THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS PRESENT "DOUBLE TROUBLE" - STRING THEORY WITH KALEIDOSCOPE AND TELEVISION. DOUBLE DOWN!!

DT: STRING THEORY / TELEVISION AND KALEIDOSCOPE

The guitar as we know it has had an illustrious evolution, starting its journey in ancient Mesopotamia, then finding its earliest recognizable incarnation 5 centuries ago in Spain, and continuing to move through various cultures until blossoming into its electric manifestation in the modern era. It was the magic wand to the baby boom generation - suddenly, everybody had to have one to express themselves, along with a garage band with whom to practice their 3 chord fantasies.

Then, there were the transcendental wizards who blazed trails of such sonic originality that the instrument’s sound never got boring. Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck, to name a couple. Most of them were firmly rooted in the blues form. Today we feature two bands (Television and Kaleidoscope) whose unique recorded output, though small, blew minds with their sublime, far-reaching soundscapes - reaching deeply into themselves, and searching widely for other cultural inspirations to make original music no 60s/70s rocker teens had even heard before.

KALEIDOSCOPE

David Lindley merged his folk cred with Solomon Feldhouse who brought a middle eastern sensibility to the mix, and they struck world-fusion-rock gold. Lindley started off as a banjo picker, but could play anything with strings, and Feldhouse, a Flamenco artist who had grown up in Turkey, was giggling as an accompanist for belly dancers. Theirs was an unlikely, but unimpeachable partnership.

In this cut from their 1967 debut album, Side Trips, the boys take us on a magical mystery tour through the sanctum of the Egyptian Gardens, where Oud riffs twirl madly through the perfumed air, and scantily clad dancers hypnotize us with their charms.

TELEVISION

Punk music was completely democratic. It was said that you didn’t have to have chops to play; all you needed was passion. Not so with Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd’s band Television. Their debut album, 1977’s Marquee Moon immediately splintered that myth. The two virtuoso guitarist’s method of meshing their sound together threw down the gauntlet to any aspiring duelists, and their achievement remains unparalleled, and unchallenged.

It was an intellectual approach heretofore unseen in CBGBs, and the other dives of the lower east side. There was a jazz-like, improvisational element at work, and in the record’s eponymous cut, Marquee Moon, you can hear Verlaine and Lloyd spur each other on to increasingly ecstatic heights.