Can't stop thinking about Tom Verlaine.
He's likely my favorite electric guitar player -- slippery, elusive, enigmatic, playful, serpentine. Also deeply narrative and able to bring the full drama of the wood and the wires when it's called for.
I was introduced to him in a freshman dorm room by my pal Sweeney. Marquee Moon CD on a Sony boombox and I thought "what is this weird math?" Like an Escher drawn by Lou Reed. The songs had the strange architecture of dreams -- solid but somehow constantly morphing. It spoke of the furtive alleyways of downtown NYC, a place I'd never been before but would end spending a good chunk of my adult life. A coincidence? Nah, I think not.
A lot of us in indie guitar rock bands in the 90s lived in a landscape mapped originally by Verlaine, Richard Lloyd, Billy Ficca, and Fred Smith. Anyone who saw Punchdrunk back in the day heard our enormous debt. In some ways we strived to be a sort of midwestern Television (an oxymoron lost on us but perhaps not on our listeners hahaha!) The structure of the songs, the interplay of the guitars, the rigid/fluid rhythms -- all from those brilliant gentlemen.
I saw Television a handful of times after they reformed in the 90s. They were spectacular each time. At Solid Sound about 5 years back, an outdoor Festival where most bands play a taut 40 minutes of the greatest hits, these aging men wandered out on stage, tuned through their amps, and meandered into a set. They looked a little bit like Ludlow Street on a Sunday morning. I had been hyping them to my daughter and was "oh man jeez maybe not." But about 20 minutes in, they slipped into some sideways jam -- Johnny Jewel maybe -- and there it was, their particular mysterious magic.
The last time I saw them was in Kingston NY. Before the show, I went across the street to a Greek Restaurant to grab a bite and who should be in line behind me but Tom Verlaine, flying solo. Essentially my childhood hero, right there in the flesh. He looked a bit like a cross between a lit professor and a guy who had maybe stayed in the temp world too long. My heart raced and I wondered if I should talk to him. But then, I thought... he's in his pre-show mental state and what am I going to say to him -- I can't tell you how much your music means to me? You're my guitar hero? I love you? So, I said nothing and let him keep to his thoughts.
What I wished I had said to him, is what I'll say now -- a simple "thank you." Thanks for all the great music.
-Steve Koester