\n\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tIn the summer of 2023, after his death, Verlaine\u2019s book collection went on sale \u2014 two Brooklyn garages packed to the rafters with books on art, physics, UFOs, theosophy, anything. The weekend-afternoon sales events became a phenomenon, drawing crowds to marvel at his wide-ranging tastes \u2014 not just hardcore music geeks or bibliophiles, but appreciators of New York cultural lore. He achieved a new posthumous glory as the ultimate urban-gourmet book fiend.<\/p>\n
\n\tSo the curiosity about his record collection has been raging away. \u201cThe thing that strikes you first is that it isn\u2019t a trophy cabinet,\u201d Ryan says. \u201cIt\u2019s a working listener\u2019s collection. The median record sits around $15, most of it lands between $10 and $50, and the range runs up to $1,000. So a fan can own a piece of Verlaine\u2019s shelf without being a wealthy collector. There are crown jewels in here, but the body of it is the kind of records a real digger lives with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe collection contains records that were crucial in forming his garage-punk sensibility, mixing up 1970s urban grime with 1960s psychedelia. It includes free jazz from the New York avant-garde scene, such as Albert Ayler\u2019s Bells<\/em>, Marion Brown\u2019s Why Not,<\/em> Archie Shepp\u2019s Magic of Ju-Ju,<\/em> and Larry Young\u2019s Lawrence of Newark.<\/em> There are Sixties rock bands like the Sonics and the Small Faces, and pioneering hippie renegades like Love or the Thirteenth Floor Elevators.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cFor him, Coltrane was huge,\u201d Moore says. \u201cJazz was really a music that he adored, and he also was really into that Nuggets<\/em> era of garage-psych stuff. When Television first started playing, they were doing covers of \u2018Fire Engine,\u2019 by Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and \u2018Psychotic Reaction,\u2019 by the Count Five, at a time when that really wasn\u2019t so much a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tThe rock treasures here range from the Andy Warhol Factory (Nico\u2019s 1967 Chelsea Girls<\/em>) to Midwestern quarries (Slint\u2019s 1991 Spiderland<\/em>). There\u2019s also Verlaine\u2019s own private stash of Television records, and Patti Smith\u2019s debut single, \u201cPiss Factory\u201d\/\u201cHey Joe.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tBut the collection reaches all over the world. Ryan describes it as \u201cPortuguese fado from Am\u00e1lia Rodrigues, Senegalese dance music from the Star Band de Dakar, Italian pop from Adriano Celentano, soul and New Orleans R&B running through the middle with the Neville Brothers and Ernie K-Doe. This was someone listening to the whole world, not just his own corner of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\tA handful of albums from Tom Verlaine\u2019s vast record collection. Photo by Jordan Keyser<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJordan Keyser*<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\tBorn Thomas Miller in 1952, Verlaine moved to New York in the late Sixties with his prep-school buddy Lester Meyers. They became poets, roommates, and naturally started a band, changing their names to \u201cTom Verlaine\u201d and \u201cRichard Hell,\u201d decadent aesthetes going for rock & roll kicks. \u201cThere was something so New York about it,\u201d Moore recalls. \u201cThere was something very urban about that, at a time when urban music was an anomaly. I mean, the New York Dolls and the Dictators was one thing, but there was another sensibility with Television, because actually it dealt with the poetic aesthetic of urbanity, as opposed to the glitz and glam and trashiness of the New York Dolls.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tTelevision didn\u2019t last long, making only two classic albums before splitting in 1978. But Verlaine remained a guiding light in New York music, on his own eccentric terms, inspiring experimental rads like Sonic Youth. \u201cIt was Tom who really initially got me interested in improvised jazz music,\u201d Moore says. \u201cBack in the Seventies, there was an interview I read with him where he name-checked Albert Ayler\u2019s live Village Vanguard record [Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village<\/em>], with a bit of a psychedelic swirl cover that Impulse! had done. It made me that much more intrigued for him to say that he was inspired by Albert Ayler. Of course, through the years, there would be other people signaling jazz and free jazz within the context of avant-garde music, rock & roll music, and whatever, whether it was James Chance or Mike Watt. I eventually became completely immersed in that world, or at least the history of it. And I certainly understood Tom\u2019s sensibility and his approach to guitar, with this idea of sound and color and improvisation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tMoore used to see Verlaine at CBGB with Television, but they met in the Eighties, when Sonic Youth were starting to make noise. \u201cI had always heard Tom was a little bit of a thorny character, but he was immediately welcoming. And we just hit it off and became fast friends,\u201d Moore says. \u201cHe had already name-checked Sonic Youth somewhere in an interview in the Eighties that really was completely gratifying for me. It was really early on, too, around Confusion Is Sex<\/em> or Bad Moon Rising.<\/em> He said, \u2018The only interesting music in New York right now is LL Cool J and Sonic Youth.\u2019 And I thought, \u2018Wow, dude, you\u2019re totally right in my alley!\u2019 I really took that to heart. But we knew that we were completely different guitar players. He was a rather high-traditional-technique guitar player who had his own idiosyncratic way of approaching it, whereas I was just completely untutored and making something else with it. And so he understood that, and we really shared a lot of music together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tFor punk rockers of Moore\u2019s generation, Verlaine\u2019s expansive tastes were a revelation \u2014 including the then-taboo influence of the Grateful Dead. \u201cI always recall going to see Television at CBGBs,\u201d Moore says, \u201dand there would be a commentary that he was extending this kind of Jerry Garcia thing into this punk ethos. It was a polarizing thing to say, because one of the dictums of punk was to smash the Grateful Dead \u2014 smashing disco and smashing the Grateful Dead. But, ironically, what happened was both disco and the Grateful Dead figured very significantly into the development of punk and post-punk. So that was the beauty of it. All these people denouncing these art forms, but they were the two art forms that really came into play \u2014 this kind of improvisatory Dead music, and the timeless funk of disco.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tVerlaine never had any interest in playing the rock-star game, but this Discogs\/Academy Records sale is a testament to how his sonic legacy keeps growing. \u201cTom Verlaine is such a key figure in New York, and the sonics of New York,\u201d Ryan says. \u201cSo it\u2019s exciting because of how much he means to the city.\u201d The in-store physical drop will be at Academy Records\u2019 Brooklyn location in Greenpoint, on 242 Banker St., including vinyl, CDs, and cassettes. \u201cCory [Feierman] and Mike [Davis] at Academy surfaced a collection that\u2019s a genuine map of one of New York\u2019s defining ears,\u201d Ryan says. \u201cWe\u2019re not racing these 4,000 records out the door in one go. We\u2019re letting it breathe, so the right records find the right people. Some go to collectors abroad, some go to people walking into Academy, but either way, we keep it moving. Because the worst thing that can happen for this kind of collection is to be sealed up in a vault for the rest of eternity. The best thing for these kinds of collections is to be distributed into the hands of the music lovers and fans who are going to treasure them for a lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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