[The Soup Nazi]

And now, a priceless bit from:

 

I added the text within brackets for context. (By the way, I typed this whole shit, so you better read it, fuckers.)

As 1976 began, Television seemed ready to fulfill that promise [this refers to Danny Fields' January 1st, 1976 review of Television and Patti Smith's December 1975 shows in the SoHo Weekly News, where he wrote that "Simply, it was a wonderful weekend, and it bodes well for everyone involved"]. The sound that would make Marquee Moon was more or less in place. Once they began performing new compositions "See No Evil" and "Guiding Light" in late '75, all the songs were written that would eventually be on the album. Their live shows attracted larger crowds than ever: at CBGB's they broke house records two nights in a row in December before headlining the final show of CB's Christmas Rock Festival on New Year's Eve. Smith joined them on stage at CBGB's around 5 am to help them finish their second set. Fields, who named Television and the Ramones the "Cosmic Newcomers" in his year-in-review column, reported that Lou Reed had been won over as a fan, that the underground director John Waters had been to see them, and that Paul Simon had come to a show in November with Arista's Clive Davies. But still no contract, a situation that would wear thin with Television's relations to other CB's bands over the coming months, as Verlaine came to feel more and more distant from the scene he had helped start. Some of their peers —starting with the Ramones— had negotiated contracts of their own. He would feel even more separated from the musicians overseas who would form the UK punk scene, many of them fueled by legends of New York's Bowery enclave.

When the NME sent [Charles Shaar] Murray back to New York near year's end to find "The Sound of '75," he somehow missed Television's live shows. He did hear the single ["Little Johnny Jewel"], though, which couldn't live up to his memory of seeing the band live the previous spring, and so he only offered the band a mixed review in his feature, which was the most extensive the scene had received overseas. Noting the band's "willful inconsistency," he concedes: "And since they still haven't recorded anything impressive (viz the debacle of the Eno Tape, a tale of almost legendary status in CBGB annals), it seems unlikely that any of the major labels who've decided that they can get along without Television are likely to change their minds unless a particularly hip A&R man manages to catch Tom Verlaine and his henchmen on a flamingly good night."

That a reporter from the NME was talking about having heard the "legendary" Eno tapes seriously unsettled Verlaine. It's not quite clear when Verlaine first heard Roxy Music's new album Siren, but by the end of '76 he was telling reporters he believed Richard Williams or Brian Eno had distributed their demo tape so promiscuously that Ferry had ripped off at least a dozen lines. Roxy's song "Whirlwind," for instance, included the line "This case is closed," Verlaine's sign-off in "Prove It." But Verlaine's list of resemblances seems superficial. The lack of a contract seemed to be pushing him toward paranoia. As early as December '75, Danny Fields had noted Lou Reed's habit of taping CBGB's shows on a portable Sony cassette recorder, still a novelty. But when Reed packed his recorder into a Television show in the summer of '76, Verlaine bristled. Lisa Robinson took notes on the confrontation, which came on the cusp of Television's finally signing with Elektra:

"What's he doing with that tape recorder?" mumbled Tom Verlaine. "Do you think I should ask him to keep it in the back?" Ask him for the cassette, I suggested, or the batteries. "Hey, buddy," Verlaine said to Reed. "Watcha doin' with that machine?" Lou looked up, surprised. "The batteries are run-down," he said. "Oh yeah?" responded Verlaine. "Then you wouldn't mind if I take it and hold it in the back, will ya?" Lou handed a cassette over, then said, "You'd make a lousy detective, man. You didn't even notice the two extra cassettes in my pocket, heh-heh." Verlaine was not amused. "O.K. then, pal, let me have the machine. I'll keep it in the back for you." Reed handed over the machine, then said, "Can you believe him?" His eyes widened in surprise.

Verlaine's paranoia may have been warranted: when Reed played the Palladium at the end of '76 in support of his Rock and Roll Heart LP, he played in front of a bank of television sets, as if to stage a pissing contest with the new underground.