Marquee Moon (1977)

"See No Evil" Anyone familiar with England's Dreaming by Jon Savage understands the case for the punk-rock bands of mid-'70s New York City actually being the horse that pulls the cart of London's Sex Pistols/Clash punk-rock. Don't get the cart in front of the horse. The Ramones came out in 1976, the obvious black leather monolith for much of what followed in the hallowed year of 1977, and that was known as punk-rock from the first gleam. Not to mention the Dolls or Patti Smith. But the question no one has yet answered well remains: What's freakin' in common about the rest of them? You tell me: Blondie, the aforementioned Dolls and Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Talking Heads. Perhaps most mysterious of all, Television -- hippies who took on the guise of a '60s garage-rock band, even as they made a point of punting away any and all sign of the 1-2-3-4 attack, with or without three-minute pop sensibilities, favored by their many peers. This stuff is way, way closer to the Dead's "Dark Star" or Pharoah Sanders's Karma than "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue." (Another question that has occurred to me: Does the band's name derive from Tom Verlaine's initials?)

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