Television: was this band influenced by Grateful Dead?

What is needed is a live retrospective from the best sources available. As good as the first 2 albums were, and they are among my favorites of all time, live gigs are where they achieved true greatness.

 

Couldn't agree more with your angle, Televison could be considered a Punk band without being Punk, they are a product of the punk era and Verlaine is one of the paladins, his fights with Andy Johns are well known as well as his ideas.

About Marquee Moon, most of the album was recorded in one take and the final recordings were left uncompressed and unadorned with studio effects... as Tom Verlaine wanted.

 

I remember when Jerry Garcia died and Sonic Youth said they hoped to fill the void that was left behind. People at the time thought this was an outrageous statement and maybe even a joke, but I think of the guitar work on Sonic Youth albums like A Thousand Leaves and it's easy to imagine them appealing to legions of Dead fans. I don't know of any specific influence the Dead had on Television, but if Sonic Youth felt it then it's not a stretch to think Television felt it as well.

 

Marquee Moon, some songs were recorded live.

 

Some of the Dead's feedback excursions sound like proto-Sonic Youth. Also, Lee Renaldo is an admitted fan of the Dead. Just throwing that out there.

 

In the studio, with Lloyd doubling his guitar parts. I'm talking about live gigs, from 1974 to 1978. There is a deep mine of glorious live music by them, in varying states of recorded quality, but it needs to be heard.

 

They were absolutely a Punk band. They built the stage at CBGB. Most of the Punk uniform should be a patent owned outright by Richard Hell.

They had three years behind them when Marquee Moon appeared. They evolved from 1974 to 1977 just as the Class of '77 had evolved by 1980.

Not that I really give a ****, but the revisionist rule book of Punk is a load of crap. It cracks me up.

According to English music fans this is Punk:

And this is not:

 

True, I have "Blow-up", ROIR 1982, recorded live 1978 and the sound is dreadful.

 

Punk can be seen from different angles but the essence, style and aim are wider.
Punk bands created fast, hard-edged music in '76 but Punk as an ideal was begun during the later sixties (to me the first example was The Monks).
Punk Rock as a genre was defined in '76 with the Ramones' debut album (to me with "The Dictators" a year before).

Television were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement, among others but they are not a band of the punk movement.

About revisionism, who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.

 

His playing reminds me of Barry Melton from Country Joe & The Fish more than anyone else.

Aaron

 

You have a good ear. The Dead's influence is everywhere on that song.
The solo in Marquee Moon is modally based as are many of Captain Trips solos. I think it is in D Mixolydian but don't hold me to it. Captain Trips used this mode a lot.

 

Wrong.

History is not a cozy box of bite-sized burgers to be edited 40-years after the fact.

Readers Digest summary:
The US Punk Movement of the early-to-mid-70's came out of a small American Underground. Patti Smith, Television, RAMONES, Talking Heads, Suicide... these were all artists in the CBGB Punk movement. Rocket From The Tombs, Pere Ubu, The Eels... from the underground in Cleveland. Most of these bands were influenced by such predecessors as Velvet Underground, The Stooges, NY Dolls, early work by classic rock bands such as The Who and the Stones and a healthy dose of Garage Rock nuggets. But the focus was on originality, not marching to a cookie-cutter youth culture.

The UK Punk movement didn't start until a couple of years later and looked to many of the same formative influences as the first generation of CBGB acts that I listed above. They were also VERY aware of (and influenced by) the music coming out of NYC and Cleveland. But equally important was the back-to-basics Pub Rock movement from the early/mid-70's... Dr. Feelgood were an essential touchstone.

When all this music was getting attention in 1976 and '77 it was one largely-unified movement. It was basically an "us against them" reaction against flaccid Corporate Rock, Prog Rock, etc.

Punk as singular musical style is something that was defined much later, by journalists, narrow-minded rulebook carrying music fans, etc. Listening to young people speak about this stuff... they sound like they're reading from a military handbook.

If you want to say that Green Day or Nirvana or whomever are Punk bands, that's fine. But if that also means you exclude the groups that were at the epicenter of a musical movement that is still resonating four decades later, well that's just silly crap. That's the Georgio Armani version of music history.

 

The Arrow vinyl boot from the same shows had much better sound.

 

For anyone that likes Television, I would encourage you to check out the band Felt. Television was probably their biggest influence. Felt isn't a copy band though, and had a string of great records in the 80s.

 

I never thought that Television sound like the Grateful Dead. However, I will grant you that Jerry Garcia's playing style influenced a lot of player due to his improvisational approach. Believe it or not, one band I know was influenced by the Grateful Dead was Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. I read that from an interview that Peter Green gave regarding the 'Then Play On" era because he liked the GD approach to stretching out.

 

I think that's how Television avoided the blues rock cliches of the era. Tom Verlaine used 7 note scales based on the modes, instead of the minor pentatonic scale.

I'm pretty sure Elevation is in Aeolian.

 

Agree, glad to see your reference to this great band.

 

The Strange Idols Pattern album is wonderful, the guitars are very very close to Television without being a mere copy, and the songs are excellent. Anyone who likes TV should check that album out.
As far as current bands, Real Estate, especially on Atlas, sound as if they listened to "Days" and "Venus" on constant rotation. Great band.

 

You got it. A Aeolian.

 

This is common in Rock Music (D Mix), a blank shot for me.

 

Verlaine was asked to produce Felt but declined after seeing one of their gigs. I wonder what put him off.

 

Well, the thread title is were Television influenced by The Grateful Dead and I listed one similarity between the Dead and Television. There are other similarities between The Dead and Television.
The Mixolydian mode is far from being "common" in rock music.

 

Which album?

 

I disagree, my aim is not a discussion between the lines, to me "D Mix" is a proof that leads to a dead end.

 

Ignite the Seven Cannons, I think. It was definitely the Cherry Red/Deebank era.