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Post by bowiglou on Sept 20, 2005 15:18:22 GMT -5
touche
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Post by Kensterberg on Sept 20, 2005 15:44:54 GMT -5
Luke -- was it your first dance "ever" (as in early on in your relationship) or your first dance at your wedding? If it was the former, that's kind of cool ... but if it was the latter, then I'm with Rocky, that's pretty weird.  Well, Ken, it was both, which is kinda part of the reason it turned out to be the wedding song. We thought the whole "first dance" thing was a bit cheesy, and we knew we'd both feel really stupid dancing in front of all those people, so we joked around about what to dance to until we came up with a song that was classy but super inappropriate. It's hard to explain...guess it's something just between she and I. The song was definitely more her idea than mine, though, but I certainly wasn't complaining. Well that's very cool then, Luke. As long as you guys were conscious of what you were doing, it's cool. And it is a gorgeous song, the kind that casual listeners (who don't pay any attention to Lou's perfect elocution throughout the song) could easily misstake for a real romantic piece. |
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Post by wayved on Sept 22, 2005 0:19:57 GMT -5
My votes for best VU albums:
1: Self Titled. It has "Candy Says" on it--the first song I heard by the Velvet Underground. "What do you think I'd see, if I could walk away from meeeeeee"-- The "doo doo wah"s on that song blew me away immediately. The first Velvet Underground album I heard after reading an article about them in a magazine somewhere in 1992. This shit was mysterious and crazy. I must have gone through 3 copies of this so far....
2. LOADED--I grew up in a tiny town. I couldnt even order this. A year after hearing the self titled I finally heard this--"Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll" blew me away. The rest of the songs--wait--theres"Who Loves the Sun"! Lot of dead double A batteries in the CD walkman.
Alot of people think theres "filler" on here--that may be true but to me its all good as gold.
3. White Light/White Heat--Someone (was it you Ken) said they had a 3 AM experience with this album? Well, that was me too. Couldnt sleep one night and put this one on on headphones! MISTAKE! I didnt sleep at all....I havent listened to this in a few years but you hafta admit "The Gift" is pretty terrible and cool at the same time, "Lady Godivas Operation" --"Sister Ray" pretty much sums it up. What an awesome album.
4. Velvet Underground and Nico -- I bought this a week after I bought the self titled album. My friends an I were going off to some party and stopped at a store on the way and inexplicably this was there for 6 dollars on cassette. Anyway since then I have bought it on CD Vinyl etc but it is still my least favorite. To this day I cannot listen to it all the way through--despite "Sunday Morning" and "Waiting For My Man"--this weekend I am going to, for the first time since this exact time in 1996-give it another shot. "European Son" and "Black Angels Death Song" just left me cold...Like I said, this may change....thanks to the people on this board. In lyrical proportions anyway--to be honest I thought "Venus in Furs" was shit cos I could not understand the whole aspect of the song--I felt that any man needing to feel dominated by a woman in that manner was asinine--and "Heroin" bored me to death. It felt to me like Lou Reed was not even speaking from experience. I did not know either way. Like I said its been over a decade since I put this on and actually listened to it. My opinion will change, I know it will. My rankings here will not.
Who here has a copy of SQUEEZE by VU? Someone posted it sucks--I had no idea it existed!
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Post by rockysigman on Sept 22, 2005 0:29:28 GMT -5
Who here has a copy of SQUEEZE by VU? Someone posted it sucks--I had no idea it existed! I used to be on a Velvet Underground email list. Someone from that list was kind enough to mail me a cassette copy he'd dubbed from his vinyl. And yeah, it's not good. Squeeze has largely been erased from the VU discography mainly because it really isn't a Velvet Underground album. Only two people play on the album: Doug Yule (wrote all the songs, vocals, guitar, bass, some piano) and Ian Paice (drums--yes, the drummer from Deep Purple). It was only released in England. Largely existed because when Lou Reed sued for total songwriting credit on Loaded (credit was initially given to the entire band), he won the songs but lost the rights to the name, so the VU's scumbag manager Steve Sesnick encouraged Yule to put a new band together. The initial post-Lou incarnation actually still included Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker. Sterl didn't stick around for long though, and Moe wasn't invited to go to England to record the album, so that was the end of her being in the band. I guess a couple of the replacement guys (Willie Alexander and Walter Powers) actually had a pretty good reputation as musicians in the Boston area though. There's a well circulated bootleg of the band fronted by Yule with Sterling and Moe still around, plus one of those two other guys (I don't remember which). I've never heard it, but its actually supposed to be pretty good. But yeah, Squeeze, for the most part is horrible, exept for maybe two songs that are merely bad. It probably would be better remembered if it had been called a Doug Yule solo album, which is really what it is, and not a Velvet Underground album. That's really the biggest knock on it. Although its closest in sound to Loaded as far as the original four VU albums go, it is way glossier and really a totally different style of guitar pop than that album is (although it does contain a "sequal" to "Sweet Jane" called "Jack and Jane". It's exactly as good as you'd expect). And it just really doesn't sound like the VU in any way. I actually heard a couple songs that Doug Yule did in the late '90s that I found floating around on the internet some time ago, and they were actually quite good, so it's not that Dougie doesn't have some songwriting talent. But I think it just wasn't the right album to be making at the time. Just out of curiousity, has anyone here ever heard the band American Flyer? The descriptions of their music that I've read really don't sound like they'd be up my alley, but the line up is really interesting: Doug Yule, Steve Katz (from Blood, Sweat & Tears), Eric Kaz (from Blues Magoos) and Craig Fuller (who was apparently in a band called Pure Prairie League who I have never heard of). |
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Post by rockysigman on Sept 22, 2005 0:41:08 GMT -5
Sorry for the length of that post.
Do you people see what happens when you get me talking about the Velvet Underground? I barely even listen to them much anymore, but it still all comes spilling out of me.
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Post by bowiglou on Sept 22, 2005 15:45:34 GMT -5
so Rocky, You're stuck on a desert island for a time a terminus.........what do you select? your top 2 VU albums or top 2 Lou Reed album or top 2 John Cale albums? (sorry no combining allowed on the island)
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Post by rockysigman on Sept 22, 2005 15:58:04 GMT -5
so Rocky, You're stuck on a desert island for a time a terminus.........what do you select? your top 2 VU albums or top 2 Lou Reed album or top 2 John Cale albums? (sorry no combining allowed on the island) I think I'd try to cheat by calling Peel Slowly and See one album. But if I couldn't get away with that, I think I'd take the first and third VU albums. Definately can't take my top 2 Lou Reed albums. Mainly because my #1 is Berlin, and if that was one of only two albums I had to listen to on a desert island, I imagine I'd kill myself pretty quickly. Would Cale's The Island Years count as one album? 'Cause that's only two discs, and I don't think that any of the three albums included on it are available on their own anymore. It's pretty much its own thing now. And what better to be a soundtrack for my time on an island that The Island Years. It's just so damn literal. |
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Post by Kensterberg on Sept 22, 2005 16:02:17 GMT -5
so Rocky, You're stuck on a desert island for a time a terminus.........what do you select? your top 2 VU albums or top 2 Lou Reed album or top 2 John Cale albums? (sorry no combining allowed on the island) I'm not Rocky, but I'm gonna answer anyways ... Like Rocky, I think I'd try to pass off Peel Slowly and See as one album. Once that got vetoed, I'd take The Velvet Underground and Loaded (Fully Loaded Edition) for mine. Or better yet, I'll take the discs from PSaS that contain each of those records. Love those outtakes. If I had to take two from Lou ... New York and New Sensations. At least I won't kill myself, and there's a solid and broad sonic pallet covered over those two records. |
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Post by Rit on Sept 22, 2005 16:35:36 GMT -5
i would take The Nico album for it's variety and layers of good sense, it would be playing as i constructed my shelter and cooked my rabbit stew.
i'd also take The self titled for its quiet resolve, to calm me down during those moments where i freak out thinking that no ship is going to come by and save me.
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Post by Rit on Sept 22, 2005 16:36:56 GMT -5
The two overriding traits of the Velvets are their sincerity and their prankishness. I can't think of a better 1-2 combo
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Post by Kensterberg on Sept 22, 2005 16:47:36 GMT -5
See, I'd just want Loaded to dance with the island girls, and The Velvet Underground should provide an appropriate sound track for subsequent activities.
I thought of you as everything I had but could not keep.
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Post by Rit on Sept 22, 2005 16:55:16 GMT -5
ahh, very cunning. you honed in on the most important essentials to keep in mind on a desert island. kudos.
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Post by Rit on Sept 22, 2005 16:56:51 GMT -5
among the seduction songs on the two albums i'd bring is "Venus In Furs" not guaranteed to win the island babes, eh?  |
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Post by Kensterberg on Sept 22, 2005 17:04:41 GMT -5
Just play The Black Angel's Death Song and you'll clear the hut for sure ...
Meanwhile, we'll be relaxing to Oh! Sweet Nothin' and Jesus ... those island babes will be flocking to my beach.
;D
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Post by Rit on Sept 22, 2005 17:16:05 GMT -5
that's okay. i'll just enthrall them back to my side of the beach with tales of inner city urban life amongst a certain middle-class slumming bohemian set, and i'll wow them with parables of Warholian decay, and hence transform myself into a Colonel Kurtz type figure, and pretty soon i'll have a sect of the islanders offering vegetable sacrifices and statues to me, at which point i'll finalize the one thing that all those loony messianic leaders ever want in the first place... ..i'll set up the most bangingest most mad-props Harem ever seen at that island, and you Ken, will be out of luck, for i will have the monopoly  |
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