Recap Richard Lloyd at The Frequency

Local opening band The Motor Primitives received some new fans on Thursday night at The Frequency. During the group's cover of Nick Cave’s Grinderman jam “(I Don't Need You To) Set Me Free,” the lone soul boogieing right up against the stage was none other than headliner Richard Lloyd, a phenomenal guitarist famed for his work with Television and Matthew Sweet. Wagging his tongue at Primitives singer-guitarist Pam Barrett in some kind of elaborate spirit-dance, Lloyd left everyone guessing as to what it might mean for his own set. Was he getting fired up to rock some Television classics, or would he pull a Greg Ginn?

In the interim, the audience was treated to a winning set of The Midwest Beat’s hyperactive garage pop. It speaks to the Beat’s insistent optimism that a cover of The Beach Boys’ Wild Honey-era track “How She Boogalooed It” fit right in with the its bouncy originals. After several barnburners, the band announced its intention to “slow it down,” and promptly launched into a song that was dancey and uptempo by any standard.

Expectations for the legendary headliner were quickly handicapped when veteran Rolling Stone critic Charles M. Young got up onstage to introduce Lloyd as having “the worst case of laryngitis to ever come out of CBGB.” But before Lloyd’s proper set began, Young, a Madison native, led the band through a caterwauling approximation of the Memorial High fight song, earning roars of approval from the cross-generational crowd. Unfortunately, that offhanded prank proved to be the highlight of the night.

Young wasn’t kidding about that laryngitis: Lloyd’s voice was shot to the point of absurdity, sounding closer to a Tom Waits impression. But that didn’t stop him from indulging in lots of nearly unintelligible stage banter, including weird digs at Bono and the ominous warning that the band would be performing a whopping 32-song set. Considering just about everyone was here in honor of the 16 tracks that make up Television’s seminal records Marquee Moon and Adventure, Lloyd’s declaration made for some ominous arithmetic.

Frequently pausing mid-song to tune his guitar, Lloyd spun a combination of bleary riffs, Cookie Monster vocals, and constant mugging that might have passed for disjointed, U.S. Maple-style rock if his rhythm section (which included Television alum Billy Ficca on drums) weren’t rocksteady by comparison. Early highlights included sloppy takes on Television's “Friction” and the title track from Lloyd’s fine solo debut, Alchemy, but Lloyd was not content to merely murder his own classics. Once he began trotting out careless renditions of bar-band standards like “Purple Haze” and “I’m Waiting For The Man,” any hopes for a victory lap from this post-punk pioneer had been thoroughly extinguished.

For what it's worth, Lloyd appeared to be thoroughly enjoying himself (which certainly rubbed off on the crowd), grinning throughout the show and delivering a much longer set than expected, laryngitis or not. Occasionally, glimpses of Lloyd's brilliance peeked through the murk; he certainly hasn't lost his ability to wrench some wholly mystifying sounds out of his instrument in the 30 years since Television first disbanded.

By the time the band limped through the closing “See No Evil,” with Lloyd absentmindedly swatting at his guitar neck, it felt more like a slap in the face than a reward. As the song slowly disintegrated, Young leapt onstage, showed Lloyd his watch, grabbed the mike, and exhorted the extraordinarily patient audience to “buy some shit.” For a crowd that had come to pay their respects to a genuine guitar hero, they didn’t get a lot of respect in return.