Over the years Rock Town Hall’s preeminent hippie hater, Townsman Hrrundivbakshi, has made numerous threats to explain what it is that makes him incapable of appreciating the artistry of a couple of more Beat-indebted rock legends, Bob Dylan and The Velvet Underground. We’ve granted Hrrundi his hatred of The Jefferson Airplane, and we’ve given up on him ever fully explaining his overall dislike of hippies. After years of grilling, he’s been man enough to occasionally come to terms with Dylan. However, to date we can recall no time when he has attempted to ellucidate his feelings on The Velvet Underground.
This week a gentleman and a scholar has agreed to air out his thoughts. He has requested we select 7 songs representing the scope of The Velvet Underground for his consideration and assessment. We will respect his request, in concept, but demand that he responds to a few more songs to accomodate for the band’s scope. Considering that it’s taken HVB a good half dozen years, dating back to Rock Town Hall’s roots as a listserv, to come clean, we will allow him a few days to assess our selections. I think this is only fair to the man.
Today we will focus on the band’s debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. I would suspect that most VU fans of my generation probably learned about the band in reverse order, from hearing Lou Reed’s Rock ‘n Roll Animal version of “Sweet Jane” to hearing the VU album version (without, I must add, the momentum-draining middle eighth that was cut back in on later digital reissues) and that song’s radio-friendly mate, “Rock ‘n Roll”, before digging back to this mystical “banana” album. I’ll leave it to our VU-digging Townspeople to share with Hrrundi what this album meant to each of you.
For me, a college freshman far from home and entering some new psychological territories, it meant that a lot of pent-up fear, anger, and desire was all right to be expressed. More than any of John Lennon’s primal scream stuff, which may have been better on paper than on record, songs like “I’m Waiting for the Man” and “Heroin” allowed me to work out some serious self-doubt. I was already well aware that all I needed was love and told myself things were getting better all the time, but I had to touch ground first. I had no idea how I’d go about getting all the love that was promised or where it even was. The Velvet Underground provided a foundation consistent with the state I was in.
Musically, it meant there were new possibilities for expression that were only hinted at by all the ’60s psychedelic and garage bands I’d been into since boyhood. The way the band played gave me hope that pounding out my own repetitive, innervisions was a valid way to make music. I never had time for “jazz chords” and reading music. Harmony groups like The Byrds did little for me. I wanted my ass kicked by the records and movies I was digging into at that time.
What was especially cool about the VU compared with the ass-kicking garage bands they often sounded like on the surface is that they were not retarded. As much as I love a song or two at a time of third-rate Rolling Stones, like The Chocolate Watchband or countless other Nuggets bands, I get tired of cars and chicks. I was a realist: the cars and chicks were never coming my way when I was 18. I had to look ahead and plot some more sophisticated, sensitive, and cynical course toward attaining cars and chicks, maybe by the time I reached my mid-20s. The lyrics of The Velvet Underground helped me prepare that course, and lord knows it worked wonders as I drive the love of my life and our two kids around in my 2003 Toyota Camry!
Without further ado, Hrrundi, your first mission is to listen to and comment on three representative selections from The Velvet Underground & Nico.
We look forward to your thoughts.
As a side topic for discussion, in listening to this album again I’m still doubtful that any listed member of the VU at the time of this album’s recording sang lead on “Sunday Morning”. Can anyone run a high-tech voice analysis on the vocals to see if they bear any resemblance to the vocals of Lou Reed or Nico? No one thinks it’s Cale singing, right, and I’ve never heard anyone suggest it was Morrison or Tucker. I think it’s Doug Yule on lead vocals – or Bernard Purdie.
It’s Lou. I’ve never had any doubt in mind. Once upon a time, he gave a damn, and didn’t rely an arrhythmic, atonal vocal style. Wikipedia says so, with footnotes to corroborate!
http://tinyurl.com/3whmql
SHOW ME THE VOICE ANALYSIS! We’ve got to have some folks from the FBI logging in who could confirm traces of Lou’s voice.
I rented the VU documentary a few weeks ago and I am pretty sure they said it was Yule singing. Reed was supposed to sing it but felt Yule’s voice was better suited.
Ooops – wrong song. Yes, I know Yule wan’t in the band then.
What you may know, Andyr, is that it’s not ever been revealed that Yule was in the band yet!
I thought Andyr was proposing a scenario similar to Frank Zappa and Ozzy Ozbourne re-recording the rhythm parts for their CD reissues.
All I can say is: you better not be planning on subjecting me to three tracks off of every VU album; I guarantee I’ll go soft long before we’re through with all that.
In the meantime, I’ll do you all a favor by starting with “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”
You may be surprised to hear that I absolutely LOVE this song. The lyric is perfectly suited to the “who the fuck is THAT” ice-goddess-ex-machina Nico; the bizarre droning piano figure is mesmerizing; Mo Tucker delivers on her reputation as an idiot savant with that oppressive, huge WHAM on the kettle drum or whatever the heck she’s pounding — hell, even Lou Reed manages to NOT ruin the tune with his amateur-night guitar plunking.
I’m not a neanderthal; I don’t hate everything the VU ever did. In *trying* to find something to like, I’ve begun to wonder if I’m a Cale guy. In general, songs like this and that “shiny, shiny… shiny boots of leather…” number really make my brain happy. He arranged or wrote that one, didn’t he?
In contrast, the whole street-wise cynic/asshole act that Reed puts on behind those Foster Grants just gives me a pain. He’s like the “Piss Christ” guy — a barely talented artist who hid behind an “out there” persona that beret-wearing college pukes could really get behind. You know, so *they* never actually had to kick anything cold turkey. It wasn’t cool to make a courtship mix tape with “Cherish” or “Don’t Cry (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)” or “We’ve Only Just Begun” on it. No, in order to snag the cool chick poon, you had to go with shite like “Pale Blue Eyes.” It had a greater “believability” or something, you know, because the arrangements were sparser, and featured a poorly tuned guitar, strummed awkwardly while people nodded off in the background. Like I say, the late-20th century, nouveau-beatnik equivalent of the turtle-necked sensitive guy in the stairwell singing “I gave my love a cherry…” Pshaw.
“Heroin,” I’m supposed to like because,
a.) It’s a non-judgemental, first-person look at something usually seen as dirty and dangerous and wicked and… yawn. Really, why do we need more than 30 seconds of this song? It’s got no groove, so I can’t forgive the retarded, back-of-a-junior-high-notebook lyric. It’s got no melody, so I can’t overlook the sodden drumming and out of tune guitars. I know, I know! I’m supposed to *appreciate* the amateurishness and —
b.) the chaotic, repetitive construction of the song. I’m supposed to marvel at how the arrangement mirrors the experience of shooting heroin into your arm, or something. The problem is: doing shit like that wasn’t new when the Velvets did it, and I prefer the efforts of the folks who preceded them. If you’re going to use music as a party trick, you better be able to BRING IT when the tape starts rolling. I don’t hear that here. I just hear society ingenues bobbing their heads in pretend sympathy while Andy Warhol snickers at them in the back of the room.
“Run Run Run” — yuck. More heroin-chic rubbish. Mod, is this your idea of a “groove”? Did you put this up here because you thought it would appeal to my trash-rock sympathies? Man, are you missing my boat! Cue this up against anything by, I dunno, ? & the Mysterians, and you’ll find it lacking. LACKING. God, this is worthless. Music to sit in a chair and fire up a bong to. While “The Price Is Right” glows across the coffee table, with the sound off, of course. Let me be clear: THAT’S NOT ROCK AND ROLL!
Look, I actually own this album, and there are at least three or four song on it that I really, really like. Why on EARTH did you pick “Run, Run Run” and “Heroin”? You owe me at least *that* answer.
I look forward to *your* response.
Sheesh,
HVB
Hrrundi, I’ll give you a more detailed response later – and I’m sure you’ll be feeling the heat from fellow Townspeople – but the reason you got stuck with “Run Run Run” was, in part, to see how fast you’d bail out. To your credit, you avoided “corn-studded turd” references. More later – from me. I expect my fellow Townspeople to start helping you to look in the mirror.
Confession: most of this stuff has never really done it for me, either. Kind of a drag.
I’ve never minded Heroin, since it at least threatens to go somewhere, and sometimes that’s enough.
But even All Tomorrow’s Parties…I don’t know, it’s kind of like being at the world’s most boring karaoke party, held at Castle Dracula.
alexmagic says:
But even All Tomorrow’s Parties…I don’t know, it’s kind of like being at the world’s most boring karaoke party, held at Castle Dracula.
I say:
LOFL!
HVB, currently listening to (and scratching my head at) “I Love You” by the Velvets. Man, does this track suck MAJOR ass!
I discovered the velvets by hearing the Cowboy Junkies’ version of sweet jane. then, i heard Japan’s version of all tomorrow’s parties. by that time, i was already familiar with take a walk on the wild side.
I went and bought the bananna album.
Then i moved in with Joe Tagg and borrowed all his records.
Hrrundi, did it ever occur to you why “I Love You” was left on the cutting-room floor? I’m with you on that one.
Now, onto some of your initial responses. (I must say I’m a bit disappointed in the lack of intervention-appropriate raking that HVB has gotten to this point, but it’s early.)
Don’t cop out on us, my man. I’m not letting you off the hook.
It makes some sense that you love this song. Personally, I find it to be one of those songs that start out like a house on fire before quickly cooling down to a few harmless puffs of smoke.
It’s promising that you see the Cale influence here, and this is something we might work with.
Here you go with the rash judgments. You sound threatened. Is this the kind of guy who kept you from making it with the Nico-like Ice Goddess of your dreams? I know these kinds of guys can be annoying, but if there’s anything to appreciate about Lou it’s his propensity for being a dick.
For someone who said up front, the other day, that you would not tolerate arguments based around “artistic legacies” and backstory – however you phrased it – why do you begin by arguing AGAINST these assumptions? I like how simple the song is. I like the sound of those toneless, out-of-tune guitars. I like the way Reed sings, and I like his lyrics. I’m “in the moment” more when listening to that song than I am the more-or-less fine “Cherish”. The song’s no “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, but what is?
We’re talkin’ about MUSIC here, Hrrundi, and I tried to set this first piece up by how the music makes me FEEL. Please reserve judgments that argue with points no one has not yet raised. This tendency indicates a great deal of unease. Do you feel threatened by this exercise? We only want to help you.
Did anyone HERE give you these notions? No, not yet. Someone might, but in the tone I’ve tried to set I’ve not made one refererence to the power of any backstory on the artist’s behalf or narrative inventions. I’ve told you that this music shakes my soul in a certain way. I don’t expect the music to shake your soul in the same or any way, for that matter, but after all these years you owe it to us – and you owe it to yourself – to respond to the issues of how the music does or does not affect your soul. Leave the judgmental stuff, which seems to indicate a feeling of being threatened, out of it.
During the selection process, The People asked for this one. Or at least one person did, I think. I was clear about my thoughts on this refried boogie from the git-go. I placed it for your consideration for one main reason: I wanted to guard you from having to out yourself as someone who doesn’t like “I’m Waiting for the Man”. I’m doing you a favor by letting you rag on this lesser 2-chord groove. I dig the groove and the bad guitar sound, by the way.
This is too painful to comment on. I have too much respect for you to bring the flaws in your thinking to anyone’s attention. But thanks for sharing.
I’ve given you that answer, and you’ve been forthright in telling us what you don’t like about “Run Run Run”. How could anyone argue with you on that song? However, what you at least owe us a real answer on is what you find so troubling about “Heroin”. Leave all your preconceived notions out of it. Don’t respond to all the rock-crit assholes in the world who’ve understandably bummed you out. Tell us what about THE SONG really bugs YOU.
I hope you found it satisfying and compassionate.
hvb wrote:
Dude you’re doing that thing that always drives me crazy — attempting to critique music by projecting a negative image of the personality of the artist. No dice. If you’re going to talk about the persona of the artist, stay focused and talk about how it does or doesn’t work with the music. Your distaste for a certain kind of cultural type is not relevant, unless that’s all you’ve got, in which case we will accept your white flag with grace.
Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
If you read through my pithy, thoughtful, enviably insightful commentary, you’ll find plenty of lab coat analyses of these tunes and why two of them suck. Don’t try to give me a rock wedgie because I’m also sharing the stylistic/Look/’tudinal reasons why these songs suck EVEN MORE.
Look, this is important: I can deal with songs that feature creaky-ass guitars, poorly tuned and played ineptly. There are thousands of such tunes I downright love. But when they’re wrapped up in a bright, VU-colored bow as if to say , “dude… check these guys out. They’re so fucking cool that they don’t even CARE how shitty they sound”… that’s when I tune out. And don’t try to tell me that the band didn’t actively try to market themselves as, well, just that — at least for a while. I ain’t buying!
Here’s my point: rock and roll is just about as much about style as it is about the muuusic, maaaan. And THAT’s why the comments that irk BigSteve are perfectly legit. Reed’s asshole persona, the band’s anti-music stance (for a while there) — all that shit is fair game, when it’s the main reason why much of their music strikes me as being at best lazy and at worst, banal.
You know, last night, I was in a pretty good mood, after having spent the entire day cleaning out my pad. I hated the cleaning, but once it was done, I treated myself to a great pizza with friends. On the way into town to meet up with folks, I cued up the latest Motorhead album, and blasted it proudly from my car as I pulled up in front of the joint. That music is about as idiotic as it gets, but if you can’t see why I can feel proud about broadcasting Motorhead, but a bit ashamed and pimply-faced about doing the same with “Run Run Run,” then I don’t know what else we can discuss. The point, I guess, is that I’m capable of just as much ridiculous, age-inappropriate, music-based, vaguely anti-establishment posturing as the next guy. The Velvets just aren’t as cool as you guys think they are!
And I’m still waiting for folks like BigSteve and others to tell me why I should *like* “Run Run Run” or “Heroin.” It’s not enough to pince-nez me on my critique. You gotta BRING IT, people.
Skipping Waiting for my Man is a big mistake. I think of the Velvets as a giant bag of clever tricks that seemed endlessly repeatable. One of theie favorite tricks is having some instument bang a single chord while the rest of the band goes through some simple changes. The piano part on Waiting for my Man is the archetype of this trick. It’s a trick that gets me just about everytime. Jonathon Richman’s “She Cracked”, Wire’s “106 Beats That”.
I think I prefer some of the live versions of Heroine, say from the 1969 record, to the original version. That one just seems too stilted and a little academic. It’s not one I would have included in the 7 pack Hrundi requested.
Geo, where were you during the song selection process? I had 7 songs picked out myself that would have forced Hrrundi to come up with more than this kind of nonsense:
But nooooooo… The People had to have “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Run Run Run”. I’m not complaining – and I’m not going to let these little differences tear us apart. Let’s keep our focus on how HVB’s inability to discuss this band without cutting on them for their perceived lack of caring. Does he ever consider how much the band had to care to hang out with Reed for a few years?
Your task will not get easier, Hrrundi. We don’t want to bring you down, but you’ve been holding this over our heads for 6 years. I’m pretty sure you’ll feel a lot better when it’s all over. Thanks.
I was thinking about this thread last night, while I tried to fall asleep, trying to figure out my point of entry.
The Velvets — particularly in the Cale era — have barely a Kentonite or Prock bone in their body. I don’t think HVB is really a Cale guy. Although he’s the Brian Jones-like multi-instrumentalist, JC is also the one with avant garde bona fides.
Along the lines of the non-Kentonite/Prock thing, The VU is where the less-is-more aspect of indie rock begins, an aspect that I think gets few props in RTH, as it doesn’t encourage the opportunity to don the lab coat and micro-analyze bass lines and the like.
Am I going to be the guy who continually tries to defend Lou’s VU lyrics? If you’re using Motorhead to prove to us that you can appreciate stuff with a similar aesthetic, this may all be for naught. Perhaps what really bugs HVB is the mix of amateurish playing and lyrical/conceptual pretension. If Motorhead is the closest you can come up with that receives your approval, I’m less-than-certain we’re really going to achieve anything with this enterprise.
Finally, that “Pale Blue Eyes”/”Cherish” story is tragic, man, but it’s backstory and you gotta move on from that shit if you’re really interested in showing us that you’re approaching this band in good faith.
Oats, I admire and respect you, so I’m going to respond to your post later. As for the rest of you, I ask again: what’s so great abour “Heroin” and Run Run Run”?
Thanks, Oats. I’m with you 100% on Lou’s lyrics. That’s what I was trying to get at by bringing up the fact that the band’s often like garage band that doesn’t have retarded lyrics – and I use the term “retarded” in the third grade sense. Beside the Brian Jones-era Stones, there are few instances of “garage rock” with great lyrics.
hvb wrote:
This is not about marketing, and it’s not about you and your sense of inferior coolness.
Hrrundi, since you didn’t get what I thought was great about the first VU album the first time around, I’ll try again. Despite my complete lack of interest in even getting a look at heroin or nodding along with the Warhol crowd, for me the song opened the door to working through deeper feelings of doubt and fear than I’d previously been aware of needing to work through at that point in life. It’s also tapping into real feelings of wanting to escape. I’m not saying the chicks and dicks escapism of your beloved AC/DC isn’t equally valid, but the escapist imagery in “Heroin” rang more true to me then and rings more true to me now. For me what’s most great about “Heroin” is the emotional landscape it provides – through the lyrics, through the out-of-tune guitars and viola, through the tempo changes, through horrible production. Don’t discount the power of the horrible production and bizarre guitar sounds, as we may continue to get into on Part 2 of our Velvet Intervention. Don’t discount the artistry (and surely good fortune of what can easily be written off as “mistakes”) that goes into creating the emotional landscape that I think is important.
I’m not even going to try to defend “Run, Run, Run,” but you’re msiing the point with “Heroin.” It’s not amateurish, and it’s not anti-music.
It is, rather, the height of VU’s experimentation: of seeing what happens when a song is made with no attempt to connect it to the commercial marketplace, to refuse any “selling points” that would make the music easily digestible.
First, the song negates any predetermined emotional response: it’s not “happy” or “sad.” It doesn’t tell you how to feel, you have to decide that on your own. It creates, as Jim has said, a vast, uncharted emotional landscape.
Second, by refusing any easy release, it attacks the shallow transcendental posturing that, arguably, lies behind 60s flower power: something I think you’d sympathize with.
Third, it seems pretty clear that Lou’s putting on an act here–as he’s clearly laughing at the end of the song; thus tye song breaks with the commercial music tradition of having a singer be identified as the protagonist of the song with a message that the listener is supposed “to get.”
I hope I’ve started to make the case for recognizing “Heroin” as a complex piece of art that could only be seen as dismissible by the creatively restrictive standards of the commercial marketplace.
Despite what I said the other day, it may not be possible to talk about VU without reference to originality. The whole idea of opening up new areas of lyrical subject matter, new ways of playing, and a sensibility that was new to rock, all of these things are essential to their identity.
One problem though is that few if any of us experienced this newness when it was new. I’m actually old enough to have done so, but I only heard VU becoming a fan of Reed’s first solo album and Cale’s Vintage Violence and Paris 1919. At that point in the early 70s VU albums were not even available, and music influenced by them, like Roxy Music and Eno, was just beginning. Iggy was not on anybody’s radar, not anyone I knew anyway. At some point (74 or 75?) I was the envy of my circle of music geeks for scoring a German import double LP with a random selection of VU’s music.
My point is that it’s strange to talk about this fresh approach VU brought to music, when it was only experienced long after it was fresh. It spoke to me some years after it had already begun germinating in other people’s heads, but it’s those people (the mid 70s art rockers, then the punks, and later the post-punks) who would really be the ones that spoke to me directly. My understanding and appreciation of VU has always been a process of understanding them as an historical presence.
It’s also true that part of their appeal is negativity, what they’re Not with a capital N. Not pretty, not happy, not nice, not melodic (not always), not successful, not pop, not necessarily beautiful just stoned. Negation as a successful artistic strategy is dependent on its opposite, so I’m not sure it’s possible to praise or admire VU without putting it up against all that it rejects.
I wish I wasn’t so busy and had more time to comment on this worthwhile discussion. I’m one of those fans who Big Steve suggests found the VU in retrospect. But they seemed to me at that time, along with Bob Dylan, to be originary points in opening up the context of what rock music could be. VU was from the first, for me, something of a roots band, in a different way than is usually meant.
In fairness to hrunndi, I don’t know how anyone could hear this band as “purely about the music.” In thinking about the band, he can’t escape his own poop-in-his-pants temper tantrum at what the band represents culturally, and while it’s fascinating to see his prejudices loosen his sphincter all over whatever good sense he might otherwise have, I think he’s right to feel that those aspects of the band are crucial to what it is: experimentation in life and music, hostility to mainstream music and cultural values, negativity, arty coolness. He really does get, in many ways, what the band was about, just like he does with Dylan. The opening up of lyrics, the new kinds of sound textures, etc, pretty much he just hates all that shit. He likes tightly constructed pop songs or rock star cock rock guitar swagger.
So in trying to talk him into noticing that the Velvets do with they do with excellence, originality, imagination, chops, texture, tone, dynamics etc may not get very far, because the fact is: he hates what they do. He’s not willing to separate what they’re trying to do from the way they do it.
At best, we might succeed in getting him to recognize that they succeed at what they set out to do. Bu we’re never going to get him to admit that it was right to do it.
Good points, Mwall. Along with what you say, I think it’s reasonable of us to expect that Hrrundi finally go through all the necessary work of better articulating his points on The Velvet Underground and distinguishing them from his points on Hippies and points on Dylan. I’m not the only one who’s a little unclear on what’s behind his disdain for all three, am I? However, it’s not important that I’m clear on this but that he is. In this way, I’m sure he’s already feeling like this is a helpful, if grueling, exercise.
Might the reason for disdain of the VU, hippies, and Dylan be that they all let the music play them, rather than trying to “hang on to their egos”?
A few quick points before I get back to work:
1. Oats, please re-read my post on the topic of Motorhead. I make no claim to Motorhead being at all similar to VU, nor to experiencing similar emotions while listening to them. Rather, I was noting that — when I feel like triumphantly giving the world the middle finger while driving through the streets of my home town — I find Motorhead does the job much more succinctly, and with less artsy bullshit, than the Velvet Underground.
2. Dr. John — man, you do this *every* time. When you want to show the world how great and brilliant and intelligent and subversive your fave rockers are… you just make shit up! Note that last paragraph of yours, where you ascribe wry satire to “Heroin” because Lou chuckles at the end. You think. I appreciate your vivid imagination, not to mention your ability to read the mind of an entire band because somebody coughs at the end of your favorite song, but come ON.
3. Mwall, don’t be painting me into a closed-minded box here. I find experimentation and a restriction-free approach to music *essential* to cultural growth and personal brain expansion. There are, in fact, many Velvet Underground songs that I really like for just this reason. I simply find the ones that everybody else sees as revolutionary to be largely stupid.
I had lunch today with Uncle Steve, and told him about this mighty battle I was undertaking for Rock Truth and Justice. He shared the same story that many of you have here — that he fell in love with the Velvets in college because they opened his brain up to new ways of hearing music. To his credit, he said he doesn’t listen to them much anymore.
Maybe the point is this: all the “Run Run Run”s in the VU catalog may have been revolutionary, to one degree or another. But so would walking my dog in the nude. Walking the dog starkers doesn’t lead to anything worth keeping, in the long-term history of dogs, parks, poo, and saying hello to your neighbor — and, to me, neither do the “listen to us, we’re so incredibly artsy and experimental” skronk-fests and half-written Lou Reed ditties so many of you make apologies for.
HVB
Point taken, but the basic thrust of my argument still stands: If you’re looking for the VU to do for you what Motorhead do for you, this intervention was over before it began. And most if not all of us never argued that VU’s greatness was about giving middle fingers in one’s car.
Well, hrunndi, your comments to me are potentially–potentially, I said–worth listening to here. But you’d have to answer two questions before I’d be willing to be less than very skeptical.
1) What are those VU songs that you like because they succeed in their experimentation? Please construct for us your “Hrunndi Successful VU Experimentation Canon.”
2) And what are some examples of other songs and other bands who succeed at the experimentation you’re claiming to admire “when it works”? And no, Motorhead isn’t a good answer.
I think I have this same exact double Lp. It was my introduction to VU, in fact. I got it when I was 18 and in my freshman year of college, though I got it at the record store I frequented the most in my high school years before I could legally drive, since it was within walking distance of my parents’ house. On the same day, I got a double Lp New York Dolls set with their 1st 2 albums. I’d already heard their 1st album at that point via a high school friend who taped it for me, but hadn’t heard anything else by them yet.
Anyway the VU album in question is called The Story of The Velvet Underground and is a double Lp that contains most of the material from their 1st 3 albums. It’s a Mercury/Polygram thing. The most annoying thing about it is that the liner notes are in German, so I’ve never been able to read them!
Hrrundi wrote:
Dude, you’re still going on about that song? I told you long ago that it was thrown out there for chum. There’s much more of substance that you could be chasing than the chum of the VU. Eyes on the prize!
Then Hrrundi wrote:
Watch it, man. You don’t have to work brown.
I do agree with Mwall that it would be helpful for you to post a list of a few songs by the band that you do actually like. You’ve had 6 years to articulate your beefs with this band. You’ve got all week to do so now. Take your time, but don’t be afraid to move the process along.
By the way, from your discussion with Uncle Steve, I think the three of us would be in agreement that this is a band best gotten into when young. I put them in the same category with Catcher in the Rye or The Graduate or pot. You probably wouldn’t want to meet someone who’s really getting into any one of these things for the first time after the age of 30. I mean, unless they dropped in from some sheltered, third-world nation or another planet. That said, as I think Mwall and some others have tried to put it, I think your real challenge is trying to explain how the band failed or succeeded at doing what it did, which in its time was – by hook or by crook – mostly uncharted in rock ‘n roll and moving to many future rock fans.
Mwall, you’ll have to wait for my answer to your first question. I plan to reveal everything after all of you have had your fun cramming me into whatever sized box you prefer.
As to the second: shoot, there are so many artists who I appreciate because they took risks and advanced the cause through experimentation. Here are just a few:
1. Motorhead
2. The Minutemen
3. Thom Bell
4. Brian Wilson
5. The Beatles
6. James Brown
7. Antonio Carlos Jobim
8. Barry White
9. Bob Marley
10. Buddy Emmons
11. Buddy Holly
12. The Clash
13. Prince
14. Chuck Berry
15. Elvis Presley
16. Curtis Mayfield
17. Public Enemy
18. Jimi Hendrix
19. Stevie Wonder
20. Marvin Gaye
21. Parliament/Funkadelic
22. Ray Charles
Now THOSE are people who took huge risks and made my world a much better place to live!
That’s great, Hrrundi, but Day 2 is halfway over. I’m sure you’ll answer all questions in due time. Carpe diem!
That’s a pretty interesting list, hrunndi, and pretty telling too for its definition of “experimentation.” With a few borderline exceptions, sometimes in the direction of extended jamming and sometimes in the direction of larger suites, almost all these “experimenters” are people who wrought changes within a conventional notion of tonal beauty and the conventional structure of the pop/rock/soul song. Your idea of experimentation (and again, with some minor exceptions) seems to be that the music can expand the normal structures of the genre and tones generally accepted as “pretty,” but not deeply fuck with them. It’s an aesthetic conservative’s idea of what experimenting would mean. I don’t mean that as a criticism of these musicians, who I also like, and who are certainly very inventive. But I’m afraid you haven’t countered my earlier point, and in fact your post here confirms what I said: you don’t like VU because of what they’re trying to do. You don’t want them to do what they do, and you don’t think it can be done. I understand that it’s a music/moral issue for you–you don’t think what they do is “right.”
I think I’m entirely clear on what’s behind his disdain for all three. All of them are examples of the 60s “going too far,” and they’re closely linked to a common cultural conservative reading of the 60s as a time mainly of too much self-indulgence. Hippies care too much about their own emotions and not enough about maintaining the good structures of American society; VU and Dylan care too much about being arty and original and not enough about maintaining the good structures of American pop music.
Now, I don’t say that hrunndi has no wrinkles in this analysis–he’s not a cliche to that degree–but in essence this is what it comes down to. So I’m not so mystified. He’s a values guy, and he knows what he values, and I can respect it to that extent without agreeing with those values. My only confusion sometimes is why he won’t admit to the fact that for him it’s about values and not simply technique. Why not be proud of it, if that’s what you think? Instead he’s got to weasel around and claim that he can’t be characterized.
Experimentation is a continuum, mwall. It cannot be defined. Past a certain point of purposeful chaos, I do not enjoy it. This, however, does not mean I don’t understand, or even, at a certain level, appreciate it. But that kind of appreciation is a very personal thing. Playing “Sister Ray” at top volume out your dorm room window says more about your insecurities and need for acceptance than my preference for order in the sounds that enter my brain through my ears.
Note that when I say “you” I mean the general “you” — or, perhaps, the “Rock Town Hall College Years You.”
I strongly urge you to check out “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” or “Fire” for a reality check on Brian Wilson’s “pretty”-ness. Not that I enjoy those two numbers. They’re just as big a failure as “Sister Ray” was.
Is that pipe tobacco I smell?
Experimentation can’t be defined? Now who’s walking the dog naked?
Experimentation can be defined precisely because what’s conventional can also be defined. By definition, experimentation plays around with and/or defies the expected. Now I agree that doesn’t make the expected automatically bad and the experimental automatically good, but what it does mean is that they’re related to each other.
Just FYI, every now and then in the world of literature or art or music, someone will say, “The reason that my art is experimental is because I do exactly what is expected, and so my experimental work has an experimental view of what’s experimental.” Which just goes to show, I suppose, the lengths people will go to prove that they’re cool and new when they have no idea what that might mean.
By the way, I think the concept you’re reaching for is one I’d like to define here someday, and which I’ve often used elsewhere: amorphous blob.
Amorphous blob doesn’t understand enough about conventional structures to be conventional, and it doesn’t understand enough about experimental structures to be experimental. It think it’s getting outside of all sorts of uncool things but it’s really just a lump.
So, let’s agree, hrunndi, that you feel Sister Ray is an amorphous blob. Yes?
Don’t try to put him in a box, man!