Original Music #10 - Television
A look at an old track, all the way from 2017!
’Television’ started out as ‘Like Joy Division’ mainly because the lyrics were already forming in my head when I came up with the bass riff that makes up the foundation of the song. This is a classic example of when the whole song - lyrics and musical elements - comes together at around the same short period of time.
As you can see from the photo, this is how I map out songs on paper before, or as I’m writing and recording them. This map shows the basic arrangement before recording began. This is the only song I have written on the bass!
I can clearly remember the 3 seconds that changed my life (for a second time actually. The first time was not long before this one - more on that later.) while watching Countdown’s Molly Meldrum segment called ‘Humdrum’. He was talking about a new movie released that year (1979) called The Great Rock ‘n‘ Roll Swindle, featuring the members, the music, and the ultimate demise of one of the most legendary bands in rock history, The Sex Pistols. Three seconds of the band miming to God Save the Queen (possibly) had me completely hooked. Having spent the previous decade worshipping The Beatles, Roy Orbison, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Shadows and so on (all records left behind by my older brothers), I now realised that great pop/rock that grabbed you by the emotion-bone, that made you sit up and take notice, even double-take didn’t have to rely on lovely chord progressions, smooth modulations, crooning and such. It could be a roughly articulated outburst powered by frustration, anger, and disenfranchisement by people who are not so schooled in the subtleties of music composition. It was a revelation, a call to arms, or in my case, a call to the guitar.
Fast forward about a year after that, and Wagga’s young FM radio station - 2AAA - was experimenting with Led Zeppelin (tuning in halfway through Whole Lotta Love was mindblowing to say the least!) and other music that Wagga’s regular AM station - 2WG - would never be able to spin. It was here I heard bands of the post-punk flavour. Bands like Psychedelic Furs, Gang of Four, and Joy Division. It was the latter that sprang shoots in my fertile angst. Stephen Morris’ drum machine-like playing, especially his invention of the staggered backbeat on the ‘4’ of each second bar (listen to Transmission!) combined with the frantic squeezing of 16th notes hi-hats that, while physically demanding and aesthetically curious, created the impression of an industrial machine, furiously pumping out some mad product.
As soon as I put some chorus on that bass part once I got into the studio with this song, I knew I had to become Stephen Morris!
Until the singing starts, there is no guitar, just double tracked bass parts. When the guitar comes in, it’s an Eadd9 chord over the bass’s A, kind of how I imagined Andy Summers approached Walking On the Moon’s atmospheric, otherworldly chord colourations.
Listen to the timing in the bridge at 2:38. The bass settles on a small motif of A three times but with a count of 7/8 over the drums 4/4, resolving the timing at the end of every 4th bar. Then a little guitar figure appears playing a 5/8 pattern on two notes over this mashed 7/8 and 4/4 backing until it collapses into a kind of solo.
Anyway, I hadn’t found my voice yet at the time I recorded this, so the vocals are not the best, but I’m proud of this song.