Television have two well-known live albums to their name, both taped in 1978 — the classic ROIR release The Blow-Up, which came out in the early 1980s, and the incendiary Live at the Old Waldorf, emerging about 20 years later. Live at the Academy is much more under the radar; originally sold in unassuming CDR format at merch tables in the 2000s, it’s been available only fleetingly since on various streaming services. This year’s Record Store Day, however, sees the performance getting a well-deserved double LP reissue. It’s a necessary addition to Television’s relatively small discography.
Category: Television
Patti Smith Group / John Cale / Television :: The Palladium, New York City, December 31, 1976
As mentioned in a recent Aquarium Drunkard Book Club, some of the most entertaining parts of Thurston Moore’s Sonic Life memoir come during his teenage years, way before Sonic Youth was even a twinkle in his eye. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Fan? From the suburbs of Connecticut, Moore made countless trips into NYC to soak in the punk/CBGB/Max’s Kansas City worlds, catching shows by The Ramones, Suicide, the Dead Boys, Sid Vicious … and Patti Smith, of course. Thurston paints an evocative portrait of this New Year’s Eve blowout, which doubled as Patti’s raucous 30th birthday party. He was dangerously high on mescaline.
Hear it for yourself …
Guiding Light :: A Tom Verlaine Appreciation
Heartfelt tributes to Tom Verlaine have been pouring in since news broke of his death late last month. A famously enigmatic character, the Television co-founder never went out of his way to make himself lovable — but he was loved all the same. As you’ll see below, Verlaine provided a guiding light for a wide array of artists through the decades. His deeply original approach (to the guitar, to songwriting, to life) went beyond mere influence and inspiration; it seeped inextricably into the DNA of generations of musicians and writers. As a result, this case will likely never be closed …
Television :: Tell A Vision
A reluctant farewell to Tom Verlaine, who helped define (and then quickly transcended) the NYC punk scene of the 1970s, inspiring countless groups through the decades.
We’ll likely have more to say about the man in the days/weeks to come, but in the meantime, here’s an hour’s worth of Television covers stretching from the 1970s on through the present day, putting a spotlight on the impact the band had on the generations of artists that followed in their wake.
Richard Lloyd :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Richard Lloyd didn’t set out to write a rock & roll memoir. While his debut book, Everything Is Combustible: Television, CBGB’s and Five Decades of Rock and Roll: The Memoirs of an […]
Let Me Take You To The Empty Place: An Incomplete Story of Peter Laughner and Television (Slight Return)
Cleveland guitarist/singer/songwriter/scenemaker Peter Laughner , best known for co-founding Rocket From The Tombs and Pere Ubu, died at far too young an age in 1977. But he managed to pack an astonishing […]
Television :: Piccadilly Inn – Cleveland, July 25, 1975
One hell of a night in Cleveland. Television played its first out-of-town shows deep in the heart of Ohio in the summer of ’75. The opening band was Rocket From […]
Television :: Live @ The Whisky A Go-Go, Los Angeles 1977
As one of the quintessential NYC punk bands, it’s a bit hard to picture Television on the Sunset Strip. One can imagine Tom Verlaine squinting vampire-like in the sunlight, scowling at […]
L’Aventure :: Television’s Adventure Reimagined
If you missed this in June…. Last year Aquarium Drunkard released RAM On L.A. — a local music compilation featuring eleven Los Angeles artists each covering a track off Paul McCartney’s 1971 LP, […]
Television :: Adventure
I was never quite sure what to make of people’s outright indifference towards, or ignorance of, Television’s sophomore album Adventure . Here you have a legendary band’s follow-up to an unquestionable masterpiece […]