Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

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they busted their ass on tour for years, basically

Communist Hockey Goblin (sleeve), Sunday, 17 October 2021 05:41 (two years ago) link

i had no idea they toured that much

it was funny seeing them talk about being booked as art exhibitions and half the auduence leaving = a good show

terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 17 October 2021 05:58 (two years ago) link

Xxposts a piece of trivia: when the reunited VU played the gig at Glastonbury they played Jonathan Richman's song "Velvet Underground" right before taking the stage.

everything, Sunday, 17 October 2021 06:30 (two years ago) link

really liked Haynes' approach to this and the dense period footage. made something so over familiar seem fresh. feel the heavy Cale involvement made the downplaying of the Yule years inevitable but that's a mistake imo, the 2 eras should be given almost equal weight

buzza, Sunday, 17 October 2021 08:35 (two years ago) link

That doc series was formative for me

In case any Britisher ILXors need a memory jog, this series was broadcast as 'Dancing In The Street' by the BBC. Well worth a watch.

Being cheap is expensive (snoball), Sunday, 17 October 2021 09:02 (two years ago) link

xp I love how Yule's closeout capsule bio just said he put out one live album, er how about SQUEEZE BY THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, huh? I mean, it exists. If Cale/Reed/Nico at the Bataclan is Velvets canon then an album under the band's name is.
I checked and apparently Yule declined to participate.

assert (matttkkkk), Sunday, 17 October 2021 09:58 (two years ago) link

Probably another reason for this front loading might be there was no Factory footage for later years, Andy having been fired. Although maybe they could have dig deeper into the Steve Sesnick vault.

_Thought Lou...didn’t need any meetings_


Lester Bangs wrote about seeing him at AA meetings.

Ah, so this was a misrepresentation by Sylvia, contributing to the Lou party line about the uniqueness of Lou.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:26 (two years ago) link

I liked almost everything about this but the moment I knew it was going to be good was when they played “The Wind” on the soundtrack near the beginning. I once had a brief conversation with Jonathan Richman before a show he did at The Bottom Line during which he mentioned he had been listening to Nolan Strong a lot.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:35 (two years ago) link

Steve Sesnick has declined to particpate for the last 50 years tbf.

Starmer: "Let the children boogie, let all the children boogie." (Tom D.), Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:37 (two years ago) link

Lol, I knew exactly which fish that bait would bring.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:40 (two years ago) link

This movie was like watching an Andy Warhol doc waiting for the Velvets to show up except they are the whole movie.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:40 (two years ago) link

I learned long ago of Jonathan Richman’s Velvets fetish from an article in Trouser Press about The Modern Lovers. He used to go to NYC and sleep on their couch or couches, iirc. Don’t know if it is on the TP website but it was definitely scanned to their FB page a while ago.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:47 (two years ago) link

Slept on Steve Sesnick’s couch, actually.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:48 (two years ago) link

since when were zappa and the mothers an emblem of hippie culture?

Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:51 (two years ago) link

there was a fascinating JR piece in a recent Ugly Things magazine where he drew out the velvet's stage equipment longhand, including lou reed's precise guitar setup.

Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:52 (two years ago) link

Clinton Heylin's "From the Velvets to the Voidoids" is basically an entire book about how often the Velvets performed in Boston and Cleveland and why after the Velvets were over the American proto-punk think sparked in those two cities before igniting back in NYC.

dan selzer, Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:56 (two years ago) link

He was basically their No. 1 fan, moved to NYC because of them and everything. I also think he used to play them his songs backstage after gigs and got a lot of encouragement from them.

Starmer: "Let the children boogie, let all the children boogie." (Tom D.), Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:58 (two years ago) link

(xp)

Starmer: "Let the children boogie, let all the children boogie." (Tom D.), Sunday, 17 October 2021 11:58 (two years ago) link

Yes, this is all true. Feel like their number two fan was Bob Quine and we all know what happened to him.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 12:01 (two years ago) link

Does this link work? https://trouserpress.com/magazine-covers-5/
In any case, you can go to that website and find Issue 44 and read the scan.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 12:02 (two years ago) link

i had no idea they toured that much

That was a frustrating omission from the documentary, which wasn’t too surprising seeing how the Doug years, and his role/importance, were glossed over. They criss-crossed the US several times in ‘68-‘69, and as much as they hated hippies, they played in San Francisco more (probably much more) than they played in NYC.

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, 17 October 2021 12:09 (two years ago) link

Re: Richman, he’s quoted in Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga’s Up-Tight, saying something about how Lou gave Doug (I think?) a pickup off his Gretsch guitar saying, “Now that’s brotherhood.” Seems he’s been a kind of go-to Velvets interviewee since at least the early ‘80s.

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, 17 October 2021 12:11 (two years ago) link

Maybe it wasn’t TP 44 but an earlier issue and article actually about the VU themselves.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 12:13 (two years ago) link

One person at least talked about what a good musician Doug was in the new doc, already can’t remember who it was, Moe maybe.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 12:31 (two years ago) link

Going to get this on physical media when it's released but meanwhile... There's a bad rip doing the rounds on the file sharing sites and a good one. Bad rip was made by someone who randomly selected a frame, sized their whole file based on that, turning it a very narrow widescreen & cutting off the top of people's heads in the other scenes and most of the "voice of xx" + name labels at the bottom. The good one is 1.78:1.

StanM, Sunday, 17 October 2021 13:08 (two years ago) link

i dunno, past all the visual bells and whistles of the visual approach i'm not sure the doc had more than a received, not particularly perceptive appreciation of the velvets' music. basically drones + gritty but literary street lyrics. which is what everybody says, but it was much more than that. didn't hear much about lou's guitar approach (except that he couldn't sing or play) or their groove or the uncanny calm of that third album etc. etc.

Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 17 October 2021 13:35 (two years ago) link

richman did talk about the cadence of lou reed's voice. that was nice.

Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 17 October 2021 13:39 (two years ago) link

I hear what you hear saying TSF, but I wasn’t really expecting that from this doc, more an evocation of that time and milieu, which I got in spades.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 13:49 (two years ago) link

You didn’t see them back in the day, did you? Probably not quite old enough.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 13:58 (two years ago) link

i think i did hear somewhere that JR was a huge VU fan, but doesn't that make perfect sense? the modern lovers are the most VU-sounding band of all time, and they did it immediately after the VU broke up. always though modern lovers were the bridge between VU and punk

typo hell 13: crypto in insidious, though (Karl Malone), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:03 (two years ago) link

Yes, I don’t know why anyone would be surprised at all by that, unless they only knew him from There’s Something About Mary.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:05 (two years ago) link

I heard "Roadrunner" the summer I discovered "Sister Ray."

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:06 (two years ago) link

The Sex Pistols version?

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:09 (two years ago) link

Richman's.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:11 (two years ago) link

xxxxp me? no, i wish. i didn't start seeing concerts until 1972 and those were the types of shows my dad could drive me to.

Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:13 (two years ago) link

Richman's.

Beserkley Chartbusters?

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:15 (two years ago) link

I think I posted this before: some graph Jonathan Richman made before anybody knew who he was (reproduced in Ryan Walsh's Astral Weeks).

https://phildellio.tripod.com/richman.jpg

clemenza, Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:17 (two years ago) link

you wonder if vu would have continued to asymptotically approach beatles or if they would have crossed.

Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:21 (two years ago) link

Seems like he cooked the books by omitting Squeeze.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:26 (two years ago) link

I finally heard Squeeze this year and I was bummed out that it wasn't WORSE, it was just such an anonymous early 70s $4 rock record, not really bad but just indistinctive, would have preferred a disaster of some sort

Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:34 (two years ago) link

fortunately Berlin was around the corner

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:35 (two years ago) link

Over in the corner

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 14:43 (two years ago) link

Yes, "Squeeze" is just fairly dull.

Starmer: "Let the children boogie, let all the children boogie." (Tom D.), Sunday, 17 October 2021 15:05 (two years ago) link

Okay, I liked the docu & it was all well done and stuff but I'm not sure I prefer it over the BBC South Bank Show (1986) one that's on the youtubes

StanM, Sunday, 17 October 2021 15:07 (two years ago) link

The worst thing about Squeeze, for me, that distinguishes it from, say, American Flyer or something, is how nakedly it apes some of the worst stuff on Loaded like “Lonesome Cowboy Bill,” as though that was the aspect of the VU that was worth perpetuating.

New Zealand, with that hottie (hardcore dilettante), Sunday, 17 October 2021 15:40 (two years ago) link

So where would American Flyer be on that list? And did George Martin produce every group with America in the name?

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 15:43 (two years ago) link

On that chart

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 15:43 (two years ago) link

Another annoying omission: Jonas Mekas (and others) went on at length about how exciting the various art scenes were in NYC in the early '60s, but no mention was made of Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman et al. Maybe a minor point, but that music was a major movement in NYC at the time, some of those artists were massive influences on the Velvets, and Lou said "Sister Ray" was his attempt to do in rock 'n' roll what Cecil and Ornette were doing in their area of activity.

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, 17 October 2021 15:49 (two years ago) link

Yeah, and I seem to recall at least one member of Ornette’s band recording with Lou.

Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 17 October 2021 15:51 (two years ago) link


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