Tom Verlaine is not an artist you ever would have thought would seek mainstream success, but the ’80s were a weird time, and even someone outsider as him wasn’t beyond seeing if there was some room on MTV for the likes of him. So 1987’s Flash Light – his fifth post-Television album – produced a partly animated, partly live action music video for the single “A Town Called Walker”; certainly one of the more pop-friendly tracks of his oeuvre, but hardly a song that was going to light up the charts… but maybe if the clip OPENED with that Rudolf Clausius quote rather than closing, it would have given “Livin’ On A Prayer” a run for its money. Ah, hindsight.

Still, I guess the album was successful enough – 99 on the UK charts? – to garner Verlaine a live appearance on UK television show The Tube to perform it; the song itself didn’t chart, though.