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https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/blasting-rod-mojave-green/

1000 Day Album Challenge (#20) Television: The Blow-Up (1982) [20.01.24]

let me take you to the empty place in my fire engine…

The Blow-Up was recorded live at My Father’s Place in Roslyn, New York in March of 1978. it was released in 1982 by ROIR (Reachout International Records) available only on cassette. at the time ROIR was a cassette-only label. scanning their discography (https://www.discogs.com/label/18316-ROIR?sort=year&sort_order=asc), my count is that I owned five of their releases. I do believe this was my most cherished.

Television was a mainstay of the mid- to late-70s CBGBs scene that was ground zero to the creation of punk rock. they never achieved the mainstream success and cultural cache of Talking Heads, Ramones, Blondie, or Patti Smith. still they were the first from the scene to play the legendary club. they were kinda the advance team. in 1974, they were also the first to release a record, the single Little Johnny Jewel which extended over both sides of their Ork Records release. and then somehow, they were among the last to release an album, Marquee Moon (1977).

this tape is about the joy of rock guitar. which I guess in some respects makes it no different than the rest of Television’s limited output. first up is The Blow-Up which is a renamed cover of 13th Floor Elevators’ Fire Engine. just before Tom Verlaine begins singing you can hear someone in the crowd identify the song as Fire Engine. it seems obvious to me, from this song alone that this is a band in search of transcendence powered by a driving rock beat. the weaving interplay of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd’s guitars blows me away.

there are a couple of more covers to mention. I never would have thought of Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door as a guitar song until Television showed me how limited my imagination was. I am realizing, perhaps for the first time, as I listen to his that their version is a Cortez The Killer for the punk rock generation. someone just shouted “go boy! go!” hey, that’s what I was thinking.

the tape concludes with a galvanic version of The Stones’ Satisfaction. John Piccarella and Robert Christgau wrote in the liner notes, “And Lloyd, always constrained by the necessity of getting his solos and rhythm riffs just right in the studio, goes nuts here--what he wanted to express on `Satisfaction' was so beyond his chops that he would regularly unwind his bottom E string, twist it behind the neck, and tense the guitar like an archer's bow, producing the unearthly noises preserved for posterity on this cassette.”

you may ask why is a punk rock band covering all of these sixties’ classics? unlike the later starting British punk scene which had the sense that they were destroying or leaving behind what had come before, the New York scene had a stronger sense of history. they viewed themselves as part of a continuum. think of Patti Smith’s gender-bending transformation of Them’s Gloria or Land in which she completely reimagined the classic, Land of a Thousand Dances. shit the Ramones and Blondie were grounded in sixties AM radio classic pop.

there is a particular standout here that is quite forward-looking. the near 15 minute version of Little Johnny Jewel is definitive. if this doesn’t do it for you then there really is no reason for you to checkout the rest of their music. it’s not for you.

as the song nears the halfway point it seems like it is coming to an end. the idea that they can take this interpretation further seems preposterous. in a near whisper, Tom Verlaine says/sings, “then he loses his senses” and we are off. it’s like a whole new song. having listened to this countless times I found myself in an excited state of anticipation as the midpoint change of pace approached.

Tom Verlaine’s performance here, by itself makes him one of my favorite guitarists ever. I truly am breathless as I listen and type. wow! I feel like the term lifechanging does not capture the hyperbole for which I’m searching. maybe on the next listen the right word(s) will find me.