I’d throw “The Bells” (song) up there as well for VU fans
― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Sunday, 24 October 2021 04:18 (two years ago) link
Thanks for the clarification. “Street Hassle (The Song)” is so great because it is kind of like the plot of a Warhol movie without dropping Andy’s name, the hard shiny, shiny surface of the storyline colliding with Terms of Endearment-level sentimentality, all tied together with those embodied cellos borrowed from the pre-Petra Haden sung cello lines of that earlier tale of Redemption Through Bad Romance performed by those crisscross trend line favorites on JoJo’s graph, The Who’s “A Quick One, While He’s Away.”
― Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 04:25 (two years ago) link
Some good stuff on this thread: In Praise Of...Lou Reed "Take No Prisoners"Including links to one guy’s excellent blog such as this one: https://damienlove.com/writing/babe-im-on-fire-the-making-of-lou-reeds-street-hassle
― Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 04:29 (two years ago) link
"Street Hassle (The Song Suite)"
― Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 04:32 (two years ago) link
Forgot about it being used in The Squid and the Whale, closing credits was it.
― Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 04:40 (two years ago) link
Just went further down the Balloon Farm rabbit hole. Will spare you for now.
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 05:24 (two years ago) link
Or you could just read this yourself: https://www.mikeappel.com/Balloon%20Farm%20story.pdf
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 05:27 (two years ago) link
I can't even interest the Velvet Underground thread in the Sunday Morning / MITM link :(
― assert (matttkkkk), Sunday, 24 October 2021 06:20 (two years ago) link
I hear the similarity! No intel to offer, sorry
― juristic person (morrisp), Sunday, 24 October 2021 06:55 (two years ago) link
oh good, I just needed a sanity check!
― assert (matttkkkk), Sunday, 24 October 2021 07:24 (two years ago) link
MITM?
― Mark G, Sunday, 24 October 2021 07:49 (two years ago) link
"Mary in the Morning" upthread
― assert (matttkkkk), Sunday, 24 October 2021 08:35 (two years ago) link
Ta. Will check it out
― Mark G, Sunday, 24 October 2021 09:16 (two years ago) link
I found the Elvis version, the intro there has a similar chord setup. I don't hear any similarity in Glenn Campbell's.
― Mark G, Sunday, 24 October 2021 09:34 (two years ago) link
Heard American Poet (the live album recorded in 1972 with the Tots on the Transformer tour) for the first time yesterday . -*It's really pretty good!
― drought map replica (brownie), Sunday, 24 October 2021 13:42 (two years ago) link
that's the WLIR Ultrasonic concert, right? with the interview segment? "where's doug yule now?" "uh, dead i hope." i think i listened to that in real time.
― Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 24 October 2021 14:03 (two years ago) link
^pvmic
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 14:05 (two years ago) link
He fired the Tots halfway through the 1973 tour for some reason.
Supposedly because the bass player (I think) was getting too much attention from the crowd - more than Lou that is.
― Starmer: "Let the children boogie, let all the children boogie." (Tom D.), Sunday, 24 October 2021 14:09 (two years ago) link
We all know what happened to his original bass player.
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 14:21 (two years ago) link
Also Fernando Saunders, prob his best solo band bassist, said that after several concert reviewers praised his "New Age" solo, Lou took it away.Speaking again of "New Age," I'm not trying to argue, but this is the way Loaded hit me a few years after its release (I quoted from this RIP piece, "Lou, Velvet" [doesn't deal w solo career atall] a little bit upthread):
hen I discovered Creem, where any discussion might lead to the Velvet Underground, and I found myself buying or trading for Loaded. When Reed mentioned, as Jack and "Sweet Jane" 's mood (and, hopefully, make-out) music, " 'The March of The Wooden Soldiers'----your protest guests?"----that genial last was an aside, a stage throw-away (not quite hiding his sociable interest), between the beats, right before going back to the sweet street kitty stalk 'n' pounce----the '70s were settling into wartime, despite all the amputations and the protestations----so Pop Art was a reality after all, (here in another counterworld, more fun than Self-Portrait)(though sometimes just as in-your-face: "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" an animated line drawing, straight from the pen, " I Found A Reason" a better-than-Zappa zing ov doo-wop and other romanticism, "New Age" starting like a Tennessee Williams x Warhol soap opera, gradually morphing into an inspirational Rock Anthem, although almost uniquely stately with it: prime example of how VU turning seemingly familiar components to new-sounding results, like Big Star and a few others did in compelling ways, among the popologists of that era)(Reed maybe sometimes writing for Doug Yule's castaway Beach Boy-for-a-day pipes as he maybe sometimes had w Nico profundo in mynd) and I was hooked. And didn't Woody Guthrie say something to the effect that a songwriter should be able to get up in the morning, open a newspaper, point his guitar at some story, and write a song about it? If that paper was the Times, the Daily Worker, Women's Wear Daily or The Enquirer, so be it.
I'd recently decided that I was too moody to become a psychiatric social worker, and thus was ready to seize on the charged smog of Loaded's elliptical momentum----somebody had suggested I should become a city planner, whatever that was, so I'd switched my major to Urban Studies, while also stimulated by the model complex on the cover of Cannibals and Christians (Mailer, who had majored in Engineering at Harvard and once planned to be an architect, co-designed this beautiful mega-D lattice, with pieces of Lego or whatever it was---he could do that and write!). Loaded, in combo with my old portable stereo, set up a grid of flats and volumes, squares and other shapes, in all shades, though brightness remained filtered by the haze. So? Just turn the treble all the way up, and let it all hang out.
There was also an association with the board game played by miners in the frozen bowels of Mars, and in Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. It was like sort of like Monopoly,especially if Monopoly included a drug called Cand-D, and a Barbie-type doll called Perky Pat, whom you could go riding with in a sports car, under the trees and over the squares. Loaded's layout experienced its own kind of Urban Renewal program, its own aforementioned "New Age", its own "Sweet Nuthin' " too, with no contradiction. Its characters were real enough, and surrounded, though never crowded, by Lou's crew and their regard, eye to eye or sidewise----oh, sweet group therapy; sweet, long gone Psychiatric Social Work syllabi----and what about distinctively rocking social workers Kevin Coyne, Ian Curtis, Paul Morrissey, Richard Riegel, Sonny Sharrock? Maybe I was wrong?! Nah."And as I walk down life's highway/Hand in hand with myself/I realize/How many paths/Have come between."
― dow, Sunday, 24 October 2021 17:55 (two years ago) link
"Maybe I was Wrong?!" to change my major, I meant.
― dow, Sunday, 24 October 2021 18:05 (two years ago) link
Good post, dow
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 18:23 (two years ago) link
“––your protest guests?"Oh, is that the line? I’ve never understood what he’s saying there!
― juristic person (morrisp), Sunday, 24 October 2021 18:24 (two years ago) link
I always thought it was "All you protest kids". Sorry for not paying enough attention, Lou.
― Starmer: "Let the children boogie, let all the children boogie." (Tom D.), Sunday, 24 October 2021 18:27 (two years ago) link
Same
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 18:32 (two years ago) link
I think the first version of the song I knew was the live version from Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal (on a Lou best-of tape), where he drops that little aside.
― juristic person (morrisp), Sunday, 24 October 2021 18:35 (two years ago) link
Seems like the intranetz agrees with the kids.
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 18:35 (two years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afam2nIae4o
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 October 2021 18:37 (two years ago) link
Wiki's The Velvet Underground and Nico chronicle is fun x v. comprehensive, with lots of footnotes, although editor says needs more----I shoulda read it sooner:45th Anniversary Super Deluxe editionOn October 1, 2012, Universal released a 6-CD box set of the album.[74] It features the previously available mono and stereo mixes as discs one and two respectively. Disc one contains as bonus tracks additional alternate versions of "All Tomorrow's Parties", "European Son", "Heroin", "All Tomorrow's Parties" (alternate instrumental version), and "I'll Be Your Mirror". Disc two contains the same bonus tracks as the prior deluxe version's second disc. Disc three is Nico's Chelsea Girl in its entirety and the Scepter Studios acetate (see below) in its entirety occupies disc 4. Discs 5 and 6 contain a previously unreleased live performance from 1966. According to the essay by music critic and historian Richie Unterberger contained within the set, the source for the show is the only audio tape of acceptable quality recording during singer Nico's tenure in the band. The essay also clarifies that the absence of any DVD materials in the box set is due to the fact that none of the band's shows were filmed, in spite of their heavy reliance on multimedia visuals.[75]
― dow, Sunday, 24 October 2021 19:46 (two years ago) link
There is this rehearsal film (was any of the footage used in the Haynes doc)?
― juristic person (morrisp), Sunday, 24 October 2021 19:49 (two years ago) link
I've also read that Todd Haynes couldn't find any film footage w sound, so matched it, to a degree, w excerpts of concert tapes.
― dow, Sunday, 24 October 2021 19:52 (two years ago) link
(WSJ reviewer said that, referencing press materials I assume.)
― dow, Sunday, 24 October 2021 19:53 (two years ago) link
VU is one of those bands that had been box-setted and expanded-editioned to death; though I guess it’s unavoidable when you’re legendary and have just a few albums.
― juristic person (morrisp), Sunday, 24 October 2021 19:54 (two years ago) link
All the EPI footage I've seen is silent, Super-8 looking stuff, that as Dow points out is synched-up with period live tracks or studio cuts. There's a nice clip of a speedy Edie Sedgwick twirling in front of Lou that's been in a bunch of docs.
― Precious, Grace, Hill & Beard LTD. (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, 24 October 2021 19:58 (two years ago) link
oh yeah, I've seen what you linked, morrisp: The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound[: filmed at the Factory, so maybe Warhol's People wouldn't be reasonable about rights? Although I saw it on the 'Tube several years ago---Web Sheriff may have nabbed it---real good, anyway. Nico's lttle son is well-behaved, while Mom just holds a tambourine and looks around (it's instrumental jamtyme).
― dow, Sunday, 24 October 2021 19:59 (two years ago) link
The clip of the Velvets / Doug doing “Candy Says” was so well reconstructed, you could believe it was part of a full performance.
― Mark G, Sunday, 24 October 2021 22:45 (two years ago) link
those pics of Nico's kid at the Factory have always haunted me.
― the plant based god (bendy), Monday, 25 October 2021 16:31 (two years ago) link
The whole thing about the kid or “Le Kid” as James Young refers to him, is pretty sad. In another wrinkle, I think early this morning I just read about Nico claiming Dylan wrote “I’ll Keep It With Mine” about “the kid and me.”
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 October 2021 16:38 (two years ago) link
“About me and my little baby.”
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 25 October 2021 16:39 (two years ago) link
Yeesh. Much as I love several tracks on Chelsea Girl, that one doesn't sound so right; neither did Marianne F.'s (although MF's "Visions of Johanna" is witty and smokey and awes).
I can't recommend an album that has "I Wanna Be Black" without some sort of warning and a signed waiver absolving me of any blame for being triggered I heard it as a takeoff of and from many of Reed's hipster contemporaries, maybe especially the musical ones---too bad it didn't come out in the 60s---also of course what Eddie Murphy referenced as "Negrophile" etc.
― dow, Monday, 25 October 2021 20:21 (two years ago) link
But I can imagine how it could be too much-little-hip for other listeners, another white guy being ironic about white guys.
― dow, Monday, 25 October 2021 20:22 (two years ago) link
I'll take it over Martin Mull's music, anyway.
― dow, Monday, 25 October 2021 20:23 (two years ago) link
I heard it as a takeoff of and from many of Reed's hipster contemporaries, maybe especially the musical ones---too bad it didn't come out in the 60s---also of course what Eddie Murphy referenced as "Negrophile" etc.
Greil Marcus used to argue that Carl Perkins's "Put Your Cat Clothes On" was tapping into the unspoken cross-racial dynamics that was playing out at the birth of rock 'n' roll - basically young hillbillies entertaining fantasies of living African-American culture. IIRC, when "I Wanna Be Black" came out, he linked it to Perkins's song, and I think that's apiece with framing it as a takeoff of Reed's hipster "Negrophile" contemporaries. Some of it's very unsettling ("**** up Jews" never fails to make me cringe) but it always felt purposely uncomfortable.
― birdistheword, Monday, 25 October 2021 20:45 (two years ago) link
Yeah, I LIKE the song but if it ever came up on shuffle with other people around i’d be scrambling to shut it down. It’s the backup singers that really make it. I assumed it was aimed just as much at himself, having been a college kid infatuated with doo-wop.
― Cow_Art, Monday, 25 October 2021 20:54 (two years ago) link
Yeah, I LIKE the song but if it ever came up on shuffle with other people around i’d be scrambling to shut it down.
That reminds me of a funny story. Sometime in the '00s, I went to see a friend at Northwestern in Evanston, and while he was away at class, I grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Celtic Knot. It was lunch time and pretty crowded so I sat at the bar. While I was eating, I noticed that a CD player behind the bar was spinning a Randy Newman compilation, and it was piping the music into the speakers they had around the establishment. Eventually, it got to "Rednecks," and I thought "whoah, that's pretty awesome, but I wonder if that's a little edgy for the lunch crowd? Seconds before the chorus played, someone came sprinting over and hit the pause or stop button before it was too late. I started cracking up and the guy guessed correctly that I knew the music. With an Irish accent, he said "He's a BRILLIANT songwriter, but I don't want to get lynched!"
― birdistheword, Monday, 25 October 2021 21:44 (two years ago) link
An endlessly unwrapped subject----yall heard this?Good Old Boys was initially envisioned as a concept album about a character named Johnny Cutler, an everyman of the Deep South. Newman made a demo of these songs on February 1, 1973: they were released as the bonus disc for the 2002 reissue, titled Johnny Cutler's Birthday.
The kernel of this concept survived into the released album, although as Newman's take on viewpoints from the inhabitants of the Deep South in general, rather than from a single individual character....On May 21, 2002, an expanded edition of the album was issued by Rhino Records on compact disc, including a bonus track demo of "Marie" and a second disc containing the February, 1973 demos entitled Johnny Cutler's Birthday. Included in these demo recordings are Newman's verbal descriptions of sound effects and other characters, the songs as a whole describing a narrative in the vein of integrated musicals dating from the 1940s.Johnny Cutler is---not old, we'd say now---although I seem to recall reading that in 1972, the average American was like 23.5; cue Nixon landslide---but he feels the birthday, as anyone might, esp, living on the blue collar Southside neighborhood of Birmingham---11th or 12th Avenue, up toward the top of the Mountain, and he sees hippies moving in, mingling with the white kids already there, blacks too---he's not Archie Bunker Jr., not exactly, though he'd appreciate it, if a more secure sense of identity came with...when I heard this, GOB seemed even more like a good gloss (of America); now like said gloss was also the Smiley Smile to JCB, in non-druggy ways, although I think Johnny knows about that ol' rabbit tobacco, has heard tell. Probably a hype of my impressionable youth (I knew firsthand about the time and place and people, but how the hell did Hollywood Randy know? He mentioned his Southern relatives, but that was in NOLA, obv. a major influence on his style).Anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Old_Boys_(Randy_Newman_album)
― dow, Tuesday, 26 October 2021 00:08 (two years ago) link
Rejected by the label, I seem to recall.
― dow, Tuesday, 26 October 2021 00:11 (two years ago) link
why is this on the VU thread
― Communist Hockey Goblin (sleeve), Tuesday, 26 October 2021 00:12 (two years ago) link
have you read the discussion right before it?
― dow, Tuesday, 26 October 2021 00:15 (two years ago) link
re: Lou v. Frank, narcissism of (not, in fact, so) small differences: "I Wanna Be Black" and the tunes other than the title cut on street Hassle are the kind of things Zappa would have done on one of the 70s records. I never owned Take No Prisoners or Growing Up in Public and only listened to them in detail this past spring, and it occurred to me that those records were very much kin to Zappa's shit at the same time: fusoid hot licks and grooves and the frontguy being an asshole insult comic showering disdain over everyone. I think Lou probly saw what Frank had and thought "that's what I should do," despite their mutual animosity. And then I think in the 80s, in light of his sobriety and a resolve to professionalize, he decided or was advised that he should try to go for a more rock and roll elder statesman thing…
The Bells is very very weird and fantastic. Do not sleep on it!
― veronica moser, Tuesday, 26 October 2021 18:40 (two years ago) link