Music
11 Apr 01

Visions on

As Television announce an Easter Monday date at Vicar St., Peter Murphy discusses the meaning of live with Richard Lloyd

Du-duh. Du-duh. Du-duh. Du-duh.

Diddle-iddle-iddle-iddle-it/Diddle-iddle-iddle-iddle-it.

It’s hard to believe, but on Easter Monday next, April 16, Dublin’s Vicar St. will resound to the luminous mercury sounds of ‘Marquee Moon’ played not by some indie tribute band or The Kronos Quartet on TG4, but the original Television line up of Tom Verlaine, Richard Lloyd, Fred Smith and Billy Ficca, appearing live for the first time ever on Irish soil.

Of course, it’s not the quartet’s first reunion – in 1992 Television toured extensively on the back of their eponymous third album, but this time out, with little fuss, they have agreed to follow up their All Tomorrow’s Parties show at Camber Sands with a Dublin date.

“The specifics of this were that the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival had Yo La Tengo, who are friends of ours, and they were able to get in contact with us,” Richard Lloyd explains. “I can’t speak for the rest of us, but I think it’s easier to do a Television reformation at a festival than to do a quote-unquote Television show. And then what happened was other people crawled out of the woodwork and said, ‘We heard you’re doing this, can we get you over here?’”

These latest reformation shows come on the heels of the recent ROIR label’s double CD re-issue of the legendary The Blow Up live bootleg, a reupholstered edition of the 1982 cassette-only release which featured epic extended versions of ‘Marquee Moon’ and ‘Little Johnny Jewel’.

How does Richard feel about this particular artefact seeing the light of day again?

“I have mixed feelings about that,” he says, “and here’s why. First, because it was recorded on a cassette, for God’s sake! I mean, a lot of people recorded the band without our permission. Basically the guy promised he would only release it on cassette and we thought ‘Ah, what the hell. He’s gonna release it anyway and we’re gonna have to sue him, so why don’t we just give him permission?’ I was at all the Television shows, dig it, and to me that was not the best show. There are some really good things on it, but if I had access to deciding what would be released… I’m glad it’s out as a document. I personally would like to see more live Television stuff actually come out, not just as a bootleg.”

In their day, Television might have been totally in thrall to The Velvets, The Who, the Elevators et al, but the trickle-down principle still applied. Verlaine and co.’s influence on the post-punk generation has been considerable, not just indie acts like The Feelies, Sonic Youth and Pavement, but also mainstream bands like U2 and REM.

“Those are the ones that acknowledge it, and it’s very nice that they do so,” avers Lloyd. “It’s interesting to see the people who call us influences, like The Edge, cos U2’s a one guitar band, but he’s using all sorts of effects to try to sound like two guitars, which he does very well. REM as well, you got Peter playing the one guitar business but approximating the two guitars of Television – that’s an interesting phenomenon. But we’re still the only two guitar band that isn’t southern rock, or Status Quo on parallel thirds.”

Oh God.

“Yeah – Oh God!!”

Television play Vicar St on Monday, April 16. Richard Lloyd’s The Cover Doesn’t Matter is out now on Evangeline Records.