389. Television - Marquee Moon (1977)

















Track Listing

1. See No Evil
2. Venus
3. Friction
4. Marquee Moon
5. Elevation
6. Guiding Light
7. Prove It
8. Torn Curtain

Review

This is an absolutely amazing album. This has been quite a bunch of albums we have been having lately. Tomorrow we may break away from the 9 and 10's, but not today. This can and usually is considered Punk, but it is a very different kettle of fish from The Clash or Sex Pistols. Television are so immersed in earlier kinds of music mainly psychadelia that they have a whole different feel to them.

This is actually what makes them individual and pretty great. There is this whole kind of psychadelic sound to the guitars that have actually made me want to buy a Fender Jaguar and move from Reviewer to actual player. Now I only need to steal £1000 from someone, if anyone is interested in donating I'll take cash or a Jaguar you have lying around somewhere. Thanks.

The title track is nothing short of epic and probably one of the very few punk tracks to go over the 10 minute mark, it involves some of the best guitar playing of the whole decade in one of the best solos ever. So you join literate lyrics with a punk delivery with great fucking playing and composition and you can't go wrong, in fact you can't get much better than this. Unlike most punk this appeals to much more than the sheer visceral level, this appeals to the thinker and the music lover as well as the gut. Get it now!

Track Highlights

1. Marquee Moon
2. Venus
3. Torn Curtain
4. Friction

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

According to the liner notes of the 2003 reissue, Television originally wanted to record Marquee Moon with veteran jazz recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder (John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, most of the classic Blue Note Records catalog) at his legendary Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey recording studio.

The album cover features a portrait of the band taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, who also took the cover of fellow CBGB rocker Patti Smith's Horses album.

There is a passing reference to Marquee Moon in the Spanish group Amaral's song Moriría por vos. In the song's lyrics, while listing various reasons that the vocalist is falling for someone, she mentions that it might have something to do with the fact that the album is playing.

A cover version of the title track was recorded in 1990 by the Kronos Quartet for the compilation album Rubáiyát.

The song "Marquee Moon" was done in one take; drummer Billy Ficca thought that they were rehearsing.

Alternate Take of Marquee Moon: