"Lightning Struck Itself"
The Edgy Transcendence of Television's Marquee Moon
“But looking at them again, just as the verses of these dear Cursed Ones are very steadily written (for proof we need only their perfections of all kinds), even their features are calm, like bronzes from decadent Rome — but what does decadent really mean? — or like polychromed marble statues. So down with false Romanticism! and long live the pure, stubborn (but no less amusing) line that communicates so well, through the material structure, the incompressible ideal!”
— Paul Verlaine (trans. Chase Madar, Green Integer, 2000)
“I remember when the darkness doubled.
Lightning struck itself.
I was listening to the rain,
But I was hearing something else.”
— “Marquee Moon” by Television
The BBC Documentary No Fun (the “Punk” episode of a multi-part history of Rock n’Roll) opens with Tom Verlaine. In the typical documentary interviewee-to-camera setup, Verlaine (arguably the best and most technically and sonically adept guitarist/composer ever associated with the genre) is limited to two lines which, while being representative enough of the spirit of the time, in no way come close to representing the depth of his contribution.
“Maybe you can do that. Maybe you and your friends can have a band, too.”
It’s possible that I could start a band. It is impossible that I could ever make any music with anyone that could even come close to being as good as the music of Television.
Verlaine (born Miller) seems to have become associated with Punk largely because he lived in NYC and had an anti-celebrity attitude. The graduate of a private school who played classical piano and saxophone, Verlaine (who befriended and was romantically involved with poet-singer Patti Smith) seems to have appreciated symbolist and surrealist poetics, and had the idea that the poet should be a sort of cultural outsider. While this gave his persona the air of a mythos, he also very clearly did not want to be a rock star, despite his obvious love for music. Looking at the record in question, I think it’s perfectly sound to call him a performer-composer.
January 28th, 2023
On January 28th, 2023, a human organism which had been certified via government documents as being named “Tom Verlaine” lost the function of what Carl Zimmer has researched as 18th Century French physician Xavier Bichat’s “Vital Tripod.”
“If the lungs failed, they could not transform dark blood to red, the life-sustaining form that the brain needed to keep working. If the heart failed, it could not deliver blood to the other two organs. When Bichat damaged the brains of animals, he discovered that a crucial connection to the heart and lungs was lost, causing the animals to die. No one part of the body had a monopoly on the forces of life, Bichat could see. Those forces were distributed across the body in an interconnected system.” 1
I didn’t know much about this organism called “Tom Verlaine.” Nevertheless, when I read the news of this transition on Saturday night, I cried.
Marquee Moon
“I ain’t waitin’.
Uh-uh.”
— “Marquee Moon” by Television
I don’t remember how I learned about Marquee Moon, the first record Verlaine’s band Television released, a record Verlaine himself produced.
If I was a betting man, I would assume a track of it was played to me in either late 1998 or early 1999 by Andy Meyer in his cinderblock dorm room at the University of Northern Iowa. If this is the case, it was pearls before swine and, while I certainly must’ve been quite affected by it (I remembered the band name and title, after all), it would have been drowned out by Lou Reed, Brian Eno, the Wu Tang Clan, Beck, Outkast, Pavement, Radiohead, Prince, Lee “Scratch” Perry (the Upsetter) and many others.
That said, I distinctly remember the day I bought it on CD a couple years later while visiting my then-girlfriend Susan Kerns in Milwaukee, and put it on my car stereo on the drive home.
The highway was an appropriate venue for this masterpiece.
Split into two distinct parts (as was often the case during the days of vinyl releases) the first half of Marquee Moon embodies two distinct movements on the first side alone. I will be writing about only side A. It opens with three perfect rock gems, all roughly pop-song length, and closes with… well, we’ll get to that.
1-2-3
See No Evil
“I Understand All Destructive Urges”
— “See No Evil” Television
Because I’m a more or less cis male born before 1981, I like to make bold, unsupportable, (un)intentionally hyperbolic claims. “See No Evil” is, for my money, the best album starter in the history of rock n’roll. Two bars of a perfect syncopated riff, a trilling bass lead in, and a straight launch into a casually threatening but non-aggressive groove iced with a slick guitar lead that adds a grace to the attitude.
It was energy with which I was unfamiliar — relaxed and ecstatic at once — and the lyrics of the chorus (shouted as a call and response between Verlaine and the band) called to mind the three Japanese monkeys, embraced by Ghandi as a representation of the enlightened perspective necessary to achieve peace.
Under Heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast with each other;
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.
Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not possessing,
Working, yet not taking credit,
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts for ever.— Tao Te Ching Verse 2 (translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)
O Beauty! dost thou generate from Heaven or from Hell?
Within thy glance, so diabolic and divine,
Confusedly both wickedness and goodness dwell,
And hence one might compare thee unto sparkling wine.— Baudelaire from “Hymn to Beauty” from Flowers of Evil (trans. Cyril Scott)
Two more equally exciting songs follow, about which I could write amply. No time here.
And there is the show stopper that finished side A. The title track.
Marquee Moon
“Life in the hive puckered up my night
A kiss of death, the embrace of life”— “Marquee Moon” by Television
Like Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island of the Mind, which played on the modernity of Rimbaud and brought a commercialist, (then) technologically-advanced (although already fading) metaphor to revamp a previous, (post)religious sensibility, Verlaine is bringing us into a reflective place from the vantage of someone living in the “concrete jungle” of New York City.
The song starts backwards. At least, it did for me. I’ll never forget how it spun me. The track starts with only the rhythm guitars, which are playing on the back beats. Since we haven’t heard the other instruments yet, and have had no count in, there’s no real way to know they’re not playing on the front. The bass then comes in and pushes back, and it’s as though the two are in a shouting match and the police have to get called. Hence, the drums. Soon we’re in full band, and it’s a swooning spin to realize things are actually the other way.
The song deals with death. There’s a graveyard, there’s a Cadillac. There’s a man at the tracks with a portentous message that seems to contradict itself.
The whole thing escalates into a sort of celestial odyssey, elevates and breaks into oceanic consciousness, a long instrumental portion with guitars like dolphins. Eventually we come back to the first verse (which you already read at the first part of this post).
But this time, the drums come first, and it feels as though we’ve been set back down into safety.
Now it’s time for side B.
Life’s Edge. Carl Zimmer. Dutton, 2021.