Television's Marquee Moon

Description

Two kids in their early twenties walk down the Bowery on a spring afternoon, just as the proprietor of a club hangs an awning with the new name for his venue. The place will be called CBGB & OMFUG which, he tells them, stands for "Country Bluegrass and Blues & Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers." That's exactly the sort of stuff they play, they lie, somehow managing to get a gig out of him. After the first show their band, Television, lands a regular string of Sundays. By the end of the year a scene has developed that includes Tom Verlaine's new love interest, a poet-turned rock chanteuse named Patti Smith. American punk rock is born. Bryan Waterman peels back the layers of this origin myth and, assembling a rich historical archive, situates Marquee Moon in a broader cultural history of SoHo and the East Village. As Waterman traces the downtown scene's influences, public image, and reputation via a range of print, film, and audio recordings we come to recognize the real historical surprises that the documentary evidence still has to yield and come to a new appreciation of this quintessential album of the New York City night.

Bryan Waterman teaches American literature and culture at New York University. His previous books include, with Cyrus R. K. Patell, The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New York City.

Penned by Bryan Waterman, the book focuses much of its attention on the four years leading up to the recording of the record in 1977...it offers amazing insight into one of rock's most unsung masterpieces. * Montreal Mirror * Waterman [has done] extensive research, culling from NYU's archive of Richard Hell's papers, rock journalist reviews from the era (Christgau, Bangs, Kent, et al.), and extensive interviews, making sure to maintain the composure of an academic thesis, and not a fan boy rag... what happens when you pull back all the layers of flashbacks and reminiscence is an extensive true story that is still interesting, and echoes long down the volleys of rock history. * Crawdaddy! * [Waterman's book] will delight both Television fans and nostalgists of seventies punk-era New York. * The East Village Local * The New York punk scene of the 1970s doesn't lack for documentation ... That Bryan Waterman still finds something new to say is impressive enough, but he expertly expands the context for Television's debut album and for the Bowery punk movement within New York's larger arts scene. At more than 200 pages, it's one of the longest titles in the series, but each page seems to contain some new idea or discovery. -- Stephen M. Deusner * Pitchfork *