(TV) Impact of Reviews on Crowds?

["Casey, Leo J" <Leo.J.Casey@Volpe.dot.gov>]

Unfortunately idiots like Burchill, Phil Sutcliffe and Pete Silverton [both
wrote for Sounds] can influence who 
attend(ed) shows. 

Kent: 
".. exactly a year has elapsed since those T.V. gigs and all the heady
pre-publicity that prefaced them, 
and conditions have changed radically.

"The music press has been known for its churlish penchant for activating a
stinging critical backlash, but the reviews 
that greeted Television's second album have been so hideously twisted in
terms of any coherent perspective that they've 
made the aforementioned 'facile' contentions of a year ago seem positively
sage-like by comparison.  

"Both NME and Sounds reviews of the album highlighted such criminal displays
of ignorance that the critics' vulture-like 
descent on their prey chose to ignore any dint of a salient angle that in
turn might accidentally refer to the music 
conceived within the grooves of their blighted victim. 

"... as to whether or not the recent media backlash caused the
just-completed Television tour to be similarly blighted by 
**feeble attendance figures**.  It probably did, and that's a shame because
at the Hammersmith Odeon last Sunday a 70 
percent capacity audience --- **that's roughly twice the capacity of all
previous gigs played on the tour** --- caught both a 
blitzing set by England's Only Ones and a set by Television which proved yet
again that they're one of rock's 
most exciting, original, and passionate units playing anywhere."   

I was always under the impression that Television were more widely received
(at their UK concerts) -- even on their 
second tour.

It's interesting that Robert Christgau was prophetic in his early 1978
Village Voice review:
"Adventure: Those scandalized by Marquee Moon's wimpoid tendencies are gonna
try to read this one out of the movement ...". 
--------------
To post: Mail tv@obbard.com
To unsubscribe: Mail majordomo@obbard.com with message "unsubscribe tv"