Glory [Early Version][#][*] - Television, Lloyd, Richard [Roc
Remastered digipak reissue for the band's 2nd album originally released in 1978, includes 3 bonus tracks 'Adventure' (previously unissued), 'Ain't That Nothin' (single version) & 'Glory' (early version). Elektra. 2003.
Remastered digipak reissue for the band's 2nd album originally released in 1978, includes 3 bonus tracks 'Adventure' (previously unissued), 'Ain't That Nothin' (single version) & 'Glory' (early version). Elektra. 2003.
"Television's 1978 sophomore attempt has suffered from a double disadvantage in the eyes of critics, fans, and history. First, it has a production that does it something of a disservice - it somehow doesn't catch the grandeur, the magic of the songs. You miss the danger and the glory that these songs should, but don't quite, radiate. The other disadvantage is simpler: It's a follow up for one of the greatest albums in Rock history - 1977's Marquee Moon.Yet this is quite a shame, because Adventure is, in its own small way, something very close to masterpiece. Like its predecessor, Adventure relies on the masterful songwriting of Tom Verlaine, whose prowess in that department has often been overshadowed by his genius hands at the fret.Some of Verlaine's songs have been covered by Artists who brought out the pop-rock genius in them. But television always shies away from that; even at its catchiest, it maintains a cutting edge, a unique sound and music making ethic which make Verlaine's music a connoisseur's art.The connoisseur has much to love in this release, one of the best in Verlaine's career. Opening with 'Glory', one of Verlaine's most rewarding rock'n'roll moments, a song which could have fitted nicely in Marquee Moon (It is only the only track off 'Adventure' which Television presently perform on a regular basis). We get a sing-along, but one which is remote nonetheless. If you can appreciate it, you'll love it, but it'll take a poppier cover for the uninitiated to appreciate the beauty in it.As a lyricist, Verlaine is both profound and whimsical, his song often sound like the more poetic of Dylan's songs, but with a weirder sense of humor. See the lyrics of the epic closer 'Dream's Dream': The elevator called me up.
She said you better start making sense.
The stone was bleeding, whirling in the waltz.
I went to see her majesty. The court had no suspense.
She said, "Dream dreams the dreamer."
I said it's not my fault.The focus on Verlaine tends to turn you away from the genius of the rest of the band, but this is by no mean's a one man show. Although clearly led by Verlaine, the interplay between Verlaine and second guitarist Richard Lloyd is legendary. Although he's hardly the revolutionary guitarist that Verlaine is, Lloyd is a superb player and Television's sound rests to a great extent on his ability to complement Verlaine's playing. As one who has seen them live, I can testify that it is often Lloyd's leads and riffs over Verlaine's chords that turn a great band into magicmakers.The Rhythm section, although less noticeable then Verlaine and Lloyd, is also fantastic. It may seem to be merely staying out of the way, but rather it is a perfect, subtle combination, as you can notice in Bill Ficca's drumming on "Dream's Dream" and "Ain't that Nothin'". Fred Smith's bass lines don't draw much attention, but he's a great bassist, and works so well with Verlaine as to be the only member of Television to have followed Verlaine into his solo career.From great rockers like "Glory", "Foxhole" and "Ain't It Nothin'", through slower tunes like "Days", and into near ballads such as "Carried Away", Adventure reeks of class. Closer 'The Dream's Dream" is a great epic, slow but tuneful, with those guitars you just die for."
A different P.O.V. from these other reviewers . . .
Rich Latta | Albuquerque, NM - Land of Entitlement | 05/17/2005
(2 out of 5 stars)
". . . but an honest one. I got MARQUEE MOON back in the late 80s and went crazy over it. It's truly one of the greatest guitar albums ever and still trips me out to this day. I had heard ADVENTURE was good too, but when I finally picked it up I was sorely disillusioned. True, making an album after MARQUEE MOON must have been a daunting challenge, but ADVENTURE doesn't turn me on much. It really lacks the power and excitment and strangeness of their enduring masterpiece. ADVENTURE reaches none of the majestic heights found on MARQUEE MOON. I simply see no reason to ever listen to ADVENTURE when I can just put on MARQUEE MOON again.
If you're craving more Television and just about worn out your MM copy, I'd much sooner get THE BLOW-UP, especially for their sprawling live version of "Little Johnny Jewel." Incidently, the MM re-release with that original single added on is well worth getting. Their '92 comeback album is sadly unimpressive as well. Sorry die-hards, it's my honest opinion."
Another Adventure in the land of Television
Wayne Klein | My Little Blue Window, USA | 11/14/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Adventure has never gotten the respect of Marque Moon. Perhaps its because it builds on the model of the first album and the songwriting is a bit more refined and polished. The British press have reassessed Adventure and decided it was superior album to the debut. They're very different albums but then again, who am I to argue with the Brits?Verlaine's singing is more confident and less self-conscious and the playing show the band in synch. Lloyd and Verlaine's guitar interplay is every bit as inventive as the debut. Adventure is the result of a band playing together over a longer period of time and a songwriter finding the best voice for his band to express themselves.Adventure is fleshed out with the title track, Ain't That Nothing (both the single and the rehearsal) and an early version of Glory. All these tracks (with the exception of the single version of Ain't That Nothing)are interesting to contrast with the more complete final versions. It's like watching a great master paint. While you get an idea of what the final painting will look like, you don't get the complete picture until the paint has finally dried."
Take a chance
L. L. Rice | boston,ma | 08/26/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I had originally picked up Marquee Moon and couldn't stop listening to it. My thirst for more Television music brought me to Adventure which seems to be black or white to most fans.
Love it, or hate it. Not much middle ground here.
I was disappointed upon first listen because its not MM part II. The production is different. The guitars on MM are more in-your-face but on Adventure they are more refined, brought into the mix more. It took me a little while to digest. I kept spinning it and started to really get into it.
On Adventure the songs that really struck a cord with me were the softer entries "Days, Careful, Carried Away." The passion that pushes MM to such great heights is here in a song like "The Fire." The epic song is again presented in "The Dream's Dream." "Glory" is an infectious feel good pop song and "Ain't that Nothin'" is a hook laden gem with a really satisfying guitar riff coming out of the solo.
Another thing to consider when listening to this record is where MM had the benefit of having the songs fully fleshed out live before the album was recorded, Adventure was made up of mostly brand new, untested material. Some of which was written in the studio.
I would put Adventure on even footing with Marquee Moon. If you really loved MM and are interested in checking this out, give it more than a few spins in your CD player. Some of the best and most enduring music doesn't hit you the first time you hear it but grows on you over time."
Television's Dream Adventure
J P Ryan | Waltham, Massachusetts United States | 10/17/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
""Marquee Moon" is the 1977 classic debut that embodies the truism that an artist/band has a lifetime to produce the first work, and seven months to get going on the second. MM is visceral, part manifesto, part New York's best rock and roll band creating tension and release and poetic evocations of lyricist and Delaware native Tom Verlaine's adopted hometown (the dense music evokes those Mapplethorpe photos that adorn front cover and inner sleeve, yes, but also the shimmering NYCscape on the back of 1981's "Dreamtime", too - blacks and whites and greys, angles and shadows, dusted with silver, an impossibly bright toy night). "Adventure" - the title ALMOST feels ironic - perhaps intentionally aims for someting much different. This album is lyrically both more erotic, explicitly or implicitly preoccupied with relationships, and yet paradoxically less grounded - the imagery is often evocative of water, fire, air, gravity and the stuff of dreams ("Foxhole", one of only two guitar driven rockers, certainly stands out for its aggression, and its images of earth and flesh, war and sex). The lyrics are also full of frequently witty wordplay that's as earthy as much of the music is ethereal. And Allen Licht's notes notwithstanding, I can't see how anyone would find "Adventure" any more commercial than the debut. I'm happy the cover (it matters) is red (not early Stones/Patti Smith black and white) - even Richard Lloyd's jacket, zippered up (his gaze, which met the camara straight on in "Marquee's" Mapplethorpe portrait, is here averted, disappointingly - cast down), is of the same fire-engine red that frames the band photo. Funny, "Adventure" didn't "hit" me with the force of that astonishing debut back in the summer of 1978, and my response was hardly unique. Yet in this newly expanded edition, the second and final Television album (at least until fourteen years later, when the band's fine 1992 reunion album was issued by Capitol) is nearly as dazzling as the debut, notwithstanding various 'issues' that plagued the band during the period of its creation (and that contributed to its breakup)...Tom Verlaine obviously didn't want another New York Rock album to follow "Marquee Moon", however coiled and (in)tense - as he remarks in the liner notes, he was aiming for a less hurried pace, and says he envisioned various tracks and rhythms to sound "lumpy", as if the band were recording at some humid little studio down South in 110 degree weather, sweating and "sloppin'" through the material (I bet that's just what Green Day axed for when they cut their breakthrough, too!); and certainly the opening song, "Glory" captures this less urgent(indeed, "lumpy") feel nicely, until you fix on the hypnotic buzz just beneath the surface. Next up, "Days", with Lloyd's exquisite Byrdsian (5D) guitar and Verlaine's 'pastoral' lyrics, floats by like a dream. "Foxhole" explodes with energy: boldly sexy, funny, and somehow a gritty antiwar song bundled into one - the band rocks and the guitars sting and slash and caress, like "Elevation" one more once. "Careful" may suggest the Ramones' "I Don't Care" thematically, but the words are more nuanced, the music jauntier, more playful. Then the first of Verlaine's longer songs that indicate a greater interest in keyboards and creating textures and moods outside of the two guitar format, "Carried Away", a seductive beauty whose pianos and guitars chime and echo out of the speakers. "Carried Away", which closed the original album's first side, also features a brief watercolor organ solo. The meticulously crafted sound and relaxed rhythms evoke waves against rocks, and the lyrics' water imagery offer a suggestion that its narrator is letting go as "the old ropes grow slack." It's a lovely and slowly paced - yet compelling - piece you'll be carried away by. On the other side, "The Fire's" music is just as appropriate to its title, with "jacknkife" guitar slashing through a dramatic and unnerving narrative that achieves in a truly fresh and original manner what "Torn Curtain" from "Marquee Moon" couldn't, quite. "Ain't That Nothin'" is crunching Stones rock and roll with one of Lloyd's brilliantly planned and executed solos, and like many of "Adventure's" tracks it seems to fade too soon. The original album closed with a long, moody, exotic, dreamy track Verlaine had first titled "Cairo" (as imagined by one who'd never been there, certainly not in 1880), its slow buildup, single sung verse, keyboards, guitar effects, and watergongs closing the original proceedings with aural evocations of the unconcious, the ebb and flow of sleep and water and a Blakean/Paul Bowlesian lyric ("the dream dreams the dreamer...").... Slow fade to black, then - with this new expanded edition - we're back.
"Adventure", when first released, clocked in at under forty minutes, and just like the charged/electric/forward motion of MM, this mysterious and haunting work was over way too fast...An underrated followup to an epochal deput, it holds up better than some fans might have been expected a quarter century ago. Imperfect, sometimes eccentric, with the understated (even uninviting, at first listen) sound mix of a "Goats Head Soup", with hindsight it all seems quite deliberately paced, including the performances - yet these songs are of a piece (and the piece is "Adventure"). And the musicianship - Verlaine's guitars and keyboards creating a broader range of mood and effect, Lloyd's angry and incandescent axe mastery, Fred Smith's supportive, melodic, supple basslines and Billy Ficca's inventive and masterfully controlled drumming, are collectively, truly the work of a great band working together most of the time (you do sense even when Verlaine takes a left turn, we usually ends up somewhere strange and intoxicating as well). God I wish there were more Television records! Verlaine and Lloyd are together unstoppable, the pair creating a 'third mind' when working as one...Should you have "Adventure" already on vinyl, or the first edition CD, it's time to get it again, for now there's plenty more to entice and enlighten even if you 'know' the album intimately. First we get the title track that never was, "Adventure," a nearly six minute outtake that rocks like the Stones with John Lee Hooker when they performed "Boogie Chillen" together a few years ago; Lloyd emerging again as a brilliant rock 'n roller, and Verlaine pushing the band forward until the swing and raunch of the guitars is (at first, barely perceptably) displaced by a calming piano that takes over as lead instrument by song's end. Definitely a keeper, even if it didn't fit the mood of the original album. The single mix of "Ain't That Nothing" is next, and this mono mix is different, more dirty, dense and intense (maybe not better, but I love it) than the album take. An alternate "Glory" is somewhat longer than the officially released version, with more guitars (Lloyd's especially) and different lyrics - a nifty contrast to the album take. Finally, I only wish the dazzling, wild, pedal to the floor instrumental version of "Aint That Nothin'" that closes the set wasn't tape spliced (a la "Rice Pudding" or "I Want You (She's So Heave") after a mere ten minutes - a Stonesier, more linear "Johnny Jewel"? - well, maybe not, but another great, long Loyd/Verlaine/Television opus to add to the too slim catalog.
The package, which is a digipak that evokes and expands on the original LP cover, is gorgeous. Great photos too. Worth its weight in water, air, fire, gold, red, and black."
Track Listings (11) - Disc #1
