Television: Marquee Moon

Good God. There are few records that hold such a dear spot in my heart. There’s The Suburbs. Californication. London Calling. Shadows Collide With People. In Rainbows. Welcome to the Black Parade (I am not ashamed!). Funkadelic. And then there is Marquee Moon, released in ’76 as the ass-kicking debut of Television. 

“I remember / Oooh how the darkness doubled / I recaaaall / Lightning struck itself / I was listenin’ / Listenin’ / To the rain / I was hearing / Hearing / Something else.”

(An unrelated side: Do not ever buy Smirnoff’s peach-flavored vodka. Do not do it. Unless you have some Snapple Raspberry Tea or Mountain Dew [who wants to endorse me?] on hand, stay far away from that flavor.)

John Frusciante (all hail) is the reason I became aware of Marquee Moon, him and the older brother of a dear friend. Frusciante, along with many other musical critics, cites Marquee Moon as one of those rock ‘n’ roll albums of the ‘70s that completely debunked the style of improvisational guitar solos. I think one of the reasons Marquee Moon is such a standout album to me is because I’ve never heard anything like it. There’s music that exists solely because Marquee Moon exists.

Brian Eno once said not a lot of people heard The Velvet Underground’s first album, but everyone who did hear it started a band. There is not a single part of me that doubts Marqueen Moon had a similar effect. I certainly feel the urge to create music whenever I hear it. The Pixies, Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen all credit the jazzy style of impromptu guitar on Marquee Moon as having a huge influence on their music.

“Marquee Moon” is a fucking unbelievably beautiful track with mesmerizing guitar solos and interplay, and the dang thing was recorded in one take. ONE TAKE. THAT’S UNBELIEVABLE. And Marquee Moon didn’t even sell well in America, so you know what that leads me to believe? That Americans are foolish goons who don’t recognize good things when they see them! New York’s post-punk scene definitely recognized the band and they had a large underground following, but pop culture couldn’t handle the genius.

Since 2003, the album’s been hanging out at spot number four on NME’s greatest albums of all time, and number 130 on Rolling Stone’s same list. The fact that I’ve only been aware of this album for a little over a year is evident to the fact that I was raised musically ignorant, a struggle I must overcome daily. (This is a joke. My parents are very wonderful, kind and loving people who have not inhibited my musical advancement in any way, shape or form. And if they tried, it didn’t work. Holla.)

From the opening track you can tell this album is going to be boss as hell. One guitar creates this unbelievably addictive riff while the other provides rhythm, and the bass and drums do their wacky, quirky thing in the backbone of the song. Vocalist Tom Verlaine (sweet God) seals the deal. His voice is a smidgen nasally, but it’s a post-punk band and his goal is not perfect pitch, it is emotion. He strains and emphasizes, rumbles and whines with his vocals and it’s fucking beautiful. Jesus CHRIST, “See No Evil” is one of my favorite tracks of all time. For the most part I interpret Verlaine’s lyrics as unintelligible but there are lines that stick out, and they’re golden.

“I understand all (I see no) destructive urges (I see no) / But it seems so perfect (I see no) / I see / I see no / Eviiiiil! / I get ideas / I get emotion / I want a nice big boat / Made out of ocean / I get your point / You’re so sharp / (incoherent mumbling, sounds good regardless).”

It’s such a fun song to sing along to (or make loosely-correct-sounding noises). The inflections in Verlaine’s voice are wild and carefree; the members of Television are literally playing with sound, and then there’s that dang guitar solo just so they can say, “We’re having fun but we’re fucking good at it.” It hurts so good, I guess because I can’t recreate it. Just punch me in the face and it’ll hurt less.

Marquee Moon is a rather romantic album--romantic in the sense that it focuses heavily on feeling things emotionally instead of...methodically. Emotion oozes out of this entire record. It’s nearly 40 years old, but it’s impossible for the music to ever lose its vibrancy. The rolling drums, the piercing guitar soloing over everything else--this is a transportative album. Transportative is not a word, but I’m using it. The title itself is representative of the romanticism, and the way current culture has destroyed that school of thought. Yes, it speaks of a moon, but of a moon created by man-made neon signs. Marquees have a gravitational effect on people; they incite and pull in, and maybe even blind. (Neon Bible, anyone?)

Everything comes to a head in the title track. You can just feel it right off the bat. There’s an element to the music that sounds more serious and thoughtful than the three previous songs, and then Verlaine starts dropping these amazing lyrics. Just the tone of his voice makes me feel like he’s telling a very important secret, but it’s in a code that I have to figure out on my own. I feel like the dude is talking right to me, and there’s not a lot of music that makes me feel that way.

I will never do anything in my entire life as well as Tom Verlaine plays the second guitar solo in “Marquee Moon,” which comprises roughly half the track. Done in one fucking take. God it makes me want to vomit a rainbow.

Now I’m not going to lie, it can be hard to pay attention to Marquee Moon once the title track finishes. The song is such a suckerpunch in the face and soul that the rest of the album sometimes floats over me in a pleasant haze of sound, which is really just dumb on my part because all of Marquee Moon is incredible. So lucky for you, this time I’m paying attention.

“Oh no / Can’t pull a trick / Never the rose without the prick / But tell me how do I say? / I woke up and it’s yesterday / Do I again face this night?” comes from “Elevation,” as does some seriously fantastic waning, other-worldly guitar.

And then there’s this shit from “Prove It”: “The birds / They’re giving you the words / The world is just a feeling you undertook.” LIKE DAMN. That’s kind of the whole album: The world is just a feeling you undertook. That’s kind of life, dude! Oh damn. That’s really hitting me right now. I need a minute.

All of reality is nothing but perception--the world exists only because you think it does. And it all manifests itself in this overwhelming cascade of emotions that change on a daily to monthly to yearly basis. The only reason we experience life is because we, as humans, feel it--in the sadness and embarrassment that accompanies being reprimanded at work, in the happiness that comes with having a new companion, in the jubilation that comes from passing an exam. It’s all only there because we feel it. If humans existed without emotion literally nothing would ever get done. We’d have gone extinct by now, just by lack of caring/trying. The world is just a feeling you undertook.

The album ends with “Torn Curtain,” which is easily the most depressing song on the record. It’s all about double-entendres and seeing the ugly side of something you thought wasn’t ugly. At one point all of Television wails in an echo, “Tears, tears / Years, years” while the guitar wails and cries, and damn, is it moving. It doesn’t necessarily change the whole mood of the album, but certainly leaves the listener with a new perspective. How nice, right? You get to the end of something only to be like, “Oh fuck, that’s what they meant?”

Going from “Torn Curtain” back to “See No Evil” is shocking. The distinction between moods is painfully apparent, and wow, it’s really not until now that I get the point. It goes from seeing no evil to peeking behind the torn curtain and realizing, "Wow, sometimes the world sucks. Sometimes you need to cry." 

Like right now. Right now I need to cry.