GUITARIST VERLAINE LETS THE MUSIC DO THE TALKING.

Byline: Fred Shuster Music Writer

Patti Smith likens his guitar playing to ``a thousand bluebirds screaming.'' We don't know what it means, either.

But there is something startling in the music of Tom Verlaine, whose mythic late-'70s band Television is among the most influential in indie rock.

In fact, Verlaine's stylish, subdued fretwork doesn't scream, and neither does his singing, elliptical lyrics or conversation. He's a man of few words, an intentionally elusive type who artfully nurtures the enigmatic image that's served him well for decades.

The mystery of Verlaine -- who long ago changed his family name of ``Miller'' to the surname of the tortured 19th century French poet and symbolist Paul Verlaine -- is so pervasive, its maintenance apparently requires little effort from the man himself. All he has to do is show up, and everybody else does the rest.

``I like to let the music do the talking,'' the pale, cadaverous Verlaine, 56, said the other night from a tour stop in glamorous Pittsburgh. ``I like working under pseudonyms.''

Verlaine -- appearing tonight at the Roxy in West Hollywood in his first solo date in more than a decade -- is important because of Television, the group he formed in the early '70s with childhood friend and bassist Richard Hell, guitarist Richard Lloyd and drummer Billy Ficca.

It was the first band to play New York's CBGB, the grubby epicenter of the punk scene, at the same time the Patti Smith Group, Talking Heads and the Ramones were surfacing. And since its 1977 release, Television's adventurous, enduringly fresh-sounding debut, ``Marquee Moon,'' with its swirling, dueling guitar lines, herky-jerky rhythms and heavenly choruses, is persistently listed among the greatest rock albums of all time.

``I don't know why (it was so influential),'' Verlaine murmurs, adding that to perform those early, ahead-of-the-curve songs today, he must ``detune the guitar just to make the notes. My voice has gotten deeper. Your voice changes as you get older.''

After Television's initial burst of creativity and subsequent world fame (the band attained superstar status in France), Verlaine recorded eight solo albums, including the newly released pair ``Songs and Other Things'' and the mellow, all-instrumental ``Around.'' Created as separate sonic entities, the two new albums are designed to appeal to different audiences.

``There's not a huge overlap of people,'' he says. ``There are people who like instrumental music and those who like songs. I don't know why.''

For years, Verlaine has toured as part of Smith's band, while playing the occasional European show with a reunited Television. The ensemble that comes to the Roxy tonight includes Television bassist Fred Smith, drummer Louis Appel, and longtime collaborator and guitarist Jimmy Ripp.

Verlaine just laughs when asked if a music scene as groundbreaking as the mid-'70s punk movement could possibly bubble up now from the downtown streets of New York in today's era of $1.5 million lofts and $3,000-a-month rentals on the formerly dilapidated Lower East Side where the Ramones, the Heartbreakers and Television once scuffled.

``Today, you have to share space with eight other bands,'' he says. ``It's become a foreign country.''

Fred Shuster, [phone]

[e-mail]

TOM VERLAINE

Where: Roxy, 9009 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood.

When: 9 tonight.

Tickets: $20. [phone]; theroxyonsunset.com.

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Tom Verlaine of the influential '70s band Television brings his famed fretwork to the Roxy tonight.