(TV) Precious / 'Not So Alone'

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

Hope this doesn't strike the list as too maudlin.

Philip's post below reminds me somewhat sadly 
of the many, many Television/Verlaine bootlegs 
that's I bought in Boston/Cambridge record stores
(and for which I paid very dearly during my long, 
quasi-career as a poor grad-student---primarially 
during the ears 1977-1988.

Cassettes of 1982-84 shows that had cruddy sonic 
fidelity, incomplete songs (that 'ended' half-way 
before they were over), low volume levels, 
and produced on cheap quality tapes.

Vinyl that was warped or skipped or cracked(!) or 
whose sound was brutally bad, e.g., double vinyl 
album of 'Television in Portland Oregon' in 
1978: my copy sounded as if it had been pressed from a 
'Mother-negative-pressing', which itself was 'cut' 
by a lathe with an air conditioner or paint spray  
compressor turned on right next to it.

Yet I continued to doggedly pursue these recordings,
 and even considered several of them very precious 
musical documents of the band. (Still do about 
some of my old purchases: e.g., the vinyl 'Arrow' bootleg; 
a second-generation Boston May 1982 show recorded on 
a guy's $29.99 Radio Shack portable cassette deck; 
and an April Easter weekend 1987 Ritz NYC show 
that I recorded on an expensive early-Walkman.)

Then one day in April 2000, by a series of fortuitous 
circumstances, I was contacted by a Mr. P. (Pet Sounds) 
Obbard about joining the MM mailing list.  Subsequently, 
I was able to "procure" several fairly decent 
Television/Verlaine shows that were a quantum step-up 
sonically/fidelity-wise from my previous acquisitions 
---one Tom Verlaine at the Ritz June 4, 1982 NYC, I still 
consider one of the best cd-rs ever made and the greatest 
Verlaine guitar live performance ever captured (I was lucky 
to attend this show so I can vouch for the accuracy of 
this particular recording--by the way, from a soundboard
--esp. "Breakin' In My Heart", "Penetration" and "Kingdom
Come").

So thank you MM List members for making me 
feel so less all alone--to paraphrase Thunders and Dylan 
(and ain't that a strange pairing?), and for all the List 
Members' incisive and often humorous posts that helped 
dredge up my memories of this inimitable music. 

And appreciation and hosannas to all the people involved 
with the both the original idea (Mr. Rovner) of, and 
the recent creation of the 'Carried Away' site 
(too numerous to mention here but the List knows who 
they are).

	Leo

PS: Keith, where the heck did you unearth those wonderful,
old pictures/advertisements of television technology 
circa mid-1950s (which you lovingly embellished with the 
band Television references)?
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip P. Obbard 
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 9:17 AM
To: tv@obbard.com
Subject: RE: (TV) Pirate CD's

>Ahhh.... yes, I misunderstood, but you are 100% correct that their
>use of the word "genuine" is particularly appalling. I've 
>fallen for this scam too, buying a "rare, hard-to-find CD copy" 
>of Public Image Ltd's COMMERCIAL ZONE a few years ago. Of course, 
>it turned out to be a CD-R, and (1) a cheap CD-R, (2)taken from 
>beat-up vinyl, (3) indexed poorly, (4) with skips in the original
>source vinyl! It was patently worse than the vinyl-to-CDR transfer 
>of the same album someone on this group had been nice enough to send 
>me three or four years ago.
>--Philip
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