 | the velvet underground I always said to myself when I was young, "Mosquito, when you grow up, you will be cool and have a band. And you will make a CD. And on that CD, you will have a picture of a banana." Unfortunately, the Velvet got to it first, maybe 20 years before I was born. And they did it better than I ever could. They got Andy Warhol to do the banana. The Velvet is extremely versatile. Their first two discs reek with distortion and are the complete foil of the usual brand of music of their time= the quintessal hippie "love rock". Lou Reed (this was back in the day, when he was cool, remember), the author of most of their songs, writes about scoring heroin, sado-masochism, and, well, heroin, all on the first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico. Their second album White Light/ White Heat, is the ugliest, most intense album I've ever heard. It's like the Doors's Oedipedal thriller, "The End", throughout all 5 songs (which, by the way, are at least 8 minutes long each. Which adds up to more time on that single disc than a crappy pop band's forty minutes of "oh, baby, I love you" seventeen times in a single song. You get fifty minute's worth of interesting, complex music.) My favorite VU album is their third album, The Velvet Underground. (Their songs score more points for originality than their title on this album.)It's different than the previous two, because, well, the distortion is suddenly... gone. Every note is clear and pretty. It doesn't hurt to have my favorite song on it, "Pale Blue Eyes". Their final disc, Loaded, is a more conventional rock disc. I don't like it. But that's ok too. -back- -home- |
