May 082009
Admit it, this is the kind of live prock experience you wish you could have witnessed in person! At least I wish I coud have been there to see a beret-wearing Tom Verlaine playing one of my favorite songs from my favorite of his solo albums, Dreamtime! Love the chops-wielding drummer! Dig the other guitarist’s huge, unbuttoned cuffs. And is that Fred Smith on bass?
i dig this!
I wonder if Verlaine and band were able to maintain that laid-back sense of scientific artistry throughout the concert? It’s rare that a band can keep it together with that approach.
not being familiar with their work, i can’t say.
i was imagining this as a ‘break in the action.’ i imagined tougher sounding stuff around it.
but hey, what the hell do I know?
wait a minute…don’t answer that.
Do you know that Dreamtime album, Sat? I think it’s the next best thing by anyone in Television after Marquee Moon. Is that album still out of print? I’ve only had it on vinyl all these years. Maybe I can get some time to prepare another Listening Party.
About 4 yrs ago, I scooped it up out of a bin of cassettes that a friend’s hippy step father was throwing away.
I enjoyed it.
But two weeks later, my car was totalled and that cassette (and many others) was lodged in a part of the car that was so mangled that it was irretrievable.
I haven’t heard it since.
here ya go (I guess):
http://www.amazon.com/Dreamtime-Tom-Verlaine/dp/B001BWQ0C8/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_k2a_3_img?pf_rd_p=304485601&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-2&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000002MA2&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1K7X3TB0CRTNB9J2FED4
No, no, no, no! This is not Prock; this is Kentonism! When will you ever get the distinction right?
Yours frustratedly,
HVB
p.s.: I wanna know what they had planned for the on-stage blackboard.
i wasn’t really concerned with whether or not it was prock, hvb. i was just enjoying it.
I agree that Dreamtime is the best Verlaine solo album, and I probably prefer it to Adventure and the reformed Television album. Some things about this performance make it seem pretty far removed from the Dreamtime release. I think the beret showed up about 3 albums later and the drummer is either not Jay Dee Daugherty or a seriously shorn version. Jay Dee was the drummer for Verlaine on all of his 1980’s appearances in this area. As the decade wore on, Verlaine seemed to focus his recording in England and the last solo album of his 80’s run, The Wonder I think it was called, wasn’t even released here. I suspect that this is an English performance. Verlaine’s solo band included Fred Smith and the other guitarist in this video, Jimmy Ripp, who also played with Kid Creole and the Coconuts. They were a really good band, able to present unembarassing versions of classics like Marquee Moon, and also pretty adept at bringing the solo material to life. I have a 12 inch that includes a version of them doing Marquee moon and it is certainly worth hearing. Although generally more consistent than Television as a live act, they didn’t burn as bright, primarily due to the replacement of the wildly wonderful Billy Ficca with the workmanlike Jay Dee. Ripp was really a good guitarist, you’ll notice he’s doing the really Beefheart-like rhythm riff on here, and the addition of his consistency probably was less of a trade-off for the potentially erratic Lloyd.
Like Saturn, I once had Dreamtime on a cassette–copied it from someone back in the GW days but don’t remember who, and eventually it vanished. I don’t recall ever hugely warming to it, and probably it’s well worth giving another shot.
Around my house at least, Sunday afternoons are all about prog.