Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

it sounds like he does it on purpose though, right? like, he's above (or just bored) singing the song the way it was recorded

Apparently he imagined he was singing like Al Green.

Is there a vocal equivalent of body dysmorphia?

something definitely changed post-VU in his vocal attack.

Maybe that he stopped playing guitar?

Stopped playing maybe, but never stopped buying ever fancier custom high tech guitars, with bodies of plexiglass, complex carbon compounds and what not.

love the velvets, can only really grin and bear most solo lou. rock and roll animal is one of the worst live albums i've ever heard.

I can hear some similarities to Chilton with Lou's slide down into IDGAF vocal performances, might have something to do with the fact that in the 70's their rock and roll dreams had mostly been crushed into dust and they just did not care anymore so they started doing all this what-the-hell tossed-off almost improv stuff

in related news, I finally got a copy of Take No prisoners yesterday at a record show

rock and roll animal is one of the worst live albums i've ever heard.

genuinely curious what seems bad about this album to you.

rock n roll animal definitely seemed super cheesy to me when i first heard it, but i've grown to love its oversized glamminess.

Have yet to achieve this level of enlightenment.

http://tuenight.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/TN_lou_reed_F.jpg

I've always loved it is why I asked - I love Steve Hunter, love the bombast, love how Lou's attempt to be a glam frontman kinda gets swallowed by the sound of the band. And me being me I love how the riffs get all crunchy, that is the way I like 'em.

It took me a long time but I've come to love R'N'R Animal

"it sounds like he does it on purpose though, right? like, he's above (or just bored) singing the song the way it was recorded

― brownie, Monday, November 9, 2015 9:30 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

W/r/t Lou's singing, he seemed obsessed with singing behind the beat, and I don't know if it's lazy exactly but he definitely seems to be wanting do something other than the recorded vers, to the point where it sometimes sounds like he's never even heard the song.

I can hear some similarities to Chilton with Lou's slide down into IDGAF vocal performances, might have something to do with the fact that in the 70's their rock and roll dreams had mostly been crushed into dust

he seemed obsessed with singing behind the beat

He did this to such a degree when playing "White Light/White Heat" with Metallica that I'm pretty sure it bent the very fabric of time itself.

I've recently been learning to tolerate or even like some of Dylan's more radical reinterpretations, wonder if I should extend the same courtesy to Lou.

genuinely curious what seems bad about this album to you.

What Tyler says, except I never grew to love its glamminess. The band feels hammy and flashy, especially when tackling the velvets songs that i love. I haven't owned a copy in over a decade though, so I might feel differently today, and the friend who bought it for me swore by it as his favourite Lou of any stripe.

That album is so different from most other Lou-related stuff, don't know why it would be surprising to those who do like it that some of us might not care for it.

Recently read an interview with Sterling in which he went on and on about how he hated the guitar tone of those guys.

yeah i mean those dudes are basically the opposite of sterling morrison.

hating on Steve Hunter's tone

ohhhhhhhhkaaaaaay

Maybe if that band sounded more like, I dunno, the original Alice Cooper band or the original Elton John band or -what's that other band Bowie produced?- that would be more the kind of glam to my liking.

We get it, you like the tone, and anyone who doesn't blah blah blah

If someone likes a tone then someone else can theoretically but with full validity hate that tone. Joan Crawford you are one of my favourite ilxors, do not pretend this is not the case for rhetorical purposes!!

There might be people who hate Stevie Wonder's music. I think they must have garbage sacks for ears but hey its possible!!

(double !!s to express my incredulity)

If someone likes a tone then someone else can theoretically but with full validity hate that tone.

But every one of those tones started a band.

Also please remind us what other great albums Steve Hunter played on so we can school ourselves.

lol Tarfumes

Also please remind us what other great albums Steve Hunter played on so we can school ourselves.

that big ringing solo in Aerosmith's Train Kept A-Rollin'
the acoustic intro on Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" -- the central riff
Billion Dollar Babies
I personally love his instrumental solo record, Swept Away, but have a higher tolerance for tech-y guitar stuff

but like...sure, it's perfectly possible to have plenty of diff opinions about tone, but at the same time, like...Zappa. Plenty of people hate Zappa. but his tone is pretty much beyond objection; if you hate it, I have ~questions~ about what it is you hate. (Can sub Jerry Garcia here, probably to similar effect.) Hunter's one of those dudes: he's really good at playing the guitar. His tone is what many people who play or enjoy guitar would think of as good. Lou Reed liked it well enough to ask him back in the late 2000s.

so, like, many people I love & respect love Hall and Oates. I have never been able to get into them, something about Darryl Hall's singing style puts me off. But if I say "he's a bad singer" or "his vocal control isn't good," I'm just posing, that dude can sing his ass off, I just don't dig his groove. that's how ppl faulting Steve Hunter sound to me -- dude showboats like a motherfucker all day long, no doubt, some people are gonna hate that, but the tone? nah man. it's good.

Solsbury Hill is awesome, awesome. awesome.

i have no doubt that hunter is good at guitar but i think what i love about the white light/white heat stuff, per se, is that the originals make a virtue of playing that some (not me) might describe as *not good guitar playing, and that kind of "*not good guitar playing" is what i like to hear in those songs. but again, it was a long time ago since i heard that record, and the last time i even thought about it was when brad from deerhunter told me that his cousin used to have a poster of it on his wall when brad was a baby, and his earliest memory was getting freaked out by rock'n'roll animal lou while having his diaper changed.

The list of credits that I hadn't known about or paid attention to this far is useful, thanks. The appeal to what "people who play guitar would generally consider good guitar playing and good guitar tone" not so much.

but is there anything more Lou than a guitarist whose tone appeals to guitar players? thinking about the Bangs interview where he's raving about George Benson records and George's tone (which I love fwiw)

I can't play guitar btw I can barely type tbh

xp yeah I hear you. I have this worry that upper mississippi is gonna come in here and tell me Hunter's tone is garbage, I'm a tonettante to some extent -- but those big soaring leads in the Sweet Jane intro on Animal, for me, really frame the song in such a great way -- they're a journey. (love the bass work in there, too, that burbling stuff that Reed would later also seek out from Fernando Saunders, my favorite of his bassists in any of his bands including the VU.) and while White Light was lifechanging for me when I first got my hands on it -- the entrance of the lead guitar in "I Heard Her Call My Name" was like a light switch going on in a dark universe -- I just prefer hearing guys who are good at playing doing what they do. I've always thought the first Lou Reed solo record, the one with Wakeman and Howe, was underrated -- precisely because it's nice to hear an obv VU piece like "Wild Child" getting knocked down by ringers, I sure don't miss Mo Tucker's "doing what I can with the tools I've got" style in a tune like that.

stop it stop it you're making me regret selling rock and roll animal

but is there anything more Lou than a guitarist whose tone appeals to guitar players? thinking about the Bangs interview where he's raving about George Benson records and George's tone (which I love fwiw)

precisely because it's nice to hear an obv VU piece like "Wild Child" getting knocked down by ringers

this is easily the gem on that record but yeah imo flashy technicians + Lou Reed was rarely a rewarding combo, and the first solo album and RnR Animal are terrible

let's have this argument again in another 10 years tho good times

feel like Rock Lou is for when you've decided you could really do without a lot of the whole Lou Reed apparatus. like, I want his occasional clever lyrics, his vocal phrasing, and his ability to write killer pop-rock changes, the way he can turn a chorus into a post-chorus transition and back into the verse (that "sleepin' out on the streeeet" sub-chorus in "wild child"...fuckin genius imo)...the stuff he got hired as a songwriter for. I am less interested in, y'know, Lou the Disruptive Genius Who Did So Much With So Little. (I'm grateful nonetheless for the records that dude made, but it's the songs I like more than the crudeness of their presentation.)

idk I like rock and roll music a lot, rock and roll animal is a bunch of guys who are good at playing rock and roll doing so!

xp man I love that first solo record so much

see, VU Live 1969 is more my bag. but it takes different strokes to something something.

lol i think i'm only now realizing who joan crawford loves chachi is

the super-dry sound on the s/t solo record also don't do it any favors imo. is there any reverb anywhere on that? been awhile since I've listened to it (the only tracks I've kept are Wild Child and I Love You)

lol i think i'm only now realizing who joan crawford loves chachi is

Oh wait, I'm beginning to see the light

think my main problem w/ that 1st solo LP is the backup singers
did anyone else have this weirdo CD from the 80s, which mixed up Lou Reed Live + Lou Reed tracks in totally haphazard fashion. dumb!
http://cdn.discogs.com/cw_MXiuZ6Ta7448cJaik3YVFtA0=/fit-in/200x200/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(96)/discogs-images/R-2777332-1300569686.jpeg.jpg

lol at "DOUBLE PLAY COMPACT DISC"

xps Joan Crawford Loves Chachi

― bag lady bag (mattresslessness), Monday, June 8, 2015 8:21 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

posts about books, metal, and durham, NC --- totally stumped

― Mistah FAAB (sarahell), Monday, June 8, 2015 8:37 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Loooool

― WE WANT FET WAP (Stevie D(eux)), Tuesday, June 9, 2015 4:00 AM

;)

thinking about the Bangs interview where he's raving about George Benson records and George's tone (which I love fwiw)

It's even nerdier than that he's talking about an amp which he seems to think George Benson invented.. he also seems to think George Benson is a bassist but, hey, it's Lou Reed, it's the 70s.

I've always thought the first Lou Reed solo record, the one with Wakeman and Howe, was underrated -- precisely because it's nice to hear an obv VU piece like "Wild Child" getting knocked down by ringers, I sure don't miss Mo Tucker's "doing what I can with the tools I've got" style in a tune like that.

I cannot even tell you how much I disagree with this, and that's without mentioning Clem Cattini AGAIN.

B-b-but what about that Loaded newspaper?