DB's Song of the Day (day 300): "SOME KINDA LOVE" (1993) Velvet Underground

Today marks the first anniversary of the death of Lou Reed. Last year, when the news hit, I wrote a tribute and so far on this series I’ve posted on three Reed songs, two he recorded in his solo career, and one on the first Velvet Underground album. For today, I’ve selected a song from the Velvet Underground reunion that took place in 1993 for a short European tour—and the album drawn from three concerts, three nights in Paris. It seems to me fitting as Reed and guitarist Sterling Morrison are both gone (Morrison since 1995) and so why not pay tribute to the most recent time when all the original VU members worked together?

What’s more, because John Cale was only on the first two Velvet Underground albums, and since I prefer the third album, without him, to the second album (the songs on Velvet Underground, 1969, are simply better than the songs on White Light/White Heat), it’s of interest to me to hear this live treatment of “Some Kinda Love” (originally on the third album) as though it’s a second album song. Get it? White Light/White Heat is the noisiest VU album; Velvet Underground is the quietest. In 1993, the “noise” factor is increased considerably, with Morrison doing one of his more extended guitar solos and Cale coming in at the end with a wonderfully disjointed electric piano solo.

Lou’s vocals can be a bit erratic on the released recording of the shows, as he seems to want to treat words as excuses for dragging out syllables, as though he’s trying to create a melodic line, when we all know that Reed’s great gift as a singer is to sound as though melody were the furthest thing from his mind. Oftentimes in his career he more or less talks rhythmically, but I suppose the rigors of playing live made him feel an urge to work his vocals a bit more.  His approach is particularly extreme on “Beginning to See the Light” where you’re happy for Cale’s attempt to deliver “how does it feel to be loved” more or less straight while Lou does his vocal hiccups.

“Some Kinda Love” suffers a bit from the tendency, but in general Reed keeps his eye on the ball, probably because it’s one of the more interesting lyrics from his VU days. In fact the opening verse is so good, it’s worth quoting in full: “In some kinds of love,” Marguerita told Tom, / “Between thought and expression lies a lifetime / Situations arise [here “evolve”] / Because of the weather / And no kinds of love / Are better than others” / La-di-ta-ta-ta

There you have two little comments that amount to something of a philosophical position. One is that “love” is something that must find its proper expression—and that the quest to find the right occasion might take a lifetime. Your expression may lag far behind your conception, in other words. The second statement is in two parts: the part about situations and the weather is a way of saying that there’s a certain je ne sais quoi to what makes love “happen,” and what makes love “depart.” It comes and goes, we might say, like the weather, but there’s also a certain pragmatism embedded in that in the same way that, y’know, you dress according to the weather. Similarly do you make up your mind how to “dress” appropriately for the “situations” of love. Finally, there’s a very open-minded embrace of whatever might arise (or evolve), as no kinds of love are better than others. A flat out statement not simply of equanimity but also of equality. As Andy Partridge says in “Peter Pumpkinhead”: “Any kind of love is alright.” How could one condemn an actual love?

The song goes on in this vein with Marguerita giving Tom the what-for. Going so far as calling him “a bore”—“but in that you’re not charmless.” One imagines that this is not an usual position as women can find bores charming much as men can find bitches charming, when the mood (or the weather) thus strikes. Though the end of Marguerita’s magnanimous gesture toward the lovableness of a bore ends with “and some kinds of love are mistaken for vision.” Which should give us a pause if we feel inclined to give ourselves too much credit in this romance biz. I take the sentiment to suggest that, though you might feel you are a giving person in allowing for the charm of bores, you are still self-serving. Love is a dish, we might say, that one cooks for oneself, then looks to find someone else who shares the taste and the appetite for the concoction.

The bridge, about putting jelly on your shoulder to do what you fear most, is odd but it leads to one of those moments when Lou Reed gets a bit more forthcoming than usual: “that from which you recoil but which still makes your eyes moist.” There you have his typical perversity, which might be something of an oxymoron. Reed knows that the thing that makes you uneasy is the thing you secretly crave, or at least is the thing to which you have a strong visceral connection and his point here is that “some kinda love” can be unpleasant, and make you anxious, and make you like that jelly. “Lie down upon the carpet / Between thought and expression / Let us now kiss the culprit.” I guess we’re a little closer to seeing the thought made flesh, so to speak.

The version of the song on Velvet Underground has a distinctive swirling guitar sound and a very lambent vocal from Reed. And that’s fine, but I like hearing the song become, live in ’93, one of those epic workouts I love so much on Live ’69 (also, sans Cale). So let’s hear it for the reunited VU even if it was just for the money. And let’s hear it for our lost Lou and his thoughts and expressions.

DB's Song of the Day (day 73):"ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES" (1967), Velvet Underground

Let’s hear it for 1967. This month (two days ago) in that year, Velvet Underground with Nico was released. Also known as Peel Slowly and See, it’s the album with the iconic banana on the cover, silkscreened by Warhol, that you were supposed to be able to peel slowly and reveal . . . a naked banana. And them’s good eatin’.

Today’s song was, in shortened form, released as a single in 1966. The album version is the only version I know (apart from the demos). I chose it today because it’s the definitive song featuring Nico’s vocals, as well as the kind of dirge-rock sound that VU patented. And so much since has come from there.

It’s in those tom-toms and tambourine of drummer Moe Tucker; it’s in the “prepared piano” of John Cale, who doubles on bass; it’s in the echo-y recording quality, with Nico double-tracked to sing with herself. That almost expressionless vocal with the Teutonic accent—it sounds both icy and crisis-y. Could anything be more perfect for a song about having to dress up for parties when costuming is so important? It could be your poor girl wanting to wear what’s required—think of proms, think of belle of the ball attire, or think of Goth accessorizing, maybe—but it could also be your poor TS having to put together a costume that would make him a her. In any case, what stays in play is that “hand-me-down gown / Of rags and silks / A costume / Fit for one who sits and cries / For all tomorrow’s parties.”

When Cale sings the vocal on the demos, it has a more madrigal-like feel, so that the costuming starts to seem like something vaguely medieval. That’s not unfitting either, for the Sixties, where being a folk princess was all the rage. But that’s not the case on the released version where Nico’s inflections seem to befit the reigning Ice Queen. All the more effective, then, that this song dwells on someone who will “cry behind the door.”  Or “cry beh-hiiind dadore.” We get a glimpse of how Cinderella felt after midnight, y’know, with that pumpkin and one less glass shoe.

The song was also covered by Nick Cave (artist featured yesterday) on his very interesting LP Kicking Against the Pricks. One might surmise that all the artists he covers are “the pricks”—no, not that kind of prick, though maybe, if you like, but rather the “pricks” the Bible speaks of when Christ says to Saul that it is “hard to kick against the pricks”—or “goads.”  Y’know, the annoying, stinging pricks that guide the ox where it must go . . . . So, let’s consider VU a “goad” for Nick, and for so many others (though, yeah, Lou could be a prick, and let’s not get started on Andy . . .).  Anyway, here’s the link because Nick does it full justice with an even stronger sense of its dense, metronomic drone, and lots of cool effects.

The VU version is actually somewhat sweet. Which, oddly, is true of all the songs Nico sings on the LP. What makes those numbers particularly interesting, to me, is that they are like negative versions of the typical chanteuse type songs that girl singers were singing all over the radio back then (think of someone like Lulu, or Joey Heatherton, or Nancy Sinatra), all those blonde pop girl voices, and then if you add those Specter-produced tunes with girl groups. . . You can see how off-kilter Nico is, where, as here, she drones rather than croons. But it’s still got something so Sixties about it. Cue the montage of Mary Quant originals.

Time has only improved the first Velvet Underground album. When I first heard it in 1976 or 1977, I preferred the VU of Live ’69. The pressing I had left a bit to be desired. I can vouch for the re-issued mono LP as the best you can expect to find, now. The stereo re-issue for the VU CD box set is good too. There is no album that better establishes, aurally, the brave new world of rock to come. Velvet Underground with Nico is a one-time deal, like most works of art. Even though promulgated by Pop meister Warhol, who believed religiously in the work of art as mechanical reproduction, the first VU album, though certainly endlessly reproducible, in that sense, was impossible to duplicate, in the sense of “do another,” though it was, in so many ways, imitated.

For me, the sound of this album is like the sunshine you see in black-and-white movies from the mid-Sixties. It’s so gone, and yet it’s still there. And there is a little memory frisson that tells me I once shared that time, though not that place (New York). And that’s important because, if you were then, you know how nothing like this album already existed. Now, there’s so much “like” it, it’s kind of hard to see this clearing for all the trees around it. And yet it’s there, then. It’s the first album, the only album, by the Velvet Underground with Nico.  And it’s forty-seven fucking years old.

Nico, Andy Warhol, Moe Tucker, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale, in CA

THROUGH THE YEARS, 1

Spread at five year intervals from 40 years ago to 25 (the era of my childhood and youth), I've selected albums for each month to cover the years that, for me, trace the Golden Age of Rock (not rock'n'roll per se -- whose Golden Age was arguably the '50s, early '60s) to the debut of my age group. The Golden Age of Rock is essentially the era in which The Beatles and The Stones (aka, The British Invasion) came to maturity. The Beatles broke up and The Stones -- like all the great bands of that era -- went into decline, but that decline was in some ways delayed by the second Golden Age: the era of punk and New Wave that surfaced in the late '70s and played itself out in the early '80s. By the mid to late '80s the decline of that initial rock impetus was complete and the New Wave had, in most instances, been subsumed into the slick digital processed rock of the era. Grunge and lo-fi and a few notable mavericks kept the game alive into the '90s at which time many of papa's heroes enjoyed a resurgence. But that tale is best left to those who were college age at the time.

40 years ago: Jan. 1967
This is a landmark year for several reasons, not least of which is the appearance of this record: Andy Warhol presents The Velvet Underground with Nico (aka Peel Slowly and See). I was eight in 1967 so I can't claim that I experienced this album in its own time. Ten years later, toward the end of high school, this album offered itself to me as a discovery of where two mavericks, Lou Reed and John Cale, got their start in collaboration.

It took me ages to warm to Nico's vocals -- and I use the word "warm" for its appositeness to the feeling her voice creates in its resolute unwillingness to register any emotion. These days I can get as misty as anyone when I hear her icy Teutonic tones on the soundtrack to The Royal Tenenbaums because in the interim the woman died (but not before I saw her live in New Jersey opening for Cale), but also because, more importantly, the sound of the songs on which she sings ("Femme Fatale," "All Tomorrow's Parties," "I'll Be Your Mirror" -- the latter two trademark Lou meditations on "the girl" with nothing to wear and nothing to say and so no identity, who, as mirror, can only reflect what the others want her to be, but which is also a kind of ars poetica for the singer who will reflect only what he sees: what Cohen called "beautiful losers" losing the best way they can) define the late '60s ambiance of this album for me. It's all about trying to warm cold water flats in Chelsea with a colorful parade of personalities poised to be famous in the Underground . . . or in Warhol's Factory. How can you not feel nostalgic for a time, place and style you never got to experience but which left its aura on virtually everything hip bohemia would pine for ever after?

The Underground, that amorphous concept of the '60s, could breed so many self-styled creations that would later be called "alternatives" and yet maintain a kind of checklist of what's de rigueur, at least in NYC. And Lou checks 'em off: alienation, promiscuity, decadence for its own sake, hard drug use (definitely NOT psychedelic!), cross-dressing, homosexuality, S/M, a cult of beauty, a cult of death ("death is the mother of beauty"), intellectual and creative pretensions -- at a time when, as he says in a later song, "poets studied rules of verse and the ladies roll their eyes," his lyrics for "Black Angel's Death Song" retain a touch of Dada, while Cale's sonic contribution -- like the smashed glass in "European Son" -- adds elements of the actual avant-garde, rubbing shoulders for the first time with rock'n'roll.

Lou began his songwriting career as a doo-wopper and those roots are audible here, especially in the tracks Nico sings on, so that the album at times showcases a kind of Brill building apocalypse: like theater pieces that end-up off Off-Broadway, these songs would never make it with the masses and can only find their place in the Underground, where they gain immeasurably by maintaining allegiance to a brittle innocence on the edge.

My two favorites are "Sunday Morning" and "Waiting for My Man" -- one of the greatest A/B pairings imaginable -- think of it as the underground version of "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane": "Sunday Morning" gives us the angst (a big buzz-word après le guerre) of "the wasted year so close behind" while "all those streets you crossed not so long ago" signal not only the changes of the identity parade but also the Heraclitean flux of time's stream. Like Sisyphus' stone (in Camus' account), Sunday morning always comes 'round again and the crushing weight of the past resurfaces. The feeling is not so much "it's nothing to get hung about" as: what a bittersweet and wonderfully melancholic feel it is to get hung about it: "we must imagine Sisyphus happy" though "I got a feeling I don't want to know": a feeling that hangs over the day, precipitating the hard drug use that will recommence the cycle.

"Waiting" is much more upbeat because, like "Penny Lane," it's a story of the street, but in this case it isn't the whimsy of how surreal psychedelics make the quotidian as in McCartney's tune, but rather how anxiously the addict waits for his fix, while still presenting the danger ("hey white boy, what you doin' up town?") and the distress ("the first thing you learn is that you always gotta wait") as a kind of adrenalin rush that precedes the heroin rush ("he's got the works/gives you sweet taste") and then "you're feelin' fine/until tomorrow, but that's just some other time" -- the "tomorrow" that will surface sooner or later as "Sunday morning."

And of course there's "Heroin," one of the best songs Lou ever wrote, implying that drug addiction is expressive -- in part ego-assertion, in part escapist fantasy, in part social protest, in part an inner quest -- and, on this album, accompanied by Cale's electric viola pyrotechnics. As they say, "a must!"

When I'm rushing on my run/ and I feel just like Jesus' son
And I guess that I just don't know/ oh, and I guess I just don't know
--Lou Reed, "Heroin" (1967)