If by top heavy you mean virtually every song on the album is a potential single, then yes, it most certainly is.

Ah, I was listening to it thinking it was their best piece of work to date. What do you think is their best?

Really? I felt "My Girls" and "Summertime Clothes" were catchy pop songs with a different dimension, but I couldn't find any other songs in the same vain.

Brothersport is similar. and i would say Strawberry Jam is their best.

While I'm still here, can someone explain this sacred cow to me:

http://backtomono.files.wordpress.co...television.jpg

I cannot understand for the life of me why this gets lumped in with other seminal punk albums, it's just a bunch of recycled riffs with little to nothing to support it. And aside from the title song there isn't a memorable track in the bunch, it's just about as disappointing as Tom Verlaine's countenance is in the album cover. I don't get it at all.

Yep.

I love that album - don't know why. There is a saying that goes something like "your reputation precedes you" (not you specifically but "you" meaning like anyone out there) for me that's true about Marquee Moon, because I read some reveiws about it, and read about the band in guitar magazines, long before I bought the CD. Richard Lloyd is very interesting person/gutiar player. Television is sometimes called Punk sometimes, Proto-Punk, the latter is a retronym given to bands that were influential to Punk. He didn't consider Television as proto Punk, he simply thought of Television "street" music. I can understand why Television is labelled as Art Punk, because when I listen to it I approach it the same way as "art music" it something where you listen to developement of different musical ideas, within the song. An other example of what I would find intellectually interesting as music is Duster/Stratosphere, it's space-rock and not something you would play at a dance part for your friends. But it is an album that is worth a listen. I mean I don't know why I mention duster/stratosphere, but I was thinking hey that is another example of an album that doesn't jump out and grabs you with it's catchy-ness of a Pop tune, but is intellectually provocative when you soley concentrate on the guitars.

I wouldn't totally give up on Richard Lloyd, I mean like at the time he joined forces with Robert Quine and both of them had made a formidable contribution to Mathew Sweet's album, Girlfriend.

I think "Marquee Moon" is a great if not necessarily classic album and as you say it does revolve around the guitars especially the interplay with Verlaine and Lloyd which at times is hypnotic especially on the title track, also the manic signing style of Verlaine. Also, a lot of other punk and new wave bands at the time weren`t very good musicians, whereas Television were very adept in that department. On a whole, I still see this as one of the most important if not necessarily the best new wave albums of the that era and like most American bands of the time it found initial success in the UK rather than in their native USA.

I think the big negative that goes against this album, is that they recorded just one more album after this before splitting, meaning that as a band they were never really able to build on the success of "Marquee Moon."

That's a fantastic album. Just pay lots of attention to the guitar lines and arrangements and you'll see the genius of the album. I think it's very unfair that they get lumped in with the punk scene at the time, they were very much parallel to it.

I can understand though why some people might be put off at first. I didn't really dig Tom Verlaine's voice at first but i soon grew to like it and started to hear the unhinged passion in his voice. It's an album that does take repeated listening to realise it's genius, it has no shortage of memorable tracks, some less immediate that others. Then there's the classic case of if you're never going to dig it, it's not the music for you, but this album deserves it's status as a classic

I'm quite partial to the lyrics on Marquee Moon, as well as the instrumentation. The vocals still bug me. I guess it's not completely the point, but I still feel it limits my enjoyment of the whole thing.