(50% of) Television

[jff]

Last night I went to see Richard Lloyd and Billy Ficca, guitarist and drummer from Television.

 

I saw Television on their early '90s reunion tour, but that was at the urging of an older friend and was before I knew their music.

 

Anyway, I had read in our local weekly that Lloyd was doing a show and that his band included Billy Ficca on drums (and a bassist who I never caught the name of). The article also stated that they'd be playing a lot of material by Lloyd's old friend Jimi Hendrix. I didn't know if that meant it'd be great or terrible. Turns out is was mostly great.

 

The band came out and Lloyd looked at the fairly small crowd (70-ish people, but probably only 50 paying customers) and commented that he saw Bob Marley and the Wailers open for Springsteen with a smaller audience, so none of us should feel bad. Then they opened with Television's "Friction". They did an admirable job of reducing the Television tunes to a one guitar lineup. Lloyd's vocals on the Television and Hendrix material was the weak link, but his singing on his solo material was strong.

 

I don't know Lloyd's solo work, but he played a lot of good upbeat rock tunes, which I assume were mostly from his solo records. The Hendrix tunes they played were "Spanish Castle Magic", "I Don't Live Today", "Purple Haze", "Castles Made of Sand", "Bold as Love", "Are You Experienced" and probably one more that I'm forgetting. They played "Friction" and "Elevation" from the Television catalog (I had to leave halfway through the encore, but I assume they played one or two more Television songs).

 

Two music dork factors that were pretty amazing to me were that Lloyd used no effects pedals. He plugged a Strat straight into an old Supro amp. With that simple setup he was able to get every sound you'd need to play material ranging from '60s psychedelia, '70s punk/new wave, blues rock, pop and almost jazz-like melodies. He had no backup equipment.

 

The other thing that fascinated me was the way that Billy Ficca interpreted the Hendrix material. Ficca has a pretty idiosyncratic drumming style, which I wasn't sure would work well on the Hendrix tunes, but somehow it worked amazingly well. I wish I could describe it better. That guy is a totally amazing drummer.

 

As a side note, Jeff Tweedy's wife bought him a private guitar lesson from Lloyd several years ago. Lloyd refuses to reveal what he taught him. He takes the words "private lesson" literally.

 

Also, Lloyd currently has a column in Guitar World magazine (which I haven't seen), and some video lessons which you can find on youtube (I have seen one or two of them, which I found pretty helpful).

[SarahC]

i would have loved to have seen that!!

[jff]

i would have loved to have seen that!!

 

Maybe you'll be able to. I don't know where they're playing next, but you're in Chattanooga and I'm in Atlanta, so maybe they'll play somewhere close to you before the end of the tour.