"Venus" - Television Tribute by Amps Do Furnish A Room

ADFAR live @ Local 506, Chapel Hill NC 1/4/2008

The other groups that evening were Guitars In The Sky, covering The Records, here they do "Starry Eyes":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rfE3-5eX8U

and Heart of Glass (some members from Durham, NC) covering the music of Blondie, performing "Will Anything Happen":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZY4Qhaio3M

It was a NEW WAVE evening.

Amps Do Furnish A Room, a music collective from Chapel Hill and Durham, NC, selects an album each year for intense study. Our current obsession: "Marquee Moon", Television's seminal CBGB-era art-punk masterpiece.

UPCOMING ADFAR SHOWS:

Wednesday, Feb 6, 2008
Marvell Event Center
119 W. Main Street, Durham, NC 27701
with ambient / experimental rockers Read Underwater and Irata.

Amps Do Furnish A Room is (from left to right)

Pete Gamble, guitar
Ken Friedman, drums
Jeff Hart, guitar and vocals
Jamie McLendon, bass and vocals
Andy Fekete, guitar

More at:
http://www.myspace.com/ampsdofurnisha...
http://www.ampsdofurnisharoom.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Television
• Verlaine
• cover
• Venus
• Rock
• New
• Wave
• Punk

[woweezowees]

I only watched the first 30 seconds, and you botched the beautiful lead guitar part that kicks off the song. If you can't play Venus don't play it. I know how hard it is, but just by sound alone this sounds pretty bad. Nice try, it's a very hard song; probably the most compilcated on Marquee Moon.

[tonyvideo2000]

I think you're missing the point that they covered the entire album.

Honestly, I'm not sure if a by-rote performance of any rock classic is in the true spirit of the music.

Please let us know when you get it together to play this song with your band. Thank you for your input.

[jocksilver7]

...and it's so damn good to see that the legacy of Television has prevailed. God only knows how they deserved it, way more than certain other Bowery stablemates... but that's ok, it was so much time ago. I'll tell you that the original guitar player in Portugal's most popular rock band (Xutos&Pontapés) used to have a very Verlainesque guitar-sound. He left after the 1st album, so he never came to taste success ... which was built upon his early legacy. Curious.

[jocksilver7]

I really don't think the intro was botched - the fact is that it was Tom and Richard then, and here we have a hard-driving nearly south-jukin guitar trio. Sure, sure! The heart and spirit are definitely there ( the vocals are almost there), but hey! : Venus was not crafted by Lynyrd Skynyrd or Molly Hatchet, and maybe here's a reason to quote that too many hands ( well, fingers) (nearly) spoilt the broth. BUT I really Enjoyed this, for good old times sake. I can almost smell CocaCola in 77!

[windmills20]

difficulty is of perception.

it doesn't really matter whether you are a virtuoso or not just whether your heart is in it. and you can usually hear when that is or isn't the case.

i'm sure that after tom studied his music theory and spent years applying it he didn't think Venus was so hard to play anymore but did know it had to be honestly felt.

even though these guys don't have the technical ability that Television did, it does sound like they are being honest.

[sleepyerick]

i'm glad they covered it! yeah rock on! huh?!

[woweezowees]

I'll give you that. And I do give these guys props for choosing such an awesome, though extremely difficult, song from one of my favorite albums. I play guitar myself, albeit on a very amateur level, and Venus is definitely the most difficult song to put together. I'm sure if this band covered the song marquee moon or guiding light they'd be fine. But Venus, I See No Evil, Friction, Prove It, and Torn Curtain are some of the most difficult songs in the punk era.

[Tycho114]

You do understand the difference between live performance and a recording, don't you? These guys are doing quite a good job, and listening to it on your computer is very different from what it would have sounded like if you happened to be in the room.

BTW, have you ever heard The Blow Up?

[woweezowees]

I didn't say I could do a better, but that doesn't mean I don't have an ear for music. This version makes me cringe at it's key moments (opening guitar hook and solo that follows the lyric "Venus De Milo". So it may not be cool to try to match Television "note for note", but it's never a good thing when the audience makes that painfull face you make when a classic music moment is botched. The band pulls it together a little bit in the end, but I'll say the version is robotic at best.