically, 
but considering that they started to get noticed w/ Hell and then he left 
AFTER Verlaine pushed out his material and made himself the songwriter of the 
band, but the rest of the personnel remained the same...I'd guess they 
probably didn't even think twice about changing it. Not to mention that there 
may have been contractual stipulations with Terry Ork, at least as far as the 
band as an entity for manegerial/biz purposes was concerned (just a 
guess...anyone know for sure?). But yeah, initially, it did indeed make 
sense.

-nick keiser

>Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 19:41:42 -0800
>From: "Brian Young" <raggedglory57@hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re: (TV) Telling a Vision

>>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).
>
>But *why*, Keith? Why was it ever clever? I don't mean to be willfully 
>obtuse, or to beat a dead horse, but please help me to understand how this 
>choice of a band name was anything other than a self-destructive move. It 
>*has* to be more than Tell a Vision. The real medium of television is a 
>pathetic bore, something that cannot be said of this group's music.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Brian
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