Television were a band formed in 1973and were active in NYC during the nascent of the punk and the new wave scene. A regular at the now defunct CBGB's scene, they never really achieved much fame but were to be immensely influential in the canon of alternative music with the release of 1977 album, Marquee Moon. Together, Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd would form a guitar team that would define their sound and pave the way for a lot of great alternative music that was made in the 80's (and of course subsequently, in the nineties and noughties). Very few things done by two guitars in a band comes close to this. An insight from a fellow rymer, unearth.
Having not aged an iota in its thirty years of existence, Marquee Moon's futurist impact is still reverberating through the music world. It is as if Television took Brian Eno's sound, reinterpretted it for guitars, and added existential poetry on top of it, but that description falls far short of the magic contained in this music. These songs ring true to my personal sensibilites, from the embrace of all experience (See No Evil), to the vitalistic desire for perpetual change (Venus), to the dispassionate, uncommited observer of the title track, there is a strong philosophical (particularly Nietzschean) bent running through the proceedings. Yet, even taken as a purely aural/visceral experience, Marquee Moon is as thrilling and vital as music gets.
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