The obvious template for my cover of this probably by-now-iconic piece of soundtrackery is Verlaine's Warm & Cool album, which was roughly contemporaneous with Twin Peaks anyway and definitely explored the same noir territory, but with the bonus of stingray guitar sounds that share a similar lineage anyhow, and which Verlaine had been exploring as his "roots" as far back as the instrumental "The Blue Robe" on his second solo LP Dream Time. And if you don't care about any of this shit, go ahead and get yourself a copy of Dream Time anyway, because it's one of the best rock and roll albums ever recorded and consistently overshadowed by the records Verlaine made with Television. If you do care about some of this shit, and you like what I did to this piece, but still don't know anything about this Verlaine guy, I still guarantee you'll like Warm & Cool.
But me, I really like Tom Verlaine. He's who I had instead of Jim Morrison, to what I still maintain to have been my advantage.
Personnel: Rex
Hell yes: It's absolutely appalling, and nearly inexplicable, that Verlaine's solo career has been so under-the-radar - particularly the first few records. I mean, yeah, the last two, and W&C, and maybe the one before that got a little ambiently weird and all...but the first few followed on in a fairly clear line from his work w/Television...and yet, they seem to have been utterly ignored. Are they even in print? (They're in my library, so I haven't paid attention.)
ReplyDeleteThe solo Verlaine records have had a few small-run and often botched CD reissues, most recently on the botchmaster (but often indispensible) Collector's Choice label. The one that's never been re-released, "Cover", was so totally screwed up in its original CD issue that arguably it's never been issued at all digitally... I had to make my own version from vinyl just to feel like I possess it at all.
ReplyDeleteThe last vocal record ("Songs & Other Things") is better than you might remember and if three or four songs were dropped and the rest resequenced, it might be classic. For one thing, it corrects the sometime-accurate knock at solo TV that the recordings can sometimes sound a bit sterile... the thing sounds live, and real, and present in a way that only the first two solo LPs approach.