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Sad news: Tom Verlaine of Television has died. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/28/arts ... at-73.html

Thank you. He deserves his own thread.

I’m not feeling very articulate about this yet. He was hugely influential on me as a musician and doer of creative things.

burpgun wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 28, 2023 2:20 pm

Sad news: Tom Verlaine of Television has died. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/28/arts ... at-73.html

He's the reason I bought a Jazzmaster.

A brilliant artist who will be sorely missed.

Shit!! I was listening to Don't Die on my earphones no more than 3 hours ago!

Oh No

I'm speechless

After not being able to confirm this earlier today I was hoping it wasn’t true. This is devastating news.

Such a tragedy. Way too early. Farewell Tom

i had marquee moon and adventure on in the shop on friday. i'm fucking gutted since marquee moon is my favorite album (well joint favorite)

i wanna actually tell the story of how i got into television though. i think that's more interesting. so it's like 2005 and me and my friends are getting bored of our usual skate-punk and post-hardcore. my dad (hobbit) was always good for 3 things. socialist ideology, weed and music recommendations. he was telling me about an album that he heard one song of and HAD to buy it. turns out, it was quite the rare beast. he went around every record shop in london and couldn't find it. one shop said they could order it but it was expensive...... my dad paid a week's rent for it. when my mum found out how much he spent importing it, she was raging and apparently that was the first big argument they ever had. it got to the point where my mum never wanted to hear the album because just thinking about it made her so mad. hobbit said it was his favorite album of the 70's so we had to listen.

we found a copy on CD. normally when me and my friends listened to music, we'd chat over it. this was different. we stuck it on and was blown away by the guitar playing. it got to the point where 20 mins after the album ended, one of us broke the silence and said "i'm out. no point in playing guitar anymore, i can't top that" and none of us picked up a guitar for 2 weeks after that. imagine an album with guitar playing so good, it makes you NOT want to play guitar. it's the reason i have a stained jazzmaster and wanted to start playing jazzmasters and offsets. i thought "maybe if i have the guitar, it will unlock for me" i also went out and bought all their albums and most of tom's solo albums over the following year.

weirdly, the moment i found out, i messaged my dad and my 2 friends who were with me on that first listen and got the replies
"why tom and not rupert murdoch?" - my dad
"i'm gonna spin it when i get home"
"i know the baby is sleeping but i'm gonna have to play it"

My television story is a little different. I have a tele I keep at work. I was playing something and one of the dudes in my shift said that sounds just like marquee moon.
I had not a single clue what he meant. Despite being into punk rock and hardcore my whole life and taken all kinds of rides on way-back machines and somehow missed them at every turn.
I took a deep dive after that and am still flabbergasted they escaped me.
This was 3 years ago.
I’m 43.

RIP.

It's kind of a weird one but listening to Marquee Moon was the last time I felt like a kid again. I'm Gen X, got into punk and adjacent music in the late 80s, had Marquee Moon on tape but never really connected with it. Flash forward many years, I'm newly married at the onset of middle age, already got one kid, a couple more will follow in the years to come. We go to visit my wife's family and we're just hanging out in her childhood bedroom. She's got a record player and Marquee Moon on vinyl and puts it one. We sit there on the floor listening to it, like teenagers. That was a long time ago at this point, never recaptured that feeling and kind doubt I will again, too many miles on this particular odometer. Godspeed Tom Verlaine, I suspect a lot folks on this particular board would not be doing what we are doing now if not for you and the boys in Television.

RIP to the reason so many of us play Fender Jazzmasters. Leave it to Thurston Moore to eulogize him perfectly:

"Went by the book stalls outside Strand yesterday thinking I’d see you as usual, have a smoke, talk about rare poetry finds for a couple of hours, downtown NYC racing by our slow meditations on music, writing - gonna miss you Tom. TV Rest In Peace."

One of the few electric guitar players that genuinely had an influence on my love for the Jazzmaster. Found Television when I was in my early teens and was awestruck.

I probably discovered Television from reading a music mag or artist interview in the '80s. I went out and bought Marquee Moon and remember being hooked instantly. Like most here I spent a lot of time playing to that record, trying to figure out my favorite lines and marveling at the interplay between Verlaine and Lloyd. I can still hear every line in my head because from that time until today that album is never far away. I got Adventure, and the live album, and am familiar with of some of Verlaine's solo work, but nothing had the seismic impact on me that Marquee Moon did and still does. One of the real guitar record masterpieces in my book and I also think Verlaine's lyrics are genius--funny, poignant, and literate, often all at the same time. This sort of thing always takes me by surprise--a real blow.

Last year just seemed to slip by with not much to shpw for it in some ways

So I resolved that this year would be different and more productive and, not having listened to them for several years, I started, with what I now know of music, arranging, production, guitars and the like, to have a good long listen to Tom Verlaine's solo albums, the Television albums and Richard Lloyd as well.

After a couple of weeks of listening, now with this news, I am stunned in a way.

Like most, Marquee Moon made a big impression when I first heard it way back then, it was different. The arrangement of the 2 guitars and the song strutures. was new and fascinating .... and he played offset guitars.

Vale Tom and thanks