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From The Desk Of Times New Viking’s Elizabeth Murphy: TV Yellow

Times New Viking is an Ohio rock trio that delivers raw rock ‘n’ roll. Jumping from different labels over the years including Matador and Merge, the band has released five proper albums in a little more than five years. On its last album, Dance Equired (Merge), Times New Viking dropped the lo-fi fuzz in favor of more melodious songs. These art-school grads from Columbus, Ohio, are still making music, and the band’s Elizabeth Murphy will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with her.

Murphy: I didn’t know the name of my favorite color until I was given a guitar that was my favorite color. Then again, it didn’t officially become my favorite color until I received the guitar. At once I recognized and was able to put a name to the color I had long adored and collected samples of: my lamp, a silk shirt, the TV tray… an exercise in foreshadowing. Like cars and crayons, the color of a guitar is anointed a name, implying both specificity and reproducibility. Expressed numerically, the color has a formula, a certainty. But my favorite color also has a circumstantial history. It stands resolute yet exists incidentally. It was never even meant to be seen. Especially not now.

TV Yellow was first painted on the Gibson Les Paul in the mid-’50s because of the way it looked on television. As natural white appeared too bright for black and white screens, yellow (low in value) took the glaring edge off guitars, lab coats, paper, etc., while still registering as white to viewers at home. There have been many shades of TV Yellow, from translucent lime to matte butterscotch, but it is a rich opaque-banana seated just on the dark side of pure yellow that coats my guitar. The color could easily be considered ugly, which makes one wonder if my lamp, silk shirt and TV tray were only ever meant to be props.

As color television shifted toward the norm, white was white again and the production of Gibson TV Yellow guitars diminished; the color no longer functionally relevant. But it reappeared in the ’90s due to the growing interest in vintage gear and in turn (cringe) the vintage look. That said, the retrieval of TV Yellow is a classy homage considering the plundering taking place today.

Those road-worn and “relic-ed” guitars, factory-chafed and chipped paint jobs all sealed in a glossy lacquer—who is buying these? And what happens to their value when a genuine history and real investment is authenticated on the surface? I guess that depends on who makes the marks. Oh, I see, $5,350 for a trompe l’oeil of the wear on Jaco Pastorious’ old bass, on a bass. If only they could only supply the illusion that anyone ever gave a damn. Pete Townsend’s actual smashed guitar bits only sold for 1,000 pounds in ’95! I don’t even remember what it was like to be confused by fake vintage T-shirts anymore …

My guitar is a 1994 Epiphone Gibson Les Paul Special Double Cut TV Yellow. The custom paint chips are my own, and I plan to have them corrected.

Video after the jump.