As a self-confessed music geek, I am obviously quite enamored of the whole 33 1/3 series (originally published by Continuum but now apparently Bloomsbury? - http://333sound.com/) and own several, (though not nearly as many as I want/need!). This past Xmas someone quite near and dear to me gave me Bryan Waterman's contribution to the series: Television's Marquee Moon. This record is definitely one of my "Desert Island Discs," and I agree with something Waterman writes early on about how it's an album that really sounds like it came not from any particular time period, barring any sonic nuances/limitations more expert ears might pick up on that betray when it was recorded. Of course, it is hard, if not impossible, to listen to it, or any album for that matter, without placing it in the context of when it was recorded. Waterman devotes a lot of his book to this, giving us the whole setting for how the CBGB's mythology was seemingly created by two Rimbaud-inspired white dudes loitering around the Lower East Side in the mid-70's (probably not the greatest idea at the time) and happened upon a guy hanging up a banner for his club, asked for a gig, and then the rest being history. Whether or not it really happened that way, as Waterman points out, is really beside the point. The fact is Television, though not the first rock band (or band) to ever play CBGB, nevertheless became the band that brought it to prominence, resulting in the scene it became and the legend it spawned. And their whole back story, about which Waterman goes into considerable detail, is kind of essential as far as informing what eventually became the album Marquee Moon, i.e., the friendship/creative-spiritual partnership/falling out between co-founders Richard Hell (Myers) and Tom Verlaine (Miller). (Verlaine mentions his former collaborator in the last verse of the second song on the album "Venus.")
So what about the book itself as a critical analysis/love letter to one of (IMHO) the greatest (debut) albums in rock? Again, not wanting to be hypercritical, I would say I really enjoyed it on the whole. Being a university professor and scholar, Waterman did an amazing amount of research for it. The bibliography is a veritable smorgasbord of resources about those halcyon days. It's amazing to me how much is written about this stuff, and how good the writing was back then, (and how the quality of music criticism seems to have gone way downhill ever since). He also approaches the analysis part as you would expect from an academic, at times perhaps a little over the top, although I think this music warrants it. A lot of these books are written by scholars and academics, so this is to be expected. (I know there are some blatant exceptions, e.g., the one for PJ Harvey's Rid of Me and Joe Pernice's one for The Smiths' Meat Is Murder, neither of which I have read yet.) As a musician, it seems a little more could have been devoted to the music itself, perhaps from a technical standpoint. Waterman does have an entire chapter where he writes something about each song, but at times it seems there is so much more one can say (inevitable for any such book though, especially one for this series). And, being a drummer, I have always felt that Billy Ficca's playing on this record is extraordinary, and never receives enough credit or attention. He does stuff on every track that to me is so creative and interesting and that I imagine most, rock drummers anyway, wouldn't think of. One can clearly hear his Tony Williams/jazz influence throughout the record. One of my favorite moments is at the 3:14 mark on "Friction." Of course, the guitar interplay between Verlaine and Richard Lloyd is stellar and defines their sound, and Fred Smith's melodic, supportive bass playing completes the sound of the quartet. I also think the book ends kind of abruptly, with Patti Smith at the closing of CBGB in 2006 essentially telling the crowd that Verlaine, unable or unwilling to be present, is there in spirit. I guess it makes sense though that any book about Marquee Moon is inevitably going to have CBGB as one of its focuses.
Look, sure there is a lot that Waterman could have done differently, but there is really no way that I am not going to enjoy a book about Marquee Moon from the 33 1/3 series. And his suggestion to listen to the album on headphones while trolling through the Lower East Side of Manhattan at night is one I hope to be able to do someday.
No comments:
Post a Comment