[no subject]

["stephen wilson" <esde2xu@hotmail.com>]

Here's some more words from Richard Lloyd, below. Apologies if this has 
already been posted; I get the Digest and am often clueless in between 
times!

Fri, Mar. 21, 2003

The picture is still bright for Television
By Tom Moon
(Philadelphia) Inquirer Music Critic

For the last decade or so, the enormously influential '70s band Television 
has mounted small, irregular little tours seemingly according to whim. The 
band, revered for the twin lead guitar attack of Tom Verlaine and Richard 
Lloyd, hasn't had new records (or even major reissues) to hawk since the 
eponymous Television came out in 1992, and its principals have been busy 
producing records and doing other music projects. "We are," Lloyd says 
proudly, "completely out of the capitalist marketing thing. Lots of bands 
say they don't care, but Television is the only one I know that truly 
doesn't care."

Still, the faithful continue to turn out to see Television, the band with a 
tiny output by today's standards - just three full-length studio efforts - 
that has been credited with shaping the sensibilities of several generations 
of rockers, from U2 to the Strokes to current New York faves the Yeah Yeah 
Yeahs.

Lloyd, reached as the band was gearing up for a tour that will bring 
Television to the TLA Sunday, has a hunch about the enduring appeal.

"When we play together, nobody knows who's going to do what," he said last 
week from his home in New York City. "It's like seeing a Maserati on city 
streets. Everybody turns and looks, you can't take your eyes off the car. 
You know it's capable of doing 220 [m.p.h.], and it's not. But you're 
looking at it because it could. With us, you've got two guitars, and don't 
know which side is going to go off, what might happen. That's worth looking 
at."

That two-guitar attack, which Lloyd describes as "seamless, like passing 
sand from one hand to the other," has grown more intricate over the years, 
as the four musicians (including Billy Ficca on drums and Fred Smith on 
bass) have matured. But it was the driving force behind the band's 
transcendent 1977 debut Marquee Moon, one of the few unassailable classics 
of New York punk. Lloyd says that though the musicians weren't thinking in 
terms of creating a classic when they recorded it, they did have a clear 
idea about the sound.

"One of the things we talked about then," he recalls, "was resisting 
production. Almost de-producing. We didn't want anyone to muck up. It was a 
time when people were adding everything. Without knowing it at the time, we 
were insisting on capturing the band as it actually was. You listen to the 
very first Doors record, it was done in a couple of days and it's very 
simple. It has its own integrity. I think Marquee Moon has that thing, too. 
We were clinging to honesty."

Asked what's changed about the live show over the decades, Lloyd says the 
band does more new material "to please ourselves" than it used to. And, he 
adds, the current Television is much steadier than it was in the early days, 
when its shows were plagued by the usual rock vices (drink, drugs, etc.), 
and as a result tended to be erratic. "The roller coaster is not so evident 
anymore. We're relaxed. The intuitive sense of musical interplay is better. 
We're not one of those bands they trot out now and again and nobody's been 
playing - all four of us are deeply into music and really busy..... That 
makes it nice to fall back into the band. There's less train wrecks, more 
competency."



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