5. TelevisionMarquee Moon
I didn’t see Television in the seventies but I went to see them in the early nineties in Shepherd’s Bush Empire. I was so excited… but they didn’t play one song off Marquee Moon! They played ‘Little Johnny Jewel’ but no ‘See No Evil’, no ‘Friction’ and I was so pissed off with them, I fell out of love with them. Who does that?! You gotta play at least one track! I just thought, "you little shits!" But when you’re walking past somewhere and you hear a strain of that record, it’s just genius. The sleeve is genius, I love the Elektra logo, I love the artwork. Having got tired of the three chord punk thing pretty quickly, it was great when this appeared, it’s more prog, more psychedelic, the way Verlaine and Lloyd’s guitars work together, I don’t think there’s ever a four-piece band has worked together so well and it’s so unconventional, some of the notes they play are just wrong, technically. It’s just genius. I really think it’s one of the most incredible records of all time. And it appears in every list! I wasn’t mesmerised by it when it came out, my friend Stan brought me this record, he was aware of it a few months before I was. But we became obsessed with it and those things stick with you. I don’t think any four-piece band has come close to this, before or since.
