| The Blow-Up | |
| Type: | live |
| Artist: | Television |
| Cover: | The Blow-Up.jpg |
| Released: | 1982 |
| Recorded: | 1978 |
| Venue: | CBGB |
| Label: | ROIR[1] |
| Prev Title: | Adventure |
| Prev Year: | 1978 |
| Next Title: | Television |
| Next Year: | 1992 |
The Blow-Up is a live album by the American band Television, released as The Blow Up on cassette in 1982.[2] [3] It was reissued in 1990 and again in 1999.[4] [5] The songs first appeared on a bootleg titled Arrow.[6]
Recorded at CBGB in 1978, the album was released four years after the band broke up.[7] It contains covers of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Satisfaction".[8] ROIR allegedly acquired the recording from the fan who had bootlegged the band's shows; The Blow-Ups sound quality is typical of a bootlegged recording.[9] [10] "Little Johnny Jewel" had previously only been issued as a single.
Robert Christgau, who cowrote the liner notes, stated that, "as with so many ROIR cassettes (and commercial tapes in general), audio makes the difference between a laudable document and living history," and called the version of "Little Johnny Jewel" "definitive." The New York Times praised the "lyrical, incendiary" renditions.[11]
AllMusic wrote that the album "comes awfully close to being an essential document, simply because the band's studio albums didn't always capture the rawness and spontaneity that fueled their on-stage improvisations." In 1990, The Philadelphia Inquirer determined that The Blow-Up "captures the heady intensity of the best guitar band to come out of New York's late-'70s punk/new-wave scene."[12] The Vancouver Sun admired the "breathtaking dual guitar interplay."[13] Spin listed the 1999 reissue as one of the five best of the year, deeming "Little Johnny Jewel" "the height of love between man and E-string."[14]