You lot are going to hate me for this but: can you explain me the appeal of the Velvet Underground?

This is why I haven't actually listened to my VU LPs since I left college/The Strokes appeared on the horizon.

Oh, and What Goes On... it's been too long since I heard that song. Someday I shall use my music editing techniques to produce a 60-minute uber-version by editing all the live versions together, and then I shall die happy and have that played at my funeral.

They were wild like the USA
A mystery band in a New York way
Rock and roll, but not like the rest
And to me, America at it's best
How in the world were they making that sound?
Velvet Underground.

A spooky tone on a Fender bass
Played less notes and left more space
Stayed kind of still, looked kinda shy
Kinda far away, kinda dignified.
How in the world were they making that sound?
Velvet Underground.

Now you can look at that band and wonder where
All that sound was coming from
With just 4 people there.

Twangy sounds of the cheapest types,
Sounds as stark as black and white stripes,
Bold and brash, sharp and rude,
Like the heats turned off
And you're low on food.
How in the world were they making that sound?
Velvet Underground.
Like this...

Wild wild parties when they start to unwind
A close encounter of the thirdest kind
On the bandstand playing, everybody's saying
How in the world were they making that sound?
Velvet Underground.

Well you could look at that band
And at first sight
Say that certain rules about modern music
Wouldn't apply tonight.

Twangy sounds of the cheapest kind,
Like "Guitar sale $29.99,"
Bold and brash, stark and still,
Like the heats turned off
And you can't pay the bill.
How in the world were they making that sound?
Velvet Underground.

Both guitars got the fuzz tone on
The drummer's standing upright pounding along
A howl, a tone, a feedback whine
Biker boys meet the college kind
How in the world were they making that sound?
Velvet Underground.

Wild wild parties when they start to unwind
A close encounter of the thirdest kind
On the bandstand grooving, everybody moving
How in the world are they making that sound?
Velvet Underground.

RS also OTM. It *is* OK not to like them. But make sure you don't dislike them for all the wrong reasons.

Listened to "Sunday Morning"; can *sort of* imagine it as a Brill Building choon, but can imagine it as a Beatles or Francoise Hardy track much better, so I dunno. Must re-listen.

Brill Building Pop, fake Motown and Bubblegum all conjure up very diferent musical directions for me (diferent from each other, that is. Tho diferent from VU also.)

Kate, will DL that track.

Before Kate said this, I was thinking, "Try The Velvet Underground." Of course, a good portion of the second side could still be a turn-off. (I don't think I would sit through the long "literary" song, the name of which eludes me.)

I'm all twisted up into ambivalent knots about the Velvet Underground. I still like a lot of their music (probably at least half of the tracks from their main releases, and some of the recovered stuff as well), but it's pretty far removed from what I normally listen to these days. My appreciation for anything droney started to wither away about ten years or so ago. Also, I don't like most of the bands that claim the Velvet Underground as forebears. I don't think they were really such a good influence. But they still made lots of good music, and they won my affection before I drifted away from their particular aesthetic, so stuck with liking them, even if they don't sit comfortably next to many of my other favorite rock bands (let alone anything else I listen to).

Lou Reed is Keith Richards:The Sequel. He's looked curmudgeonly for years and he will undoubtedly outlive us all.

I don't actually care about Lou Reed solo. According to my ex, he was an arsehole anyway, and actually stole his lunch.

I used to say the same thing.

I'm nonplussed. Is that the right word?

What Kate says about Lou as popster is bang on the money. After all - he used to write for others and is rooted in late 50's doo-wop etc. It shows.

And yes, the Morrison-Reed guitar interplay is stellar - I like it better when Cale had fecked off with his viola so that you can hear the beauty of it. Yule>>>Cale IMHO.

Dr C. you're wrongness is astonishing on so many levels... ::gapes:: and all the more irritating cause you agree with me on other things!

http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v253/catwank/john.gif

[/typical kate response]

dog laton comvinced me.
I lived in mistake.Fuck You VU.

It's one thing if people need to learn the historical/cultural context of a piece of music. Any demands for explanation beyond that... seems to be in opposition to much of the thrill of music entails.

Yeah. I liked the velvet underground from the first listen (VU & Nico when I was 16) and it was just: sound-wave into my ears and everything blew up. I knew little about them apart from the name and a bit about Andy Warhol at the time.

If I hadn't had that instant hit reaction, I don't think I'd like them at all. If a music is only interesting in theory, or only after analysis, that puts it down one level for me.

It's the same for Erik Satie for me.

But, none of this holds up if someone doesn't get the rush from the sound.

I dislike the basic idea of 'Bands you HAVE to listen to!' also and these often get promoted in that way

yeah, especially since that sort of attitude often comes with lots of ethnocentric assumptions, namely that rock music is at the center of the musical universe.

ethnocentric and just plain narrow-minded

Yup.

VU also pushed me away from rockist ideas and into popism, I think having listened to them and then looked into the story of how the records were produced, one can't seriously use the adjective 'manufactured' as a negative. (Personally, Nico made me like Blondie which made like Madonna)

White Light/White Heat sounds great on my car speakers.

cardamon socl

VU's magic for me lies in the atmosphere their songs evoke: strange times, strange places, strange frames of mind...but always accompanied with very down-to-earth human feeling. It's like you're getting transported somewhere and sinking into your heart at the same time.

There's nothing unusual about the fact that they don't charm everyone, because that "atmosphere" is a fragile, tenuous thing, and depends as much on what the listener brings by way of projection and expectation as on the sound the stylus picks up. That expectation in turn is also shaped by what else you've listened to. When I first heard VU, my diet consisted mostly of hard 70s rock and punk. I had just never heard anything like them before, so the impact was forceful, and those first impressions have a way of lingering.