Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

no way is the man wearing "beat-up shoes," wtf Keef

XP Found the full quote:

Dave: "You know when you have a cockroach and they run round the house and get into a corner? We used to have these shoes called PRFCs - Puerto Rican Fence Climbers, okay? And this was aptly titled because if you were running from the police or what have you, and you were wearing your PRFCs, you could hit the fence at a dead run and your foot would stay in and you could commence climbing immediately, which was the essence of the whole sport anyway. And these were also great shoes for when the cockroach moves into the corner and you get at it with your foot or the broom anymore. You just jam your toe into the corner and hit as hard as you can. And if you did it right you got the full bug. So this slang means bammm! - you have to give it everything you've got. Make the maximum effort, do everything possible, get the full bug."

yeh I always thought it was Dior shoes as well

much amused by this song by 1977 punk jokers The Snivelling Shits, which is Waiting for the Man but the lyrics are about his love for crap UK soap opera Crossroads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhjWdz541wM

but is anybody with access to liner notes from the "Between Thought and Expression" box able to confirm what Lou actually wrote?

It's not the liner notes to the box, it's in his book of lyrics of the same name. It's literally just an asterisk next to the line "PR shoes" with "* Puerto Rican Fence Climbers" written at the bottom of the page.

thank you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eihW4LdR6yw

Lou explains the reference mid-song (2:23)

great, thanks for this as well

New very chopped up version of "I'll Be Your Mirror" bgm on some corny-ass Expedia TV CM.

decided to put together one of my periodic "covers of an album" mixes with the third velvet underground record. realized some of the best covers i had were live so set an extra challenge of putting in all live versions. tends towards the classic rock side, including folks who are not super in vogue right now, but i'm going with it anyway

ANOHNI - Candy Says (2003-06-26): one of the most beautiful fucking things ever. it just means so much to me. lou reed's last live performance was accompanying a gender non-conforming femme (ANOHNI is a trans woman but Lou wouldn't have known that) singing lou's song about candy darling. candy died about five years after the song was written at the age of 29. ANOHNI is, i don't know, 52 or 53? her actual birthdate isn't a matter of public record. i'm 48. i came out and transitioned at age 43. i think it's beautiful that ANOHNI, who sang this song with Lou Reed at his last performance, can sing this song _now_. for me as a trans woman, i have a _lineage_, i see a lot of trans women as having a _lineage_, and ANOHNI's goes right back to Candy Darling.

The Dils - What Goes On (1978-08-05): this version goes on _forever_, which is how long "What Goes On" should last in my book. It doesn't last as long as the Velvet Underground playing it at the Hilltop Festival (which is also one of the greatest things of all time), but it's a good eight minutes. Heavenly.

Spacemen 3 - Some Kinda Love (1986-03-06): Kind of a weird choice for them, this is the only recording of them doing it. It actually suits their playing style really well! This listen through, this lyric hits the most: "Let us do what you fear most / That from which you recoil but which still makes your eyes moist." I guess in the past I've had a hard time getting past "Put jelly on your shoulder". I still have no idea what the fuck kind of sex act that's supposed to be. I guess it doesn't matter. The rest of the lyric, I'm still working really hard on that. Shame is a challenging thing. If Lou recoiled from lying on the carpet for whatever reason, well, I hope he was able to do that anyway.

Hole - Pale Blue Eyes (1992-02-11): I don't know too much about Hole, honestly. I know a lot of people hate Courtney Love. I know a lot of people give a lot of women a lot of shit they wouldn't give men. I know plenty of people dismiss Courtney Love as being a talentless grifter. I know she got married a little over a week after this performance. I know this performance fucking kills.

Smog - Jesus (2001-12-10): Everybody wants to do this as a gospel song. Maybe a Peel Session is cheating. Birds. I don't know. Birds. ANOHNI's breakthrough record was "I Am a Bird Now". One of Bill Callahan's most beloved records is "Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle", the album he ends by singing "It's time to put God away". Those are the two records I think of when I think of birds and music. Mostly I think of birds by their absence. I feel like Bill Callahan best conveys the complexity and ambiguity of the song's approach to Christ.

Bettie Serveert - Beginning to See the Light (1997-11-27): I genuinely feel that Bettie Serveert are the best interpreters of the Velvet Underground's music ever. Yes, better than the Feelies. Somewhere I have a bunch of really great performances of Velvets songs that aren't on this '90s album, and I like them even better, if anything. This performance, though, is the one that kicks off their album of Velvets covers, and it's a corker of an opening.

Thom Yorke and Beck - I'm Set Free (2002-02-26): Yorke and Beck are both... complicated people. As far as I know this is the only time they performed better. Some charity benefit or another.

The Feelies - That's the Story of My Life (2018-10-13): Just because I feel that Bettie Serveert are the best interpreters of the Velvet Underground doesn't mean I'm not incredibly fond of the Feelies. This is one of those songs that doesn't get covered a lot... Serveert and the Feelies are both good at highlighting the hidden gems in the Velvets' catalog. I'm not saying "That's the Story of My Life" is a hidden gem. It's just kind of... there, you know? I can't imagine the album without it, though. One of the parts the whole is bigger than the sum of.

Pete Hayes (of The Figgs) and The Maybe Sump'ms - The Murder Mystery (2013-11-20): No, I have no idea who these people are. All I know about them is that _they performed the Murder Mystery live_, and really, come on, who's going to _do_ that? It's the Revolution 9 of Velvet Underground songs, except not quite, because "The Murder Mystery" is a song that one _can_ theoretically perform live the way they do it on the album. It's just _really fucking hard_. So whoever these people are - mad respect to them. For the record I fucking _love_ "The Murder Mystery". Again, I can't imagine the album without it.

The White Stripes - After Hours (2000-12-21): Another complicated one. Being a woman in rock is complicated. Particularly Meg White. She's a rock drummer who sings sometimes, and isn't a virtuoso at either but has a lot of charm and personality, and it's kind of... easy to kind of push her into the Maureen Tucker role. And she's not. I don't know _who_ she is, really. I don't have the right to know who she is. She lives her life out of the public eye, but people do put pressure and expectations on her that aren't, I don't think, fair to her. So I'm conflicted about featuring one of her performances in this context. Still, it is a performance, and it has been publicly released. It's just a performance, though. That's all.

Most of these performances are officially released in some form. The Spacemen 3, Smog, and Thom Yorke & Beck performances aren't, that I'm aware of, but should be reasonably easy to track down. The Pete Hayes and Maybe Sump'ms performance isn't either, but it's available on Youtube, presumably with authorization.