Notes

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1974-1975 Demos
Televison
December 1974 Fairland Studios, Hollywood CA
or Good Vibrations Studio, NYC
August 1975 Unknown studio, NYC


Fairland: Microphone Records (Italy) No. MPH CD 017 released 1994
Double Exposure: no label (Italy) No. DE-92-SC released 1992

Audio Source: tape demos

from: Silver CD


Notes: sound quality is quite good, clear and sharp, on the Double Exposure tracks. The quality on the Fairland tracks is definitely bad. The reasons for incluiding both are detailed on the next lines, as well the reason why the live tracks were excluded.

Fairland
Includes 1974 demos. The sound is flawed and there seems were speed problems during the transfer. In fact, the time of each track is different among both boots. Even Marquee Monn on Fairland is one minute longer than in Double Exposure !!!.

The original tracklisting is:

01 Prove It (long version)
02 Give me a Friction
03 Venus
04 Marquee Moon (long version)
05 Obsession
06 High Voltage Pleasure

Track 5 is in fact Double Exposure.
To make an easier contrast among both boots, I have changed Marquee Moon and Double Exposure order to leave them as they are on the Double Exposure boot.
Track 6 is a cover of the 13th Floor Elevators' Fire Engine, also called on other Television bootlegs as Blow Up, recorded at CBGB.

Finally, the title is Fairland, cause supposedly they were recorded at Fairland Studios, Hollywood CA. But as you could read in the following info, there seems the recording was on NYC.


Double Exposure
The 1974 Demos were produced by Brian Eno and Richard Williams for Island Records, at Good Vibrations Studios in NYC. I have marked them as being recording in December, 1974, as Richard Williams did not see the band for the first time until the end of November, 1974, and these demos have always been identified as 1974 demos. So, in all likelihood they were recorded in December, 1974.
The 1975 demos were recorded in a studio in August, but I have no further information".

The original tracklisting is:

01 Prove It
02 Friction
03 Venus De Milo
04 Double Exposure
05 Marquee Moon
06 Fire Engine
07 Blank Generation
08 Double Exposure
09 Hard On Love
10 Friction
11 Careful
12 Prove It
13 Fire Engine
14 Little Johnny Jewel
15 Breakin' In My Heart


Tracks 1 to 5 are from 1974
Tracks 9 to 14 are from 1975
Tracks 6 to 9 are live tracks recorded at CBGB.
Track 15, not listed in the artwork, is a live recording at the Piccadilly Inn, Cleveland July 25, 1975.

Have to say I have a doubt about Little Johnny Jewel, You could hear at the beginning the noises of vynil playing, and the sound is far superior that the rest of 1975. I have not found any information about this detail. In my opinion is a rip of a vinyl version of the song. Is not a demo, or at least, would be an acetate demo, but it would be quite rare. It has a proper mix and mastering, and you hear the same than in the single.



Line up for 1974 demos:

Tom Verlaine
Guitar/Vocals

Billy Ficca
Drums

Richard Lloyd
Guitar/Vocals

Richard Hell
Bass/Vocals


Line up for 1975 demos:

Tom Verlaine
Guitar/Vocals

Billy Ficca
Drums

Richard Lloyd
Guitar/Vocals

Fred Smith
Bass

Additional info on demos, quoted from this great site
http://www.thewonder.co.uk/index.htm
The quoted one is Tom Verlaine.

-Television got noticed in their CBGBs days. Firstly by Malcolm McLaren, who had been in New York looking after The Dolls, and was duly impressed by Hell and Verlaine's unintentionally impoverished charisma, returning to London to create the 'pauper chic' that the Pistols have since passed on as the uniform of the punk people. And secondly by Island's A&R man, Richard Williams.

"He had heard the band in New York on his way to California once, and he called up and said he wanted to do a demo. I said 'Great', and just before he came over, he said he wanted to bring over this guy Eno, who was apparently really good in the studio as far as technology and all that jazz goes. He probably is, but I think he had a certain sound in mind for us which probably just didn't work out. It's an interesting tape, but I don't let anybody hear it, because I don't like it."


-"the only thing I can tell you about it would be bad! I mean I like Eno, I like his records... The bad thing about it is there was a very uncool A&R guy who took the tapes back to London and played 'em for every fucking artist on Island Records, so-& like I tell that to people but they don't believe it, it happens a lot, especially with the English... I mean they ripped off a whole fucking artform from Americans. And their whole esthetic is like if they hear something that's good it just sorta comes in their ear and goes out their mouth y'know-and most of 'em have the means to like set something on vinyl really quickly, crank out the stuff, so yeah, so there's a lot of lines that are on our record (MM) that might strike some people as familiar even though the songs are like 4 years old...specifically, a lot of the lines turned up on Roxy Music's SIREN record-at least a dozen! Some I got so distressed about I said 'Well FUCK! -if he's gonna take THESE lines! I mean how can I prove it, I can't prove it, right? But you know...".


-Brian Eno, captivated by Verlaine’s “(Arms of) Venus de Milo”, was suddenly interested in Television. “We could’ve signed with Island Records at that point. We did a demo with Eno, but he’s not as good a producer as he is an artist himself. He gets a little carried away…” Verlaine was unhappy with Eno’s mix. “He recorded us very cold and brittle, no resonance. The guitars sounded so remote. We’re oriented toward really strong guitar music…sort of expressionistic.”


-The situation wasn't helped in the slightest by Island Records sending over Brian Eno and Richard Williams to invigilate over a premature session back in '75, the combination of the band's possible immaturity and Eno and Williams' understanding of what was needed to flesh out the songs recorded, resulting in the taping of four or five horrendously flat skeletal performances which gave absolutely no indication regarding the band's potential. Following that snafu, Verlaine became, how you say, more than a little high-handed and downright eccentric in his dealings with other record companies and potential middle-man adversaries to the point where even those who quite desperately wished to sign him threw up their arms in despair of ever achieving such an end.


-Television's initial suitor was Richard Williams of Island Records, who co-produced their first demos in New York with Brian Eno in early '75.
Whatever Island's corporate reaction was, Verlaine emerged from the experience convinced of two things: that he would have to supervise the band's recordings in the future, and that the band's bassist had to go.


- About Double Exposure boot: The first five songs here, demos produced by Eno and Richard Williams, are fascinating in the way the blueprints of what would be "Marquee Moon"'s magnificence are being drawn up. Eno might have seemed like a perfect choice of producer for Television but I'd guess it was his influence that has them sounding at times alarmingly like Talking Heads.
How relatively restrained it all sounds; not the songs themselves - it's obvious even from these first recordings that these guys are operating somewhere far left of mainstream. It's also apparent that nobody is quite sure how to record them - and maybe they weren't so sure themselves. Though by no means poorly recorded, the songs have a stark, skeletal feel to them, as if they needed to be bounced off a live audience to stretch and shape, breathe some space into them.

Tracks 9-14 are studio recordings from ''75 and sound as if they were recorded live in the studio. They start with "Hard On Love", a great, lost Television song. Why didn't Verlaine (or Lloyd) record this properly later on? (Verlaine's "Without A Word" on "Dreamtime", which uses the basic musical structure, doesn't count). It's almost a traditional 'pop' song which even on (or perhaps because of) this basic recording conveys a longing and vulnerability. It owes something to 60s music, a little to country music and, like all the best pop songs, a lot to common experience. It should have been covered by Johnny Cash. Or Willie Nelson. Or The Four Tops.

"Friction" and "Careful" show more confidence. Fred Smith's bass playing brings a more secure foundation to the bottom of the sound. As if Billy Ficca now had someone to play with - consequently his playing seems tighter and less cluttered, and the sound of the band is taking on the familiar angularity and edge.

There's a rather mellow version of "Prove It" with a great Verlaine half-spoken vocal and evidence of an increasing sense of dynamics. Verlaine and Lloyd seem to be finding their places within the sound of the band and there's a feeling of something special beginning to gel. "Little Johnny Jewel" is intricate and full of space. Great drumming from Ficca and the beat held solid by Smith. Verlaine's guitar is so low that it sounds like an acoustic. It doesn't go anywhere near the places that later live versions such as on "The Blow Up" would, but it points the way.