Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

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?

lol that is so great when Lou is trolling Bangs by playing the Ron Wood solo album over and over.

we all know that joan crawford hates loaded
Loaded vs. American Beauty

Oh wait, I'm beginning to see the light

1st LP has great songs but really shitty production and leaves me unconvinced of Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman et al's ability to play three or four chord rock songs in 4/4.

.. play with any feel for the material, that is.

I've never known exactly where to post this. Strange 1969 song by another pair of NYC songwriting hacks, that sounds an awful lot like something Lou Reed might have put on Loaded. Note the "Aaaalright" and other little Lou-like vocal tics. Came out in 1969. I'm convinced it has something to do with VU, but have never been sure quite how.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09hcrDnDxuc&feature=youtu.be

i always think it's too bad he didn't record an album w/ the Tots. That live radio show (released semi-officially as American Poet) is pretty great.

posts about books, metal, and durham, NC --- totally stumped
Oh wait, I was thinking Statler instead of Waldorf, never mind.

lol that is so great when Lou is trolling Bangs by playing the Ron Wood solo album over and over.

― tylerw, Monday, November 9, 2015 12:48 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've Got My Own Rock Critic To Troll

unconvinced of Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman et al's ability to play three or four chord rock songs in 4/4.

Dude, the Tomorrow album.

now there's a good record

Yup

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.

so good.. "absolutely zero distortion" "hey lou, why doncha turn off that herbie hancock shit". would a play that was just bangs interviewing reed for a couple of hours be cool or lame?

Same guy who rates James Williamson but not Ron Asheton, iirc.

What! <3 williamson but also all stooges, cmon now.

Sorry, overreached and thought you were a friend of yours instead of you yourself.

I think one of those 'hacks' above were involved with the same set-up as Lou, and at least one is credited with "The Ostrich" along with Lou and others..

... and shared a manager with Captain Beefheart (this I know from John French's indigestible tome).

i'm not usually a fan of releasing new covers for old albums (like when kraftwerk ruined half of their old covers), but it's difficult to imagine a worse cover than Loaded.

Well, it fits alongside "Squeeze"

There are so many worse covers than Loaded

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/worst-album-covers

i like how when they did the Fully Loaded reissue, they took a good hard look at the cover art and decided to change it by upgrading it to glorious 3D lenticular

I like the Loaded album cover much more than I like the album.

i want this to be true for me as well (i really like the album)

yo la tengo closed the set i saw last night w/ a gorgeous "I Found A Reason". it was perfect.

Gotten used to the cover over the years, admittedly it's way way way below the standard of the earlier covers! Nice photo on the back sleeve of the band's resident genius, Doug Yule, working on one of his compositions/arrangements.

ha, yeah i'm used to the cover now and kinda dig it.
isn't the story that the artist had never even heard the VU, and was just told the name of the band?

Something like that, so velvet smog(?) billowing out from the Underground...uh, yeah, that'll do. I seem to think he was Russian or Polish or something, have visions of Atlantic cutting costs by shipping out graphic design to somwhere behind the Iron Curtain.

nah, if they truly outsourced it to an early 1970s polish graphic designer it probably would have turned out to be pretty cool

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/the-legacy-of-polish-poster-design/