3/30/2023 0 Comments Television marquee moon![]() ![]() The pattern becomes clearer when you step backwards in the timeline: The Velvet Underground and Nico completely bombed with the listening audience and the New York Dolls failed miserably in their quest to conquer the heartland. However, when you consider that none of the CBGB artists wowed the masses with their maiden releases, a pattern begins to emerge (Patti Smith’s Horses did the best, sneaking into the Top 50 the rest languished at the bottom of the charts or missed out entirely). The old stand-bys and pop-friendly hitmakers owned the market. ![]() A look at the albums that made it to #1 on the Billboard charts in 1977 tells us that your average yank wasn’t particularly interested in shiny new music: Songs in the Key of Life, Hotel California, Wings Over America, A Star Is Born (soundtrack), Rumours, Barry Manilow Live, Simple Dreams. Americans are into “new and improved” when it comes to consumer goods, but tend to stick to the tried-and-true when considering music purchases. The sheer originality of Marquee Moon was likely part of the problem. Marquee Moon is a fascinating, innovative work by a talented and committed band, a record that defies genre classification and would eventually influence a generation of artists in the emerging alternative rock field. There are many reasons why the record failed to excite the average ‘merkin back in 1977 (we’ll get to those in the moment), but one possibility we can eliminate from the get-go is the quality of the music and the musicianship. I’ll take a wild guess that most of those copies were sold in a narrow geographical area centered around Manhattan. But while Marquee Moon made it to the UK Top 30, the album barely charted in the United States, selling less than eighty thousand copies. The initiators of the CBGB scene certainly made it in New York, receiving rave reviews from Christgau and other New York music critics. I’m pretty sure that the members of Television would agree with my take on this iconic song: the heap in question is a heap of bullshit. ![]()
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