Tag: Rock

The Velvet Underground – Loaded

Loaded

The Velvet Underground – Loaded Cotillion SD 9034 (1970)

“Sweet Jane” sums up the unbelievable scope of Loaded. With reverence for all the joys and sorrows of this world, compassion is what rises to the surface.

“Jack is in his corset/Jane is in her vest/ and me, I’m in a rock and roll band.”

Whether Jack or Jane is in the corset (seemingly each version transposes the two), the distinction is meaningless.  There are spectators, performers, pawns, poets, lovers, families, hypocrites, philosophers, dreamers, and more.  These simple categories simply don’t matter:

and there’s some evil mothers/ well, they’re gonna tell you everything is just dirt/ you know that, women never really faint/ and that villains always blink their eyes/ and that, you know, children are the only ones that blush/ or that life is just to die/ but anyone that ever had a heart/ oh, they wouldn’t turn around and break it/ and anyone that’s every played a part/ they wouldn’t turn around and hate it

The usual question and answer format of the Velvets’ earlier albums isn’t present on Loaded, but you can use your imagination.  The music is still there in one place or another.  People get by — that in itself can be glorious.  Maybe, as Arthur Rimbaud so eloquently stated, “Life is the farce all must perform.” The Velvets, with infinite compassion, simply take pleasure in the grand scheme of it all.  The greatest rock band faced imminent destruction while recording Loaded.  They certainly proved their conviction at the least.

Despite Atlantic/Cotillion Records’ every attempt to ruin Loaded, it still rocks.  Had the record company continued allowing full creative control, this album could have been one of those “top ten all-time”. Credit is due the Ahmet Ertegun for recognizing the group’s talents. Atlantic did initially consider signing the Velvets a prestigious “score,” but those feelings quickly changed.  Loaded took forever to complete as the Velvet Underground disintegrated as a band. Atlantic switched producers and rescinded much artistic control. This band could make the most innovative experimental rock if they chose to but instead, given the circumstances, made a great pop album.

The album loaded with possible hits. Yet, the original release had bizarre mixes that re-ordered and shortened songs (“New Age,” “Rock and Roll” and the unforgivable disservice done to “Sweet Jane,” otherwise one of the greatest modern rock songs ever).  There is no possible explanation for this.  When re-released on the “Fully Loaded Edition” reissue, the original mixes were restored.  Though the song order was never corrected, all the great songs are still there, somewhere.  The recordings of a few, like “Head Held High” still show an unreal studio awareness, with subtle textures and precise timing.  The final product is imperfect, but that gives Loaded a kind of underdog status in the Velvet’s catalog.

Lou Reed was on a fucking roll for Loaded.  Many of his most memorable lyrics are nicely contained on this one disc.  The largely autobiographical “Rock and Roll” is one of the great proclamations of the glory of rock music.  “Who Loves the Sun” starts the album off with a spat of disillusionment and sweet isolation.  Unlike the sonic attack of the Velvet’s first two albums, Loaded establishes them as pop song virtuosos the equals of other rock bands like The Beatles or The Rolling Stones.   “Lonesome Cowboy Bill,” about William S. Burroughs, is careening fun.  The Velvets had traditionally been a dark, bleak band, but only by choice.  Loaded conclusively proves their range included rock rebelliousness and pop sensibility as well, simultaneously.  It’s easy to yap about all the classic rock and roll songs found on this album, but it’s no use to state the obvious.

Sterling Morrison’s best guitar work is on White Light/ White Heat.  On Loaded, his influence is sparse but powerful.  Morrison always added humor to the Velvets.  He was an influence of humanity in the group.  Despite his crumbling faith in the group he turns in a few fine moments.  Doug Yule played some of the lead guitar parts.  Sterling adds the flavor to Loaded that makes it so fun.

Tension comes in simple, easy-to-grasp doses.  Doug Yule’s vocals falter at times (weakening the otherwise great tune “I Found A Reason”), but are generally strong (“Who Loves the Sun”).  Moe Tucker does not play drums due to pregnancy (it’s hard to reach drums around a baby). The obstacles were apparent. The way the Velvets forge ahead anyway is the real story behind Loaded.

Every force runs against the Velvets and they still prevail.  Thanks largely to Lou Reed’s songwriting genius as a profound lyricist; worldly computations and amputations (to use Reed’s vocabulary) do little to dampen the spirit of this great music. The Velvets keep their “Head Held High.”

Wouldn’t you be a bit disillusioned if you were the greatest rock band, but no one cared?  Loaded delivers everything a great rock album must:  catchy hooks, rebellious attitudes, and yes, it makes you want to jump up and play some rock and roll yourself.  Glory is attainable.  After hearing this album, you want to achieve it too.  You can; somehow it will all work out.

When Loaded failed to be the commercial hit it should have been and old frustrations lingered, the Velvets essentially broke up, continuing on only as essentially a new band with the old name.  More than a decade later, the music world retroactively identified the Velvet Underground as the pinnacle of rock music.  Time proves the Velvet Underground were always right, in a world that often wasn’t.  Like Arthur Rimbaud, respect came after their lifetime.  A reunion tour was short-lived.  Lou Reed’s ego destroyed the group more than once.  Fortunately, four studio records survived what the band’s members couldn’t.

I would say the original version of Loaded suffers from some ridiculous edits and remixes at the hands of the record label, but the Fully Loaded Edition and the Peel Slowly and See box nicely fix those problems.  So I recommend seeking out one of those reissues as opposed to the “original”.

Ray Davies – Other People’s Lives

Other People's Livs

Ray Davies – Other People’s Lives V2 VVR1035352 (2006)

Hey, an old guy making a rock album.  Get me out of here!  This kind of lends support to the truism that rock and roll is a young person’s game.  There are a few rock songwriters/performers who can successfully work into middle age and beyond (Lou Reed).  Ray Davies, Elvis Costello, The Rolling Stones and so many others are not among those few.  For those who don’t know, Davies was the principle songwriter of The Kinks, penning songs that had the trappings of rock counterculture but with lyrics that were surprisingly politically conservative, of a kind of right-leaning populism.  His version of counterculture was passed by long ago and this pathetic batch of songs is dreadful.

The Band – The Last Waltz

The Last Waltz

The Band – The Last Waltz Warner Bros. 3WS 3146 (1978)

Though sometimes deemed a “great album,” The Band’s Last Waltz is a humdrum affair that all too often relies on the mere presence of guest artists as a substitute for working toward interesting musical statements.  There are still a few choice performances.  “Helpless” with Neil Young, “Caravan” with Van Morrison, and “Life Is a Carnival” with just The Band are all quite good.  Bob Dylan‘s appearance is rather poor, on the other hand.  This would have been better as a single album than a triple one, and the movie made about the concert special seems crassly self-important.  It is worth mentioning that some songs from the concert film are not on the album, and vice-versa.  Some of the album tracks were also later overdubbed.  In 1976, when this concert was recorded, The Band’s style of “roots rock” no longer seemed to hold much relevance as the punks were well on their way and reveling in feel-good nostalgia seemed like a pretty tepid attitude in turbulent times.

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Trout Mask Replica

Trout Mask Replica

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Trout Mask Replica Straight STS 1053 (1969)

Imagine if Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Jack Kerouac, Luis Buñuel and Jackson Pollock joined Howlin’ Wolf’s blues band. The result would probably sound like something resembling Trout Mask Replica. Exuding a disjointed zaniness, the Captain [a/k/a Don Van Vliet] was unlike anything else out there. One of the watershed recordings of the 20th Century, this is essential listening (though his debut Safe As Milk makes the best introduction).

Though the Captain pays respect to free jazz legends, it is more a slapstick homage. He plays two saxophones simultaneously (vaudevillian and/or Rahsaan Roland Kirk-style) on “Ant Man Bee.” This happens while he manipulating textures like early Steve Reich compositions. While he couldn’t really keep up in a free jazz group, the point is that no one had ever combined such seemingly disparate elements into a package so moving.

Beat poetry is subtly and perfectly delivered over a variety of backdrops. Desert-styled blues on “China Pig,” “Dachau Blues,” and “Orange Claw Hammer” highlight the backbone of Trout Mask Replica. Twisted gospel on “Moonlight On Vermont” makes it a standout song. Most of the material doesn’t make sense out of context though. The lengthy 70+ minute album must be digested together.  Comparing “Frownland” to “Veteran’s Day Poppy” shows the range in just this one album and why it takes time to absorb.

The most interesting aspect of Captain Beefheart is his zany, surreal approach to American music. A child-like determination fuels his humor. He tackles difficult topics without sacrificing an underlying idealism. His commentary is poignant and always deeply respectful. The clarity of his vision is what seems so unreal. Captain Beefheart was a child art prodigy almost from birth. He only attended school for a half a day of kindergarten. He brought an outsider’s perspective to the table. Trout Mask Replica is music the Captain wanted to play. It takes advantage of every bit of his abilities.

This is Captain Beefheart’s masterpiece. It is a testament to total creative control (Frank Zappa produces, but this one goes beyond Zappa’s world). The Captain’s debut hinted at British Invasion blues-rock. This sophomore effort can only hint at some other dimension of music.  The ingredients sound familiar but the soulful mixture is unique. Arty experiments and beat poetry never quite found a stage so absent of elitism. Trout Mask Replica is the kind of album that doesn’t get old.

Pere Ubu – Dub Housing

Dub Housing

Pere Ubu – Dub Housing Chrysalis CHR 1207 (1978)

Pere Ubu was a remarkable band from an unlikely place. Hailing from Cleveland, Ohio, they created some of the most inventive music to come from the punk movement. While most groups remotely comparable at the time would be expected to come from England or New York, Pere Ubu almost single-handedly kept cutting-edge rock and roll alive in the Midwest (along with Debris’, and others). They emerged,along with patent punk stereotypes Dead Boys, from the demise of the queen mother of all cult bands, Rocket From the Tombs.

Cooperative performance and arrangements distinguished Pere Ubu from their ancestral roots. Tom Herman‘s amazing guitar work blends seamlessly with the rest of the group. Sometimes shaded by psychedelia, the atonal barrage works outside typical rock & roll form without losing the spirit. Pounding electronics massage thick beats. If rock is truly dance music, Pere Ubu can still satisfy. They go so much further though. Everything is a statement.

Singer David Thomas towers like Sleepy LaBeef and wails like Captain Beefheart.  Despite a limited vocal range, he did make use of every bit he had. Lyrics — the usual downfall of Midwestern bands — are legitimately interesting.  Something simple like drunken sailors missing their boat on “Caligari’s Mirror” is insightfully recast as a tale of inescapable waiting and an unbreakable connection to worldly moral disease (giving the Dr. Caligari folk tale echoes of Samuel Beckett). Without abandoning Midwest flavor, Pere Ubu works magic with their experience. Adopting a foreign persona is just unnecessary.

Dub Housing is often considered their masterpiece. Generally dark, a fairly constant wackiness avoids total bleakness. Old-fashioned rock and R&B crops up. It is more abstract than their debut album. Goofier. Weirder. Their take on “Drinking Wine Spodyody” is strikingly angular and dissolute. Allen Ravenstine‘s musique concrète manipulations are at their peak power. “I Will Wait” and “Blow Daddy-O” use the space of kraut rock in an American style. “Ubu Dance Party” is lively. It stays true to the spirit of old soul dance singles yet inverts the typical dance rhythm.

Pere Ubu played rock and roll in all its glory. They knew the pressure points and inner structure, well enough to bend the American rock demon to their will.  Unlike punk bands they destroy nothing. They leave rock & roll intact, reformed. Despite recording for a major label, Pere Ubu was largely a cult phenomenon. Their impact was as great as rock and roll ever produced.

Alex Chilton – Like Flies on Sherbert

Like Flies on Sherbert

Alex Chilton – Like Flies on Sherbert Peabody PS-104 / Aura AUL 710 (1979)

In 1983, Neil Young had a dust-up with his record label Geffen.  Upset that his krautrock-inspired album Trans (1982) sold poorly, they rejected his country album Old Ways (later released in 1985) and an executive insisted he record a “real” rock ‘n roll record.  Angered, Young went out and decided to make his next album Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983) by taking the executive’s statement quite literally.  So he made a collection of old rockabilly covers and soundalikes — the kind of “real” rock ‘n roll that reached its peak nearly three decades earlier.  It was this kind of nobly bratty behavior that made fans love Young.  But the resultant Everybody’s Rockin’ album was merely a competent genre exercise without any character of its own — though, in Young’s defense, the label did cut off the recording sessions before the last two songs were complete, leaving it short of his full vision.  So the album is frequently viewed as a lark, either (sympathetically) fun and forgettable or (unsympathetically) simply boring and anachronistic.  All this is relevant because in many ways it is the complete opposite approach to a very similarly bratty premise adopted by Alex Chilton on his solo debut album Like Flies on Sherbert (working title: Like Flies on Shit).

AllMusic Guide reviewer David Cleary had this to say about the album:

“Production values are among the worst this reviewer has ever heard: sound quality is terrible, instrumental balances are careless and haphazard, and some selections even begin with recording start-up sound. *** Many of the songs here stop dead or fall apart rather than ending properly. Instrumental playing is universally slipshod and boorish, and vocals are sloppy and lackluster.”

All of these comments raise the question, “by whose standards?”  Alex Chilton willfully disregards convention, employing improper, careless and sloppy techniques as a deliberate choice.  Don’t like it?  Fuck you.  Alex Chilton didn’t care.  He was going to either revolutionize music or be derided.  Right after Chilton’s death in 2010, former associate Chris Stamey recounted a story from the early 1980s when Chilton was working as a dishwasher in New Orleans, when a co-worker said, “Yeah, Alex, you’re right, and the rest of the world is wrong.”  Chilton reflected to Stamey, “You know, I think he was really on to something.”  What happened with Like Flies on Sherbert was very much to Chilton’s liking.  He once recalled to journalist Robert Gordon, “My life was on the skids, and ‘Like Flies on Sherbert’ was a summation of that period. I like that record a lot. It’s crazy but it’s a positive statement about a period in my life that wasn’t positive.”  It Came from Memphis (1994).  So, the conservative view is that Like Flies on Sherbert is a poorly recorded roots rock album like an album by The Band (Stage Fright, etc.).  But to be fair to this album’s premise it must be admitted that it embraces a rough, do-it-yourself aesthetic that is less overtly entertaining and more of a shared communion in outsider status.

Chilton had been living in New York city before recording the album, hanging around CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City.  He took to the punk ethos.  He didn’t play straight punk rock.  Rather, he obliquely incorporated the punk attitude into unraveled rock and roll, country and disco songs. The approach is often cited as a precursor to a lot of 1990s rock like Pavement, and even some 80s rock from bands like Flipper.  That was the thing with Alex, who always seemed to be working about 5-10 years in front of trends, creating and inspiring them without every really benefiting — ahem, capitalizing — from them.  The man’s career was a cautionary tale of the perils of success and the way that no amount of artistic brilliance can make up for lack of distribution and label support when it comes to making a living through music.

The album was released first on Peabody in the US, then shortly thereafter on Aura in the UK.  The UK version dropped “Baron of Love, Part II” and “No More the Moon Shines on Lorena” but added “Boogie Shoes.” It is probably appropriate that not even the track listing is deemed sacred here!  The wrecked KC & The Sunshine Band cover “Boogie Shoes” is a stronger opener than the talking blues “Baron of Love, Part II” but the rave-up of the 1931 Carter Family song “No More the Moon Shines on Lorena” is worth having in the mix.  Various reissues have appended some or all of the variant songs as bonus tracks.

With all the interest in dilapidated, lo-fi pop decades later, it seems that Like Flies on Sherbert deserves its due as pointing toward that same aesthetic of downward social mobility, and the ragged glory of penniless cultural sophistication.  In Holly George-Warren‘s biography A Man Called Destruction (2014) Alex is revealed as a Trotskyist who grew up in a bohemian household in Memphis, part of a burgeoning and uniquely Southern kind of leftist counterculture.  From such roots Chilton builds up a musical worldview that defends the dignity of every failure.  His music, perhaps like his politics, abhors competition, and finds a place for those who would otherwise be the losers right along those who would be kings and queens.  Taking such a stand is not the sort of thing that slides by in a society ruled by competition.

There is something of a choice given to people living under capitalism, though: become part of the system, or be crushed by it.  The system admits no one on terms other than its own.  But there is a third option, the one that Alex Chilton took.  He nominally goes along with the system.  On occasion, he’ll even smile as he does.  But then, he goes and defiles everything that the system values.  This is not a frontal attack.  It is something entirely different.  It is more of a decay from the inside.  The idea is to introduce an irritant or pathogen, like a virus, that the system can’t fight and instead must eject to save itself.  Think about this for a moment.  The idea is to be insufferable!  On Like Flies on Sherbert that is accomplished through a kind of sonic tantrum.  And what a tantrum!  Chilton had an interest in psychoanalysis (and horoscopes).  During the May 1968 uprisings, students graffitied walls with psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich‘s name (Chilton was an admirer too) and threw copies of his The Mass Psychology of Fascism at police.  Alex’s music was not far off, though it was like a rebellion standing in one place.  It simply transforms its own self-identity to be something that passively irritates the system.  From a place of disappointment and hopelessness, it forges something that breaks with those conditions.  They key is that like an irritant or pathogen that the body tries to reject, or a puzzle piece that simply is the wrong shape and must be set aside, the “system” that is the music industry casts off music like this.  Once outside the system itself, a space is created that the system doesn’t try to crush (perhaps for fear of contamination).  This is the genius of people like Alex Chilton.

Music like this does something akin to what Jean Genet‘s writing did: it takes the standards of a society that rejected the author/performer and willingly pursued what it deemed vices (Genet wrote in Journal du voleur [The Thief’s Journal]: “Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating: they can breathe it.”)  Its methods also recall the way filmmaker John Cassavetes worked: recording uninterrupted, fleeting performances that would never occur if the relentless, self-conscious drive for unblemished takes took precedence over spark and spontaneity.  It may not quite be détournement, because it doesn’t claim to be a complete reversal of the prevailing order and accepts participation in it, but it is still close.  This is worlds away from what Chilton did with The Box Tops and Big Star.

It makes sense that this album arrived in its own time.  Chilton was a product of the 1960s counterculture, not as a leading advocate but as someone carried along with it.  He suffered as the counterculture and the New Left incurred political losses.  As in the 1970s, he found that opportunities dried up and that years of partying and hedonism didn’t add up to much.  The punk attempt to break off from corporate commercial imperatives appealed to his sensibility.  But as a southerner he was kept somewhat at arm’s length by many of the punks (and their record labels and venues).  So he did his own thing, which at arm’s length didn’t have to adopt all the same feedback and power chords of typical punk rock, but instead looked back to vintage rock ‘n’ roll, blues and country/folk.

A song like “I’ve Had It” recalls “Blank Frank” from Eno‘s Here come the Warm Jets (a Chilton favorite). Only about half of the songs are Chilton originals.  And those mostly chug along with a hook that comes across only crudely.  The swampy blues cover “Alligator Man” is a freewheeling success, with Chilton caterwauling in his upper register.  Co-producer Jim Dickinson plays guitar (ineptly) on some of the songs, to underscore the anti-perfectionist tendencies of the album.

Like Flies on Sherbert has maintained a cult following.  It documents a kind of cathartic approach to music — going back to a Neil Young comparison, like Tonight’s the Night (1975).  While not exactly a “great” album, it has earned admiration.  This is easily the most essential of Chilton’s solo output, even if he has plenty of other worthy solo recordings.

U2 – The Unforgettable Fire

The Unforgettable Fire

U2 – The Unforgettable Fire Island ISL-1011 (1984)

Perhaps The Unforgettable Fire is best viewed as a transitional album.  The Gang of Four influences noticeable on War had faded, and in place Brian Eno‘s production makes the record sound like more of a continuous sonic fabric bound by The Edge‘s delay-laden guitar.  Now everything seems designed to support Bono‘s voice, a big reason most love or hate U2.  Bono confirms here that he has only one vocal trick — the aching, dramatic cry — and he was going to use it on every song, forever.  While this album took the first steps toward establishing a distinctive sound that made the group superstars, it also feels like a mere warm-up for The Joshua Tree.  The biggest factor holding this one back is the songwriting, which is mostly less than satisfying.  It’s effective on “A Sort of Homecoming” and “Pride”, but the political subject matter gets old.  “Elvis Presley and America” is of course regrettable too.  This is still a fair U2 album, but War was more interesting and The Joshua Tree was much better at what The Unforgettable Fire actually accomplishes.  Pinned between better offerings, it’s easy to see why this is overlooked, even if it’s better than most U2 albums.