From Billy Inman: When I was a teenager discovering punk rock, I learned about Television’s “Marquee Moon” and the band’s history before I ever heard the record. I knew they were seminal to the ’70s New York punk scene and one of the first bands to play CBGBs. In my muddled adolescent mind, I imagined their sound was like the “three chords and the truth” minimalist punk of their contemporaries, The Ramones.

Then I listened to “Marquee Moon,” and it turned everything I thought “punk” was on its ear. Turns out, you can be punk and be supremely talented musicians (guitarist Richard Lloyd palled around with Velvert Turner, a student of Jimi Hendrix. Or so goes the legend). You can be punk and have an almost 10-minute title track (so not punk that it is punk). And you can be punk and record a timeless opus that is as sonically relevant, authentic and influential today as it was in 1977.

“Marquee Moon” is an absolute classic — lightning struck itself. It transcends punk or any other label or idiom. More than any other recording, it set a teenage me on down a path of musical discovery that has never stopped. I’m sure I’m not alone in that regard.