TELEVISION Marquee Moon

Like, what's worth keeping in music is the kinda thing like anybody, even from another time or say, another dimension, could get even pieces out of. Some of Dylan's stuff maybe, a lot of that horn player, Albert Ayler. That's got that, ya know?—Tom Verlaine

I'm writing this from my hometown—Cleveland, Ohio. The biggest "progressive" FM station, a station renowned as a big breaking point for new events in rock music, once played Television's Marquee Moon. They don't know what to do with it; something from their preconceptions keep whispering "New York... punk rock." But what's actually going on here cuts far above and through such labels. Sure, Television lives and plays in New York. Simple geography. Expand that to "urban" and you can include Portland, Memphis, Houston, Washington, L.A., New Orleans, Minneapolis...as for "punk rock", it's a term that we coined stillborn. To me it means nothing. If it's supposed to mean rock music played with deliberate lack of finesse and intelligence, then it means less than nothing when applied to Television.