The Velvet Underground and Nico
The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
Either the most overrated band of all time or the most influential on who you ask, the Velvet Underground are still relevant to any music lover today. Their debut is often considered their best, but I see it as second banana (ha, that�s an inside pun there) to their third effort, but they still get off to a strong start. The band is Lou Reed with sleazy lyrics and guitar, John Cale on an assortment of keys and the viola (!), Sterling Morrison on lead guitar, Maureen Tucker on monotonous (yet cool) drums, and finally for one album only NICO! Man, screw all the critics, I love her vocals. So sue me.
Probably the most beautiful song in the whole VU catalogue is their first song on the record, �Sunday Morning.� This mellow and lush song brings the listener into the mood of one watching the sun rise on a Sunday morning after a long night of partying and debauchery. �I�m Waiting for the Man� is a hard driving song with the music repeated over and over about scoring either drugs or women. This song was also covered by Bowie in concert. �Femme Fatale� is a harmless pop song and is the first song with Nico on vocals. Reed leads the band into the dark side of sex with �Venus in Furs.� Cale MAKES this song with his experimental viola work that turns it into a numbing drone. �Run Run Run� is just a basic R and B type standard, nothing too spectacular about it. The first side ends on my favorite song of the album �All Tomorrow�s Parties� where Nico laments about �What costume shall the poor girl wear to all tomorrow�s parties.� I love the sound of this song as Nico�s Teutonic voice cements the mood and the melody is top notch.
The most famous song on this album is Reed�s ode to heroin appropriately entitled �Heroin.� The song is basically built around a repeating phrase of music and changes tempo to mimic the physical and spiritual highs and lows of a heroin addict. While it is interesting and another example of the creepiness the VU could display, I don�t know if its worthy of its exalted status as it seems to have much more potential then is actually realized to my ears. �There She Goes Again� is from the same well as �Run Run Run� and deals with a cheating lover and is like its predecessor a competent tune. �I�ll Be Your Mirror� is Nico�s last sung song on this album and isn�t outstanding in any way; just a nice song. �The Black Angel�s Death Song� is a semi Dylan knock off with Reed�s monotone stream of consciousness lyrics set against eerie viola scraping on Cale�s part. Hints of the next album are seen in �European Son� whose promise is quickly ruined when it turns into a dissonant jam that is just painful to sit through.
Final Comment: As the saying goes (I�m too lazy to look it up so this is paraphrased): �All who heard The Velvet Underground and Nico went on to form their own bands.� Who am I to kill that sacred cow?
Score: ***
Ah, a band�s second album. The true measuring part of any artist. Will they suffer the dreaded sophomore slump? Or will the show artistic growth? Or will they just remain the same? Well The Velvet Underground�s second album White Light/White Heat is a little of all three and like all uber artistic mish mashes ends up unaccessible and practically unlistenable to these ears. So the VU head south in some ways, improve in others, and remain on their very experimental side they showed on their debut by kicking up the feedback to a category 5 type of storm.
The title track kicks things off and is a rocking ode to uppers and downers. It is one of their most famous songs and was covered live in concert by Bowie as early as his Ziggy Stardust period in the early 70s. It is easy to see why as it is pounding and catchy, ending in a dissonant pounding jam that would hint at the rest of the album. �The Gift� is just a short story that Reed wrote back in school set to a simple pure Sixties garage type jam. The story is morbid and funny the first few times through but gets old after awhile. Interestingly if you listen with headphones you can hear that the left channel is all story and the right channel is the music, so you can chose what you hear. �Lady Godiva�s Operation� is back to singing the lyrics and has interesting parts where Reed and Cale trade off piercing lyrical interjections into the song. �Here She Comes Now�is the most normal sounding song on the album and thus sticks out like a sore thumb with Reed repeating the same line over and over. This normalness I ruined by �I Heard Her Call My Name� which is almost pure feedback soloing and abrasively yelled lyrics. I just can�t get into this type of stuff. I�m sure if I was tripping on acid or something the guitar solo that ends the song would move me but uh no.
�Sister Ray.� What can I say about ol� Sister Ray. Quite possibly the most controversial song of all time, a love it or hate it affair that either drives men into ecstacy or drives them into the pavement as they jump from the top of high buildings to escape it. Basically Reed wrote a song about all types of street life and whatnot, the stuff that VU and solo Reed became infamous for. However the band decided the song was to be recorded in one take and that all the members would jam for a certain amount of time. While that sounds normal it was far from normal as possible. All the band members crank their instruments up as high as the volume will go and try to play over each other, and with the poor recording equipment of the 60s, feedback spills all over the place. It is even rumored that the recording engineer got up and left a few minutes in and told the band to do it themselves, and to get him when they were done. So what do I think? Answer is I don�t. I like some parts such as Cale�s organ solos and the reference to Carolina (woot). However, I can only take so much feedback (17 minutes + worth!) and references to �sucking on ding dongs� as if they were some spiritual metaphor. I�m sure some people may find meaning in this song as they hold their lighters aloft and bob their head self assured in their superiority, but I don�t and I�m not going to try to hard looking for it.
Final Comment: I�m not too impressed. I like the title track and certain other parts, but no one song really knocks me off my feet, and I�m not including �Sister Ray� in my score, it defies such limitations as scores. (But if I did I would up the score because of the sheer balls of this release, but I can�t justify giving this thing a score over stuff I would actually WANT to listen to).
Score: *
John Cale left the band after some �irreconcilable� differences between him and Lou Reed. This led to normal joe Doug Yule coming on to play bass and keys, sing some vocals, and drag the band into mediocrity. Well not yet anyways, the Velvets would come up with one more tasty album and arguably their best effort to date.
The key word for this album is �muffled.� The version I have is Lou Reed�s �Closet Mix� which is pretty close to explaining the overall sound of the album. Lou Reed strung out on heroin writing weepy songs about pain and uplifting ditties about salvation. This album is almost proto Emo (and could kick Emo�s fakey ass seven ways to Sunday). Well sort of. I doubt the true validity of a song such as �Jesus.� Now I don�t think I can judge wether or not Lou Reed found God at the end of a heroin needle, but it seems unlikely. This record does seem genuinely angsty though, and a manly angst at that. There are no high register castrated Generation X�ers singing of their woes here, only manly sounding men singing about typical problems. (Heck even drummer Maureen Tucker, a woman, who lays down some vocal tracks here sounds more manly than the dime a dozen MTV angsters out there today {Oh and I realize I just used a made up word about 3 times in this paragraph}[And no I don�t know how to properly use these bracket/parentheses things]).
Umm onto the actual album. �Candy Says� is a beautifully put together song in the vein of �Sunday Morning.� While the song may actually be written about a MAN that Reed knew, I think I am going to live in bliss and pretend that it�s a woman who is not �happy with her body.� Anyways, �What Goes On� is a nice mid tempo rocker that has a really cool organ thing going on in the background that gets louder and louder as the song goes on. Nice rhythm guitar work as well. �Some Kinda Love� is a soft countryish dirge with a repeating guitar lick and great vocals during the �like a dirty French novel� part. �Pale Blue Eyes� is good and full of emotion but goes on much longer than is needed.
A hypnotic plea to religion is found in �Jesus� with great harmony and dynamics. It is a personal favorite of mine. The logical follow up is next with �Beginning to See the Light.� which has a driving beat and catchy bridge sections to go with its joyful exuberance. �I�m Set Free� continues the theme of finding redemption with a pretty darn good and emotional guitar solo in the middle. �That�s the Story of My Life� is a short one stanza ditty with the same muted bluesy riffs that permeate the album. The experimental side of the VU is not yet gone though as seen in �The Murder Mystery� where Lou Reed and Doug Yule rapidly read different stories at the same time to rising guitar strumming and other musical flourishes, then Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison sing different lyrics at the same time to an organ line. It really is interesting and at the same time really creepy. Scares the crap out of me in a dark room. �After Hours� ends the album on a somber note as Tucker sings her only lead part in the VU catalogue, and while she isn�t the best vocalist ever, she does an adequate job of bringing the whole work to a close.
Final Comment: Beautiful: at times soft and pleading and at time rocking and bizarre. The best Velvet Underground album and one of my favorites.
Score: **** �
Finally the End. Mo Tucker is pregnant so she�s out on the recording of this album, and right before the thing is finished Lou Reed up and leaves as well. So that leaves Sterling Morrison as the only remaining original member and Doug Yule firmly in control. Loaded does nothing for me at all. It is pop done by a group that I am not interested in hearing straightforward pop from at all. Where�s the catchy weirdness that made them cool in the first place? And why does everyone hate Doug Yule with a passion?
If I had to choose I would say Side A would be where its at. �Who Loves the Sun� is a typical 60s pop song with nice harmonies and nonsense �ba-ba-ba-baaas� interjected in the appropriate places. The two songs that are the most famous are �Sweet Jane� and �Rock And Roll.� Well they are nice songs as well, but they don�t stick out and I really don�t remember much about them at all, which is the cardinal sin of music to me. Entertaining but harmless. �New Age� ends the side and while the lyrics are entertaining I can�t help but wonder how different the song would be if Lou Reed sang the vox instead of Doug Yule. The singing is so limp and uninspired it drags what could be a great song down into mediocrity.
Side B is dismal as it gets. Song after song is just basic boring and bland pop, sometimes country tinged pop at that. No wonder Reed left, he must have seen how banal the band was becoming. Taken out of context songs such as �Oh! Sweet Nuthin�� and �Lonesome Cowboy Bill� could be good songs with another band, but here they have no energy whatsoever. This all can�t be blamed on Doug Yule as many seem to do, the band was more than just one uninspired artist. All the creativity and sparkle that Lou Reed had on the first three albums is now gone and the songs just drag on for an eternity. Admittedly �Train Around the Bend� does have some interesting use of feedback and studio experimentation to make the instruments sound like an actual train approaching. By this point however, that should be child�s play for a group with the talent displayed on the earlier albums.
Final Comment: Dull as dishwasher. If I want pop and rock n roll I�ll go put the Rolling Stones on or something. Heck the Turtles are better than this, at least they are honest with what they are.
Score: * �
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