Television - Kingdom Come (1979)

Television released their second album in April 1978, through Elektra Records. Titled Adventure, it came on the heels of the classic Marquee Moon, a critically successful album that established them as one of the premier bands of the burgeoning Punk/New Wave movement. The band toured to promote it for most of 1977, recording their follow-up Adventure very hurriedly later that year. It consisted of a mix of newly written material and older songs which were part of the band's repertoire and were written even before Marquee Moon was released. It even showed some evolution in the band's sound, showing a softer, slower side of the band and giving more focus to ballads such as "Carried Away". Critical reception of the album was more muted than to Marquee Moon, but still positive. "Foxhole" was even a minor hit in the UK, but commercial success still eluded them. Later in 1978, they toured the album, debuted new song "The Grip of Love" during some concerts, and played theatres all over the US. By the end of the Adventure tour in 1978 however, creative differences between Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine had come to a breaking point, with infighting between the band members no longer sustainable. And that, allied to Lloyd's worsening drug use, led the band to fold after only two records, going on to have solo careers and become one of the biggest cult bands in rock history.

That leaves us with the question: What if Television had released one more album? Had they done so, I believe they would have followed the Adventure formula pretty closely, a mix of some newly written material and a couple of the band's live staples. At that point, the group had a considerable amount of songs written in 1975/76 that they were yet to release, and there's a good chance some of them would have ended up in this third album. To determine which ones would have, we will only include older songs that were still part of their live roster in 1978, which seems to me to be an indication of whether the band still considered those songs good enough for them by their final year together. That means other unreleased Television songs such as "Double Exposure", "Come on In", "Let Me Out", "Hard on Me" and "Judy" will be left out, as they were dropped a lot earlier than that. One song that very well could be included on this album as it meets all criteria but won't is "Adventure", retroactively added as the final song on the Adventure album for obvious reasons. We're also dealing with very long live takes of songs, which means we'll have to limit ourselves to as little as seven songs on the album, to keep the album under a reasonable length. With all of that out of the way, here's what our album looks like:

The Grip of Love (Live in New York 1978)

Poor Circulation (Live in Portland 1978)

Kingdom Come (Live in New York 1978)

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Fire Engine (Live in New York 1978)

O Mi Amore (Live in Portland 1978)

Last Night (Tom Verlaine)

Breakin' in My Heart (Live in Cleveland 1975)

Bonus tracks:

Piano Song (I Need a New Adventure)

Download link:
Television - Kingdom Come (1979)

Ficca, Lloyd, Verlaine, and Smith backstage, sometime in 1978.

When considering which songs to include, we have our first clue when we consider that Tom said in an interview during the Adventure tour that "Breakin' in My Heart" would be on his next album, be it solo or with Television. So, despite the song not having been played live for a couple of years by that point, it gets included here. Another song that wasn't performed live in '78 was "Last Night", demoed during the sessions for Adventure as the instrumental "Piano Song". We use the Tom Verlaine album version since it's the only one with vocals, and sounds like what a finished version of the song by Television would probably be like. All other songs were in the band's live rotation in 1978, with only "The Grip of Love" being newly written, and performed in an arrangement nearly identical to the one found on Tom's debut album. "Poor Circulation", "Fire Engine", "O Mi Amore" and "Kingdom Come" are all older songs that were still regularly found in the band's setlists during the Adventure tour, with the latter being a completely different song to the one of the same name found on the Tom Verlaine album. All songs, with the exception of the aforementioned "Last Night" and "Breakin' in My Heart" are culled from live versions from 1978, the best possible representation of what this album would sound like, and show a band at the peak of their powers, performance-wise, even if the sound quality isn't great.

The final part of a trilogy, Kingdom Come is a very welcome sequel to Marquee Moon and Adventure. It might not reach the same heights as Marquee Moon but it's a great album, of roughly the same quality as the Adventure album before it, and would most certainly further establish Television as easily one of the greatest bands to come out of the late 70s. Clocking in at 46 minutes, with two roughly equal sides, it would have probably been recorded in the studio sometime in late 1978 and released in early 1979. As for singles, either the poppy "O Mi Amore" or the newly written "The Grip of Love" would be the album's ideal single, both even having the capacity of becoming modest hits and maybe even bringing them the commercial success that so eluded them. I titled this reconstruction Kingdom Come after what I consider to be one of the highlights of the album, a 10+ minute jam that rivals "Marquee Moon" in both length and improvisational guitar awesomeness. For the cover, I made one that could look of a piece with the first two Television records, with the same framing and a third color to drive the point home that this is a trilogy and all three albums are connected. It's really heartbreaking that Television couldn't stick around for at least one more album, to help cement their reputation as one of the most talented and unique bands of all time, and let their own personal problems get in the way.

Sources:

- Tom Verlaine - Tom Verlaine

- Television - I Need a New Adventure [Bootleg]

- Doom and Gloom from the Tomb: Television - Kingdom Come