Recording: Fake Palms

Artist: Fake Palms

Song: Venus [Television cover]

Recorded at The Dance Cave (DEATH TO T.O. V), October 30, 2015.

Fake Palms - Venus

For its massive fifth year of Hallowe'en covers, DEATH TO T.O. upsized from its home at The Silver Dollar/Comfort Zone to Lee's Palace and the Dance Cave. That allowed it to keep its sprawling two-stage upstairs/downstairs dynamic even as it accommodated a bigger crowd than ever. Besides curating no fewer than seventeen (!) short sets, Dan Burke and Elliot Jones also kept things running on schedule, with one set starting quite crisply as the one on the other stage ended for nearly the whole night. And as always, the bands put in a lot of work — not just musically, but a lot of the time in trying to capture the look and mannerisms of the band they were covering.

The Fake Palms crew didn't go as far in trying to capture the image of the band they were playing — Television was a pretty anti-image band, anyways, but I somehow couldn't imagine Tom Verlaine taking the stage in a Kermit the Frog costume. And it took them three guitarists to match the work of Television's two — but beyond that, the band nailed the sound quite superbly, building up to a triumphant "Marquee Moon". I saw Television play back in aught-and-six and this was definitely more vital and memorable than that gig.