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The True Godfathers Of Punk
Part 2 - Marquee Moon by Television
One flaw of music history articles is that many writers trace a thread from recording to recording, adding some oral history if available but often to accentuate the importance of the disc. For example, in the Jazz genre, writers often began history with Louis Armstrong in the 1920s, though he was a product of the earlier work of artists like King Oliver and Buddy Holden (who didn't record).
One old story says that Buddy Holden (whom Armstrong was aware of) was so popular that he had two or three bands playing at once in different clubs and would walk to each, one at a time, play his solo, and then repeat that for the rest of the evening. You can't do that if the bands can't improvise.
However, Armstrong was seen as the one who began "improvising" and laid the foundation of Jazz as most know it, with the result that many music historians later on ignored or stayed ignorant that musicians had been improvising since it became a profession. That doesn't minimize Louis Armstrong's importance, but if we lived in a society that emphasized oral history, like Native Americans, the narrative of any music genre would be different and go back well before who sold more records or was on the Billboard charts.
Competent Historians know this, but most music histories you'll come across on the Internet are simply timelines of recordings, tales of the rise and fall of stars, or cherry-picked facts to fit an agenda. That's why reading as many sources as possible is the best way to study history. One article can cite '60s garage bands as early examples of Punk, while another may credit Rockabilly, and yet another will cite an artist who doesn't sound Punk at all but had the right sensibility.
That said, we'll look at an album that didn't sell as much as others on the list, but those with a complete picture of Punk know it was an essential recording in the first wave.
Remember that I'm writing impressions, not going track by track.
Television: Marquee Moon
There's an old comment about Alex Chilton's Band, Big Star; it was said that it only sold 50 copies, but everyone who bought the album went on to form a band. One can say that Television, led by Tom Verlaine, wasn't a band that sold many albums but certainly was admired and influenced later bands like U2 and REM.
Edge of U2 once remarked in an interview that he learned guitar by copying a lot of Tom Verlaine licks. Television was a band that Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols admired at first, then disparaged as being like the Grateful Dead, which in a sense was true.
They were technically a jam band like the Dead, but their sensibility was quite different in terms of lyrics (and maybe not). Verlaine's lyrics were often indecipherable to the average listener and involved imagery that probably only made sense to himself. Still, the group's sound was anchored by a very solid Rhythm Section and the powerful interplay between Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine's guitar. The guitar sound combined a sharp, jagged rhythm guitar with a loose, lyrical, and often spacy top.
Their first album, Marquee Moon, is my favorite album from the Punk Era. It's certainly the one I listen to the most.
The title track, which includes a riff from an old Gene Clark song, was a long extrapolation that starts off with an edgy opening riff, then loosens up into an expansive middle section, and returns to the opening theme after a powerful chord burst that, to be honest, was a hallmark of a Grateful Dead jam number.
This album is considered a classic and, to this day, doesn't sound dated.
I wrote a detailed review of the album in 1996 and included a revised version in the Delta Snake Review. I recommend it for those who'd like to read more.
Al Handa
2024
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