Television's "Adventure" lp: your opinion

My 2 cent$: I think it's a very good album. Verlaine's songs aren't quite as amazing as the ones he wrote for Marquee Moon, but how could they be? The music is also nearly as good as the debut album. Only the sort-of tame production holds Adventure back from being a classic.

 

maybe i'm the wrong person (huge Television/Verlaine fan) but I'd say Adventure and Television are must haves...if you like Marquee Moon

 

Carried Away is the best song they ever did...

 

It took me a few listens, but it's a very good album. Marquee Moon is still their undisputed classic in my mind, but Adventure is no slouch.

 

Maybe you could answer this, because it's boggles my mind: Why was the song "Lindi-Lu" left off the CD release of Tom Verlaine's Cover? (I should never have gotten rid of my old Cover cassette.)

 

agree

 

It's only not as good as the first by the thinnest of margins.

I also think Tom's first two solo lp's are right up there as well

 

Adventure was the first Television album I heard and I thought it was great enough to check out Marquee Moon and Tom Verlaine's solo albums too. It only pales slightly in comparison to the first album. I could imagine it would be a bit disappointing if you heard Marquee Moon first, but Adventure is a fine work.

Steve

 

I agree with all of the above, it's a great album, almost as good as "Marquee Moon", and "Carried Away" is just gorgeous.
All three albums are amazing.
Re Verlaines' "Lindi Lu", it's on "The Millers' Tale", don't know why it would have been left off the "Cover" CD, though.

 

I would have preferred rawer production but the songs and the playing are top-notch. It's always seemed to have a case of second-album syndrome for me, in that the band had a record's worth of stuff that they'd honed for years to put on "Marquee Moon" and the second record may have been a notch less solid, but it's as good a rock record as anyone put out at the time.

 

Not enough Richard Lloyd on Adventure.

 

Ditto...Adventure was the first Television album I heard and it led me to Marquee Moon. I think it is great album and still find myself listening to it more often than Marquee Moon. Days is a great song.

 

I was in Warner Bros once and I saw a bunch of reel-to-reel tapes of demos for Adventure. The guy whose office it was made me a cassette of them; I don't think they've ever been bootlegged. Every bit as good as "Marquee Moon" (though a little rougher) and featuring the otherwise unheard title track and an instrumental, "The Drone Song." I'd kill to have a CD copy of these, but I still have the cassette.

 

Richard was in the hospital during much of Adventure.

 

You are aware the 2003 Rhino remastered CD of Adventure has the title song as a bonus track?

 

I wasn't. Thanks for the tip!

 

When Adventure came out it got mostly poor reviews, with people comparing it unfavorably to the first album. Personally, I thought the reviewers were out to lunch, and that Adventure was (and is) a very fine album.

Kwad

 

He has a great solo on "Ain't That Nothing".

 

I think it's a UK/Europe vs USA release difference...sort of like the US and UK versions of Stones' Aftermath. Sounds like a record company decision. (i'm likely not telling anything that you already thought of)

I have the lp and it has 'Lindi-Lu' on it. Awesome song! You can find it on cd here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0000075V6/ref=dp_olp_2/104-3814724-3973520?ie=UTF8&qid=1197149836&sr=1-3

 

The amazingly precise interlocking guitar interplay between Richard and Tom is largely absent on Adventure - it's good but pales in comparison to the first IMO. Interesting because many of the songs, which are great, on Adventure date back to before the first album - so it's the arrangements and production that's a little lacking.

 

I have the UK " Cover", and "Lindi Lu" isn't on it and yes, as I said earlier, it's on "The Millers' Tale".

 

I agree that "Days" is a great song.

And I must add that I can't think of another guitar break anywhere in rock quite like the one on "Foxhole" when it first comes in. That literally made my head snap around the first time I heard it.

As I've said more than once here, while I'm not one to worship great guitar playing on its own (that is, outside the context of a great song), I'm willing to make an exception for Tom Verlaine. There's simply no one else who's ever played quite the way he does.

 

I actually would rather listen to Adventure than Marquee Moon on most.... er, days.

 

I dig Adventure...

One thing "the critics" didn't understand is that Television could have made another album with a similar feel to Marquee Moon if they'd wanted. They had an extensive repertoire before they were signed to Elektra. Careful (a.k.a. I Don't Care) and Foxhole had been in their repertoire for a few years by that juncture and Breakin' in My Heart and Kingdom Come (almost a different song from the version that appeared on Tom's first solo album) were both set-closing show-stoppers in 1975. Add in Double Exposure, O Mi Amore and a couple others and you have MMII. But they didn't do that. They tried something different and got a lot of negative reaction for it.

If you want to hear Adventure as it was almost released, program the title song as track No. 5, closing Side One and then start Side Two with Carried Away. If you look at the layout of the lyrics on the original inner sleeve there's a big blank spot after Careful and Side Two has four tracks starting with Carried Away. The title track was dropped at the last minute because test pressings revealed the cursed "groove cramming."

I agree that Carried Away is an absolute gem; that song and The Dreams Dream were the centerpieces of the album... a very different animal than the debut.

I wouldn't wish away Marquee Moon for the world, but I sometimes wonder what might have happened if Television's recording career had started in the summer of 1975... they were ready.

 

I read here awhile back that Rhino was going to issue a Television boxset that included an early version of the Adventure LP that was completely scrapped. I bet that would be an interesting listen.