Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

I felt the same way about the Big Star documentary and Chilton

re: that Cale bit on Leno… I saw Cale a bunch in the early 90s, and in 92 his thing as it was on Leno there was playing with Sterling and the string section…they did a gig at the NYU student center on Washington Sq (he lived across the park on Washington Mews so that wasn't much of a hike to get home)… and in what turned out to be a dry run for the 93 tour, Lou showed up at the end to play some very fecund fusillades on "Forever Changed"; it wasn't "I heard Her call My Name" but it was pretty fucking exciting! and I saw that SummerStage show with Stereolab which musta been after the european tour…I was out of my mind stoked for Stereolab… and then in 95 Lamonte Young played with what he called a blues band at the Knitting factory… long, punishing drones, with Young pounding the keys and beaming through his mangy-ass beard like a enthralled four year old, encouraging his band to go deeper and harder, not at all like a studious minimalist academic… and yes his sturgis wear is awesome; I don't think Steve Reich dresses like that, although maybe Terry Riley has?… I feel like an asshole for living in NYC for 30 years and never going to the Dream House…

I have that Forever Bad Blues Band 2cd Just Stomping which i think is a couple of live sets. Just intonation blues.

Great point, bendy!

In a way that may also be another reason why the absence of Doug was probably for the best, him being a Lou proxy and stand-in. As well as foil of course, but there are more than enough of those to go around.

I felt the same way about the Big Star documentary and Chilton

If Reed was alive, he would've either shut down the documentary before it started, or demanded final cut. And if he'd gotten final cut, he still would've trashed the film in interviews.

Yes, exactly.

If Reed was alive, he would've either shut down the documentary before it started, or demanded final cut. And if he'd gotten final cut, he still would've trashed the film in interviews.

Indeed.

Here something to read whilst waiting for Tyler’s return:

https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/a-velvet-underground-playlist-129772/

Ace!

Enjoyed the doc, even if I didn't learn very much. Though I somehow had no idea Doug sings "Candy Says"!

Is there a Jonathan Richman doc? There should be.

No Richman doc. There's a drab live DVD called Take Me To The Plaza from 2003. I doubt he would ever participate in a documentary about himself which is a shame because he's a fascinating character.

The best spot to learn more about Jonathan is the book There's Something About Jonathan, by Tim Mitchell. It's not a GREAT book by any means, but it has loads of good stories. My favorite: JR fell in love with a married woman. He began camping in her front yard, to the irritation of her husband who would spray him with a hose. She wound up divorcing her husband and marrying Jonathan. This was Gail, of "Gail Loves Me." See also: "My Career as a Homewrecker."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5tTW2UQIeQ

do i have a weird memory of richman being a total asshole/creep or is it someone else of that era? sorry to just throw that out there

I don't think so? He has a history of being prickly with interviewers, so he sometimes reads jerky I guess. He's very uncomfortable with the process, and I think at this point he only does interviews in writing. At one point he was still insisting on snail mail, but I don't know if that's still the case.

I haven't heard stories of gross inappropriateness or anything, for what it's worth. He's no Lou Reed, that's for sure.

I took my daughter to see him four years ago when she was 8. After the show she gave him a drawing of beavers partying on a dam and they chatted about drawing. "Beavers! Hey, I like drawing too!"

I saw him in 2002. He loaded his own gear into the van.

That married-woman story isn’t exactly charming, but I guess the devil’s in the details.

About ten years ago, I came across a large, deep 'n wide assortment of JR albums on his MySpace: speedy folkie poppy originals, w voice acoustic guitar drums (his usual), more instrumentation for country, back to voice & guitar, no drums, for romantic Latinx ballads, an album produced by Ric Ocasek, his Something About Mary soundtrack songs, live Modern Lovers, calypso, several live JR and drummer albums, JR solo albums---some of this was not so hot, but most of it was, enough to keep me coming back for more. Then he added a brief video intro to the whole thing: "When I signed with Rounder, the good news was, they let me do anything. The bad news: they let me do anything. Some of those albums were so! Bad!" Then he went on to echo those who accused him of being an aging bratty kneejerk etc. After that, he slowed down the release rate, and some of the songs got more/differently serious, like one (not maudlin, pretty straightforward) about talking with his mother on her last night. So seems like he did grow up.

By impulsive use of "Latinx" here, I meant some different Spanish dialects, or maybe the styles of the songs had me thinking that, what do I know.

I've also come across wonderful live sets on the 'Tube, and easily forgot how old he is.

forgot I'm subscribed to Apple TV lol.

I'll watch this afternoon.

That Jonathan Richman book sounds sort of intriguing but is out-of-print anyway and used copies seem to be expensive so I guess I will pass.

I've got it and my copy was, er, not expensive!

I saw him in 2002. He loaded his own gear into the van.

i saw him a handful of years ago and he stayed to help sweep up the club after everyone else had left

I saw him on Mar 11 2020, for the first time ever, and in keeping with his exacting idiosyncracies, he noticed that the air conditioning in the venue was making noise that was not to his liking, asked for it to be turned off, was told it would cost this much to do so, and said "take it out of my pay for tonight"…which most of of his payment, and that's what they did. He played a steady, stream of conscious set, where he and his drummer never stopped playing for an hour and I couldn't tell when one song stopped and the next began…is this standard for him? I did not recognize any tune, fragmentary or otherwise, at that time, but my impression is also surely down to the fact that I only know the Modern Lovers material and do not know anything he's done other than that, not anything he did for the farrelly bros., or the lesbian bar one…

In the VU doc and surely when I encountered him, he looks incredible for a 70 year old, which is surely down to never having done drugs or drink of any kind… and does not it seem odd that that he was super fan #1 of this band, which despite its profound differences with the bay area milieu, shared with those bands the belief that bacchanalian drug intake and indiscriminate sexual congress was the pathway to enlightenment…if you were a big VU stan in the late 60s/early 70s, you most likely aspired to or achieved this state…but not Jojo.

I saw him a few years ago and he was actually constructing the venue with his own hands!

Since this has become the JR live show story-time thread . . . I saw him play a tiny club in Providence in 2003 to about 40 people, they (him and Tommy) played vaguely Latin influenced versions of the usual favorites that were punctuated by Jonathan taking frequent, wordless dance breaks where he wound suggestively swivel his hips to the drum beat for a minute or two before resuming singing. It was delightful and strange. After the show, he was sitting at the bar alone and undisturbed sipping a soda water and looking fairly morose, so I decided, with the unearned confidence of an 18 year old, that it was my job to try and cheer him up. I tapped him on the shoulder and said something to the effect of "Awesome show, Jonathan, thanks for coming out. You're the king" and he looked at me with an impish glint in his eye and croaked "Oh no no, I'm not the king, but I might be the viceroy."

of any kind… and does not it seem odd that that he was super fan #1 of this band

Veronica, that is more or less a standard show for him. It’s almost always him with Tommy Larkins and Modern Lovers songs are a rarity. While those songs are what gis reputation largely rests on, he does not hold them in high regard. The “Bermuda Monologue” that I posted above tells the story of when he shifted his focus away from his early style.

Also he's been doing the dancing thing for years, when I saw him he had a mike set up pointing at his feet. I knew someone who hung with him after a show and said his energy and sheer intensity was kind of weird.

He’s still a hyperactive kid, inside and outside!

So I guess we are going to talk about Jojo until tyler or at least Alfred comes back and weighs in.

I was sad when I learned relatively recently that Leroy Radcliffe had passed, leaving Jojo as the only man standing from the second classic lineup.

I always thought of Richman as sort of a parallel figure to Alex Chilton, a weird dude who glommed on early to other weird dudes and their weird music (I don't know who was first to cover the VU, but Big Star had to be close, right?), who made linchpin music early in their career before totally turning their back on it and doing their own (other) weird thing.

and Chilton was just as sober!

lol

The few times I've seen him the audience has been shouting for teh coume to be turned up while he asks for it to be turned down.

Both artists who I had really weird interactions with until they finally said "look, it's not you, it's me."

well, they didn't actually come out and say it outright, it was just the preponderance of evidence talking.

Apparently The Yardbirds were the first to record a VU song in 1966 as Jimmy Page had worked with Nico in 1965.

Video has footage from 1966 but audio is apparently from 1968.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLNSMtpfTx4

I don't know who was first to cover the VU, but Big Star had to be close, right?

David Bowie told a story about how one of his early managers had been sent an advance copy of VU & Nico which was passed along to him, and his band at the time covered a song or two at their last shows in late '66, before the album had officially been released ("...and that's the essence of Mod!" Bowie concluded.)

The Yardbirds did "Waiting For The Man" live in '68. Jimmy Page was a fan.

There were some other released covers in the early days. The first one was probably a Dutch(?) group doing "Run Run Run" in '67. Notable early '70s covers where Mitch Ryder's Detroit doing "Rock'n'Roll" in '71, and the Mott "Sweet Jane" a year or so later.

XP!

definitely charmed when Richman was breaking down the different components each member brought to a VU song on his acoustic guitar.

Anyone know where/when that clip of them doing "Heroin" at the very end is from?

I think that’s Le Bataclan 72?

I seem to recall Eno getting his hands on an import copy of the first VU when (or before?) he was in Roxy. He much later did some charity cover of "White Light," which I've never heard:

The Velvet Underground was the band that decided me on becoming a rock musician, because they offered the prospect of creating some unity between the ideas that I'd been interested in from avant-garde music and the visceral excitement of rock music. There's no viscera in avant-garde stuff. The other thing was what they chose not to write songs about love and relationships of that kind. I'd always been fed up with that, and I still am; it still forms 96 per cent of pop lyrics - it's just sheer laziness, sheer lack of imagination.

"White Light/White Heat" is not actually my favourite song. But if you had to name one Velvet Underground song, probably that would be the one people would name. I'm playing some kind of a game in making the song: what I've done is reverse something that Lou Reed does. He sings the verses and then throws away the choruses - they're sort of throw-away scat choruses and you can't understand what he's saying at all. I've tried to decode what he was saying there, which is close to nonsense actually, and I've arranged them so that they are sung by a choir. So these things that were almost incoherent become very clear and with very precise diction and timing.

In fact there's a message in that, funnily enough. I say: "I first heard 'White Light/White Heat' on the radio, it was a Saturday, it was probably the John Peel show, it was early 1968." And then it says, "and I thought" and breaks into another song that I wrote, which is like a piece of gospel, where I say "Upon this rock I shall build my church". And I keep saying that. And then it says: "The whole album took one day to record - that was one day in New York, in autumn 1967. I just spent almost that long trying to hear what Lou Reed was saying in the choruses."

The point is that it took the Velvet Underground almost no time to do. But the amount of listening time that thing has received from me and all the other people who have listened to it consolidates it into something much, much bigger than it was ever made as.

The song is sold with a CD cover I designed; it's the only copy in existence but it is to be sold with full exploitation rights. That means if somebody buys it they can release it; just like with an ordinary record, whoever releases it can take the profits that a record company would take, which are for the sales of the actual object itself, but as always, they pay a royalty to the artist. And these will go to War Child. What a sucker, eh - it will probably be my only hit ever.

I'm convinced "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is the Stones riffing (so to speak) on "Heroin." Very similar two chord progression, very similar subject matter.

Downliner Sect cover Reed/Cale preVelvets. Spiritualised had the same song on an early single.

Pretty sure Bowie covered VU before anybody. He heard an acetate or a test pressing and was covering Waiting for the Man before it was released.

Ack, nevermind

shit that yardbirds cover is like proto stooges

Jagger later said the drone-y ness of "Stray Cat Blues" was Velvets-inspired.

When John Cale went to England to shop their demo, he tried to give a copy to Jagger, but he wasn't home and passed it along to Marianne Faithfull instead.