Television's second album "Adventure" would turn out to be it's last album for well over 10 years. An arduous project that began in September of 1977 and finally concluded -- after replacing Andy Johns with John Jansen in the engineer's role --with mixing in February of 1978, the sessions had not leaked very many outtakes over the years. Until now.
Sound throughout is solid and clean, and the tracks offer the typical mixed bag of studio outtakes: longer versions, missing lead guitars, alternate vocals, alternate mixes. In the case of The Dream's Dream, we have a SHORTER version (1:33). Possibly a proposed single edit - surface noise is slightly detectable.
The three versions of Glory each have their merits, the first offering an alternate opening verse, and the last sounding much more like a Marquee Moon version. In fact, these outtakes can consistently be rated as having that quality. Adventure tended to suffer from a slick production that muted much of the songs impact. Here most of the tracks are captured before the over-meddling began.
There's also the Television version of Grip Of Love that would later appear on Verlaine's first solo album, the unreleased title cut, and apparently new finds in Up All Night and the dramatic Last Night.
All together these tracks present a fuller story of the crossing over of the band's sound from 'Television' to 'Tom Verlaine solo' that became Adventure.
Packaging is adequate if not unremarkable, but Punk Vault is all about substance over style and should be commended for their quality series of releases relating to this under-recognized genre.
A must for Television fans - even if the New York art-punk founders' sophomore effort doesn't get too many plays in your rotation, as is the case with me.
jdstone |
