Vinyl Release

Although ostensibly a band album, Television’s 1977 debut owes much to the vision of frontman Tom Verlaine. Steve Sutherland tunes in as the 180g reissue drops

There’s a quote attributed to Brian Eno that says: ‘The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band’. Television’s Marquee Moon is a bit like that. Very few people bought it and although it was such a complex curate’s egg that I doubt many bands formed because of it, the album is famous for being one of the most written-about, talked-about and lauded albums of all time.

Pop quiz! Which artist musically links Happy Mondays, Nick Drake, Sham 69, The Stooges, Patti Smith, Brian Eno, Jonathan Richman, Nico and Squeeze? Answer: Lou Reed. Only joking! It’s his old Velvet Underground buddy John Cale, of course, otherwise why would we be mentioning it here?

Some say it’s a dominant 9th of F in the key of C. Others claim it’s a poly-triad ii7/V in A flat major. Still others insist it’s a G7 with added 9th and suspended 4th or a superimposition of Dm, F, and G.

Lana knows what I'm on about. In the song 'Brooklyn Baby' from her brilliant 2014 LP Ultraviolence, Ms Del Rey complains, 'They think I don't understand the freedom land of the '70s'. She was born, you see, in 1985 and Lana - known to her mum and dad as Elizabeth Grant - is deemed by those who should know better to be too young to appreciate the '70s aesthetic.

Following on from last month’s Vinyl Release about brilliant records that nobody else likes but you, I bet I’m not the only one who has an album that, although you’ve played it on and off down the years, even the decades, you can’t decide whether it’s any good or not. On one occasion it may sound great. Significant even, a landmark piece. Other times it just sounds... well, rubbish.

It’s October 1989 and we’re chatting with Kate Bush on the occasion of the release of her sixth LP, The Sensual World. This is an album that not only sounds utterly sumptuous but, looking back on it now, appears to predict the spiritual and social upheaval we’re entering today with the growth of artificial intelligence.

It may well have something to do with the wretched state of the world right now but have you noticed how the 1990s are back in vogue? Celebrated by those who lived through it as a halcyon decade on a par with the legendary 1960s, the '90s are being glowingly reassessed as a time of growth and hope when world politics had not gone totally crazy, we weren't all existing on the breadline, the arts were actually appreciated as something inspirational and worthwhile, and anything seemed within the range of possibility for just about everyone.