It was in September, 2002, and nearly 1,000 columns ago that I began to write about television for the Courant under the column name “TV Eye.”
Coming to TV criticism after being rock critic for a dozen years, I thought it’d be a cool reference to a classic track from the Stooges' 1970 album “Fun House” that wild frontman Iggy Pop later issued as title track to a live album he put out in 1978.
The enigmatic lyrics of the song spoke vaguely of a woman with “a TV Eye.” And the red cover of the live album was designed like a TV set. So I thought I was on pretty solid ground in tying it to a column about television.
Turns out I was wrong.
It wasn’t until after writing “TV Eye” for quite some time that I was leafing through Legs McNeil’s excellent oral history of punk music “Kill Me Now” that I actually found out the real origin of the song.
Kathy Asheton, younger sister of Stooges members Ron and Scott Asheton, recalls at one point how she came up with the term as shorthand for a term involving a more vulgar term for her anatomy: "Twat Vibe Eye."
“TV Eye” was my term. It was girl stuff. My girlfriends and I developed a code. It was a way for us to communicate with each other if we thought some guy was staring at us …
Like, ‘He’s got a TV Eye on you. And if we had it then we’d use “I have …”
Iggy overheard us and thought it was really funny. That’s when he wrote that song “TV Eye.”
Oops.
Too late to change now.
i'm from ypsi, ann arbor, and detroit, and i was around during that period. chics used to talk in code. it was common. i think the tv eye element is exact. i know ron, but i never spoke with him about this. so, maybe, no. but my gut sez its fact.
Posted by: johnny | March 19, 2008 at 03:24 PM
Great story. And thanks for the plug. Best, Legs
Posted by: Legs McNeil | January 09, 2006 at 09:28 PM