Gerry Goffin ~ 1960's songwriter worked with (and later married and divorced) Carole King. Starting in 1959 they became one of the prolific songwriting teams working out of the Brill Building in New York City writing hit songs like;
LITTLE EVA ~ "THE LOCOMOTION";
THE VISCOUNTS ~ "WHO PUT THE BOMP";
THE ANIMALS ~ "DON'T BRING ME DOWN";
GRAND FUNK RAILROAD ~ "THE LOCOMOTION";
"Take Good Care of My Baby" (a hit for Bobby Vee), "Halfway to Paradise" (Tony Orlando, Billy Fury), "The Loco-Motion" (Little Eva, and later Grand Funk Railroad), "Go Away Little Girl" (Steve Lawrence, and later Donny Osmond), "It Might as Well Rain Until September" (Carole King), "One Fine Day" (The Chiffons and later Carole King), "Up on the Roof" (The Drifters), "I'm into Something Good" (Herman's Hermits), "Don't Bring Me Down" (The Animals), "Oh No Not My Baby" (Maxine Brown, and later The Action, Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin and The Partridge Family), "Goin' Back" (Dusty Springfield, The Byrds), "Wasn't Born To Follow" (also The Byrds, later covered by The Sadies), "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" (Aretha Franklin), and "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Star Collector", "Porpoise Song" (all by The Monkees, the last covered by The Grapes Of Wrath and The Church) along with a bunch of other songs by The Monkees and Drifters.
THE MONKEES ~ "PLEASANT VALLEY SUNDAY";
THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY ~ "OH NO NOT MY BABY";
He also worked with other songwriters in the 1960's on songs like "Who Put The Bomp"
(by Curtis Lee & The Viscounts and later Showaddywaddy and The Boppers)
After splitting from King, Goffin released a solo album in 1973, It Ain't Exactly Entertainment, but it was not successful, and he began working with other composers, including Russ Titelman, Barry Goldberg, and then Michael Masser.[7] He and Masser won an Academy Award nomination in 1976 for the theme to the film Mahogany, sung by Diana Ross; and also wrote "Saving All My Love for You", a worldwide hit for Whitney Houston, "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love", and "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You". Goffin and Masser also received a Golden Globe nomination for "So Sad the Song" from the 1976 Gladys Knight film Pipe Dreams. He recorded another solo album in 1994 which included two collaborations with Bob Dylan. He later was an early booster for Kelly Clarkson. He died at 75
THE MONKEES ~ "STAR COLLECTOR";
THE MONKEES ~ "PORPOISE SONG";
Bobby Womack started out as a gospel singer in a group with his brothers as The Womack Brothers on Sam Cooke's SAR records in the mid 1960's. After recording a few singles ("Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray") they made the same journey Cooke himself made in moving to secular R&B under the name The Valentinos who would record the single "It's All Over Now" which was a moderate hit until it was covered by The Rolling Stones who had a major hit with it. Womack was at first angry at having his hit record undermined until Sam Cooke told him; "You'll feel differently once the royalty checks come in. This will be good for us." That turned out to be right as Womack would have to admit. He would later have solo hits with "Lookin' For a Love", "That's The Way I Feel About Cha", "Woman's Gotta Have It", "Harry Hippie", "Across 110th Street" and his 1980s hit "If You Think You're Lonely Now". Ironically he would also do covers of hits like Dylan's "All Along The Watch Tower" and John Phillips' "California Dreaming".
THE VALENTINOS ~ "IT'S ALL OVER NOW";
THE ROLLING STONES ~ "IT'S ALL OVER NOW";
BOBBY WOMACK ~ "CALIFORNIA DREAMING";
Answering the question "Can a white boy play the blues?", Johnny Winter was the whitest bluesman ever. Well, along with his brother Edgar, since they were both albinos. Beginning as teens in various garage bands in Texas as early as 1959 Johnny would later go solo and become a highly respected guitarist plying with Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Willie Dixon, Big Walter Horton, Janis Joplin, Rick Derringer and eventually producing an album for Muddy Waters. He also battled drug addiction over the years which he eventually beat. Winter continued to play up to his death at 70.
JOHNNY WINTER, MUDDY WATERS, JOHN LEE HOOKER & FOGHAT ~ "I JUST WANNA MAKE LOVE TO YOU";
JOHNNY WINTER ~ "JUMPING JACK FLASH";
Lee Dresser ~ 50's & 60's ~ American R&R singer/guitar w/the The Krazy Kats "Beat Out My Love" (later covered by the Cramps)
LEE DRESSER & THE KRAZY KATS ~ "BEAT OUT MY LOVE";
George Hamilton IV, not to be confused with the actor, was a country and folk singer of the 1960's who scored a number of hits the biggest of which was "Abaline". Later in the decade he adopted folk music and recorded popular albums of Canadian music including hit versions of Gordon Lightfoot songs, even though he was actually not Canadian.
GEORGE HAMILTON IV ~ "ABILINE" & "FORT WORTH DALLAS OF HOUSTON";
Idris Muhammad ~ American jazz drummer w/Fats Domino, Pharaoh Sanders, Ahmad Jamal, Grover Washington jr, Hank Crawford, Johnny Griffon, Gene Ammons ~ 74
PHARAOH SANDERS;
AHMAD JAMAL ~ "DARN THAT DREAM";
Manny Roth ~ Owner of 1960's New York nightclub Cafe Wha?, a folk & comedy club where Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen, The Velvet Underground, Paul Butterfield, Peter, Paul & Mary, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Joan Rivers, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor started. Also the uncle of Van Halen singer David Lee Roth ~ 95
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO ~ "SYMPHONY OF SOUND";
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & THE EXPLODING PLASTIC INEVITABLE;
PAUL BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND ~ "BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN";
Dance Macabre
Showing posts with label Velvet Underground. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Velvet Underground. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
Thursday, 14 November 2013
Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground (1942 - 2013)
Everyone knows the quote about the Velvet Underground; "They didn't sell a lot of records but everyone who bought one started a band." That's not entirely true of course. A lot of those fans became writers and college radio DJ's instead. And therein lies part of the enduring appeal of the Velvets. They attracted the kind of fans who could and would become promoters, Hell proselytizers, for the Underground church. And so it remains.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "SUNDAY MORNING";
It's easy to forget in these post punk years that back when the Velvet Underground's first album came out in 1967 there was no real underground as we know it. Bands were either successful or they were not, if they were not they did not get played on the radio, let alone TV, and they got very few gigs. Touring was out of the question. The nation wide network of small alternative clubs and promoters simply did not exist. These are all the unruly spawn of the punk and post-punk revolution of the late 1970's as it urged a thousand flowers to bloom Mao-like across North America, Europe and Australia. As are the cadre of fly-by-night zines and more co-incidentally the network of ground breaking college radio stations which sprang up in the same era. This ad-hoc network would make it possible for a willfully uncommercial band like the Velvets to actually thrive in spite of getting absolutely no attention from the mainstream music press. There are no shortage of such bands today in a variety of genres to choose from. But back in 1967 such a musical world was not even a dream. Bands like the Velvet Underground, The MC5, The Stooges, Shaggs, Silver Apples, Runaways, Red Krayola, Love, Brinsley Schwartz, Holy Modal Rounders, Gram Parsons, Hasil Adkins, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Van Dyke Parks, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Albert Ayler and The Flaming Groovies, slaved away, sometimes for years, with only small devoted cults of lonely followers and a few stubborn music writers to keep them warm. Even combined they all probably sold fewer records than Monkees. Now they are recognized as icons of the late sixties underground counter-culture. And the Velvets are their godfathers, even for those who sound nothing like them.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "VENUS IN FURS";
They didn't plan it that way, nobody did in those days. Lou Reed, the son of a conservative accountant, started off with a thoroughly conventional background scuffing around in teenage garage bands and later as a staff songwriter for a bargain-basement Tin Pan Alley song mill when he stumbled on the far more Bohemian art students John Cale and Angus MacLise and along with fellow garage band guitarist Sterling Morrison, decided to form a band. Cale was a classically trained cellist, pianist and bassist who had been an active part of New York's avant garde music seen with the likes of John Cage and Lamonte Young. As for their first drummer Angus Maclise, he was part of the beatnik art and poetry scene. He named the band before quitting to be replaced by rock's first female drummer Maureen Tucker. Reed had studied modern literature with his rock & roll and like Bob Dylan saw no reason not to blend them. Unlike Dylan he and Cale also brought the avant garde to their music as well.
JOHN CALE ON A TV GAME SHOW "I'VE GOT A SECRET" IN 1963;
The first album had the legend "produced" by Andy Warhol boldly emblazoned on it's cover but other than helping them get a record deal and designing a cover he had nothing to do with the recording. There was his one and only musical brainstorm of course, forcing the band to adopt Nico, an icy glowering Germanic chanteuse, to the mix. The resulting album was a disorienting mix of reasonably straight forward, even beautiful, if off centre ballads like "Sunday Morning", "Femme Fatale", "I'll Be Your Mirror" with jaw-dropping wall of sound epics like "Venus In Furs", "Heroin", "European Son", "Waiting For My Man", "Run Run Run" and "All Tomorrow's Parties" which pushed the boundaries of what was considered rock & roll farther than anyone had ever considered, as well as wallowing in the dark side of the Summer of Love. People were not amused. The second album went even father, discarding the bitter sweet ballads for the full-on feedback overdrive of "Sister Ray", "I Heard Her Call My Name" and the Edgar Allen Poe mini rock opera "The Gift". People were even less amused. The first album limped onto the very bottom of Billboard's top 200 for a week an then crept away, as if embarrassed. The second album sank without a trace.
While everybody else was saying "All You Need Is Love" the Velvets said that the whole happy peace and love facade was not only a mask but a scab over a festering sore of sex and rugs. They turned out have a valid point about much of that of course but nobody likes a spoilsport, especially if he might be right. In their one journey out of New York and down to the centre of the action at the time, California, the Velvets were shunned as disturbing interlopers into the laid back hippy scene. While every other band was singing tributes to pot, acid and LSD, usually in cryptic or playful ways, the Velvets were wallowing in tales of heroin and speed in coldly matter- of-fact tones. They didn't even look the part, while everybody else was in a riot of flowing colours the Velvets dressed in severe black, dark shades and dour glares. Now their look is essential to any band with artsy rebel pretensions, but at the time they were an affront to all that was utopian about the sixties. After the failure of the first two albums Cale left and Reed carried on for two more albums that tried to forge a somewhat more conventional sound, sort of like a New York version of the Byrds. Both still had some classic (and surprisingly upbeat) songs in "Sweet Jane", "Rock And Roll" "We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time", and "What Goes On" but they were no more successful than the first two and Reed gave up in frustration as the band fell apart.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "ROCK AND ROLL";
Lou Reed's post Velvet's career would have many ground breaking moments like "Berlin", "Transformer" (which scored a fluke hit in "Walk On The Wild Side" which probably surprised even him) and "Metal Machine Music" which unsurprisingly scored no hits. In between were attempts at the mainstream like "Rock And Roll Animal", "Busload Of Faith" and the surprisingly upbeat "I Love You Suzanne" which had an even more surprising video in which Lou Reed proved that he could not only smile but dance . Plenty of smart people swear by these later songs and I won't quarrel but I've always been a Velvets fan first and foremost.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO ~ "I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR";
Someone once said that most people who bragged about listening to the Velvets (or The MC5, or The Stooges) were full of shit. Most reasonably hip people who grew up in the eighties listened to The Smiths, Cure, Clash, Siouxsie, Sex Pistols, Simple Minds, and Psychedelic Furs at best. Maybe Teenage Head if you lived in Canada. But I was actually the only person in my high school who could honestly say I really did listen to the Velvets. In 1985 it so happened that the Velvet Underground's long out of print albums were re-released along with the "VU" album of out-takes and demos. Coincidentally the very same month a different record label (Rhino of course) also re-released the classic Nuggets collection of sixties Garage Punk. This allowed music mags like Spin to run full page articles saying in essence "Hey Punk. Yeah You. You think you're so cool? Well here's were all this Punk and New Wave started. So buy these records". Naturally I ran out and did so. Keep in mind that this was before the internet so you couldn't just go on Youtube and check out a band you didn't know, you had to actually go downtown and spend you money and take your chances. Of course the fact that you went out and searched for off-the-beaten track music in small dusty record stores and had to do some reading and research helped form an unshakable bond with band like this for the few who ventured out to the outlying districts of music. That is an era that that will never quite return in the internet age. I'm not sure that instant gratification and convenience is a fair trade.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "I'M WAITING FOR MY MAN";
When Lou Reed died this past month he was a much revered and still active elder statesman whose cool, monosyllabic persona was as beloved as a crusty uncle. He leaves John Cale as the only surviving member of the Velvet Underground since Maureen Tucker wasn't the original drummer. Sterling Morrison died in 1995 of cancer aged 53 and Angus MacLise of complications from tuberculosis, malnutrition and dehydration in Kathmandu in 1979 aged 41. Nico died after having a heart attack while riding her bike in Ibiza and striking her head in 1988, she was 49. Cale's replacement Doug Yule is still around, as is Mo Tucker.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "PALE BLUE EYES";
One of the indicators of a band's importance is the number and variety of cover songs they inspire and the Velvets have a progeny that ranks with The Beatles. A few faves are;
Cabaret Voltaire; One of the founders of Industrial Music named the Velvets as one of the few bands they would admit to as an influence, their droning, feedback drenched version of "Here She Come's Now" brought the Velvet's nascent noise-rock experiments to perfect fruition.
CABARET VOLTAIRE ~ "HERE SHE COMES NOW";
The Cowboy Junkies; At the other end of the spectrum it took the Cowboy Junkies to realize the gentle beauty that was the flipside to the Velvet's menace. Lou Reed himself said that it was even better than the original.
THE COWBOY JUNKIES ~ "SWEET JANE";
Eater; This band from the first wave of 1976 London punk bands was known mostly for their extreme youth (average age of 15) and their barely competent but energetic three chord thrash. Their version of "Waiting For My Man" is too slap-dash to approach the original's hypnotic drone of course, and it totally misses the monotony of heroin by romping through the song like it's a drunken rave-up, but damned if it isn't still catchy. Their ham-fisted version of "Sweet Jane" is pushing it too far though.
EATER ~ "I'M WAITING FOR MY MAN";
Joy Division on the other hand were perfect for the Velvet's brooding dark side and this was their only cover song, as a live track on the "Still" album. Done with a very English droll wit, especially the closing brush-off; "You should hear our version of "Louie Louie", Whoa..."
The Runaways; The Runaways were the same age as Eater but they were more musically savvy and their changing of "Rock & Roll" to a stadium rocker manages to outdo Reed's attempts to do the same thing on his bombastic "Rock & Roll Animal" album. Check out how Joan Jett brings the boogie to the original guitar riff. Oh, and Sandy West brings the cowbell. Natch.
THE RUNAWAYS ~ "ROCK AND ROLL";
The Scenics; This artsy first wave punk band from Toronto were obvious Velvets fanatics and they proved it by releasing an entire album of Velvet's covers including a suitably cacophonous trek through "Waiting For My Man".
THE SCENICS ~ "I'M WAITING FOR MY MAN";
R.E.M.; Known in their early years for their variety of covers including a soulful version of "Pale Blue Eyes"
R.E.M. ~ "PALE BLUE EYES";
Simple Minds; It's actually from Lou's solo album "Berlin" rather than a Velvet's track but the Scottish artsy New Wavers did a lovely version of "Street Hassle" on their "Sparkle In The Rain" album. Much later they did a more perfunctory version of "All Tomorrow's Parties".
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "STREET HASSLE"
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO LIVE 1967;
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "SUNDAY MORNING";
It's easy to forget in these post punk years that back when the Velvet Underground's first album came out in 1967 there was no real underground as we know it. Bands were either successful or they were not, if they were not they did not get played on the radio, let alone TV, and they got very few gigs. Touring was out of the question. The nation wide network of small alternative clubs and promoters simply did not exist. These are all the unruly spawn of the punk and post-punk revolution of the late 1970's as it urged a thousand flowers to bloom Mao-like across North America, Europe and Australia. As are the cadre of fly-by-night zines and more co-incidentally the network of ground breaking college radio stations which sprang up in the same era. This ad-hoc network would make it possible for a willfully uncommercial band like the Velvets to actually thrive in spite of getting absolutely no attention from the mainstream music press. There are no shortage of such bands today in a variety of genres to choose from. But back in 1967 such a musical world was not even a dream. Bands like the Velvet Underground, The MC5, The Stooges, Shaggs, Silver Apples, Runaways, Red Krayola, Love, Brinsley Schwartz, Holy Modal Rounders, Gram Parsons, Hasil Adkins, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Van Dyke Parks, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Albert Ayler and The Flaming Groovies, slaved away, sometimes for years, with only small devoted cults of lonely followers and a few stubborn music writers to keep them warm. Even combined they all probably sold fewer records than Monkees. Now they are recognized as icons of the late sixties underground counter-culture. And the Velvets are their godfathers, even for those who sound nothing like them.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "VENUS IN FURS";
They didn't plan it that way, nobody did in those days. Lou Reed, the son of a conservative accountant, started off with a thoroughly conventional background scuffing around in teenage garage bands and later as a staff songwriter for a bargain-basement Tin Pan Alley song mill when he stumbled on the far more Bohemian art students John Cale and Angus MacLise and along with fellow garage band guitarist Sterling Morrison, decided to form a band. Cale was a classically trained cellist, pianist and bassist who had been an active part of New York's avant garde music seen with the likes of John Cage and Lamonte Young. As for their first drummer Angus Maclise, he was part of the beatnik art and poetry scene. He named the band before quitting to be replaced by rock's first female drummer Maureen Tucker. Reed had studied modern literature with his rock & roll and like Bob Dylan saw no reason not to blend them. Unlike Dylan he and Cale also brought the avant garde to their music as well.
JOHN CALE ON A TV GAME SHOW "I'VE GOT A SECRET" IN 1963;
The first album had the legend "produced" by Andy Warhol boldly emblazoned on it's cover but other than helping them get a record deal and designing a cover he had nothing to do with the recording. There was his one and only musical brainstorm of course, forcing the band to adopt Nico, an icy glowering Germanic chanteuse, to the mix. The resulting album was a disorienting mix of reasonably straight forward, even beautiful, if off centre ballads like "Sunday Morning", "Femme Fatale", "I'll Be Your Mirror" with jaw-dropping wall of sound epics like "Venus In Furs", "Heroin", "European Son", "Waiting For My Man", "Run Run Run" and "All Tomorrow's Parties" which pushed the boundaries of what was considered rock & roll farther than anyone had ever considered, as well as wallowing in the dark side of the Summer of Love. People were not amused. The second album went even father, discarding the bitter sweet ballads for the full-on feedback overdrive of "Sister Ray", "I Heard Her Call My Name" and the Edgar Allen Poe mini rock opera "The Gift". People were even less amused. The first album limped onto the very bottom of Billboard's top 200 for a week an then crept away, as if embarrassed. The second album sank without a trace.
While everybody else was saying "All You Need Is Love" the Velvets said that the whole happy peace and love facade was not only a mask but a scab over a festering sore of sex and rugs. They turned out have a valid point about much of that of course but nobody likes a spoilsport, especially if he might be right. In their one journey out of New York and down to the centre of the action at the time, California, the Velvets were shunned as disturbing interlopers into the laid back hippy scene. While every other band was singing tributes to pot, acid and LSD, usually in cryptic or playful ways, the Velvets were wallowing in tales of heroin and speed in coldly matter- of-fact tones. They didn't even look the part, while everybody else was in a riot of flowing colours the Velvets dressed in severe black, dark shades and dour glares. Now their look is essential to any band with artsy rebel pretensions, but at the time they were an affront to all that was utopian about the sixties. After the failure of the first two albums Cale left and Reed carried on for two more albums that tried to forge a somewhat more conventional sound, sort of like a New York version of the Byrds. Both still had some classic (and surprisingly upbeat) songs in "Sweet Jane", "Rock And Roll" "We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time", and "What Goes On" but they were no more successful than the first two and Reed gave up in frustration as the band fell apart.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "ROCK AND ROLL";
Lou Reed's post Velvet's career would have many ground breaking moments like "Berlin", "Transformer" (which scored a fluke hit in "Walk On The Wild Side" which probably surprised even him) and "Metal Machine Music" which unsurprisingly scored no hits. In between were attempts at the mainstream like "Rock And Roll Animal", "Busload Of Faith" and the surprisingly upbeat "I Love You Suzanne" which had an even more surprising video in which Lou Reed proved that he could not only smile but dance . Plenty of smart people swear by these later songs and I won't quarrel but I've always been a Velvets fan first and foremost.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO ~ "I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR";
Someone once said that most people who bragged about listening to the Velvets (or The MC5, or The Stooges) were full of shit. Most reasonably hip people who grew up in the eighties listened to The Smiths, Cure, Clash, Siouxsie, Sex Pistols, Simple Minds, and Psychedelic Furs at best. Maybe Teenage Head if you lived in Canada. But I was actually the only person in my high school who could honestly say I really did listen to the Velvets. In 1985 it so happened that the Velvet Underground's long out of print albums were re-released along with the "VU" album of out-takes and demos. Coincidentally the very same month a different record label (Rhino of course) also re-released the classic Nuggets collection of sixties Garage Punk. This allowed music mags like Spin to run full page articles saying in essence "Hey Punk. Yeah You. You think you're so cool? Well here's were all this Punk and New Wave started. So buy these records". Naturally I ran out and did so. Keep in mind that this was before the internet so you couldn't just go on Youtube and check out a band you didn't know, you had to actually go downtown and spend you money and take your chances. Of course the fact that you went out and searched for off-the-beaten track music in small dusty record stores and had to do some reading and research helped form an unshakable bond with band like this for the few who ventured out to the outlying districts of music. That is an era that that will never quite return in the internet age. I'm not sure that instant gratification and convenience is a fair trade.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "I'M WAITING FOR MY MAN";
When Lou Reed died this past month he was a much revered and still active elder statesman whose cool, monosyllabic persona was as beloved as a crusty uncle. He leaves John Cale as the only surviving member of the Velvet Underground since Maureen Tucker wasn't the original drummer. Sterling Morrison died in 1995 of cancer aged 53 and Angus MacLise of complications from tuberculosis, malnutrition and dehydration in Kathmandu in 1979 aged 41. Nico died after having a heart attack while riding her bike in Ibiza and striking her head in 1988, she was 49. Cale's replacement Doug Yule is still around, as is Mo Tucker.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ~ "PALE BLUE EYES";
One of the indicators of a band's importance is the number and variety of cover songs they inspire and the Velvets have a progeny that ranks with The Beatles. A few faves are;
Cabaret Voltaire; One of the founders of Industrial Music named the Velvets as one of the few bands they would admit to as an influence, their droning, feedback drenched version of "Here She Come's Now" brought the Velvet's nascent noise-rock experiments to perfect fruition.
CABARET VOLTAIRE ~ "HERE SHE COMES NOW";
The Cowboy Junkies; At the other end of the spectrum it took the Cowboy Junkies to realize the gentle beauty that was the flipside to the Velvet's menace. Lou Reed himself said that it was even better than the original.
THE COWBOY JUNKIES ~ "SWEET JANE";
Eater; This band from the first wave of 1976 London punk bands was known mostly for their extreme youth (average age of 15) and their barely competent but energetic three chord thrash. Their version of "Waiting For My Man" is too slap-dash to approach the original's hypnotic drone of course, and it totally misses the monotony of heroin by romping through the song like it's a drunken rave-up, but damned if it isn't still catchy. Their ham-fisted version of "Sweet Jane" is pushing it too far though.
EATER ~ "I'M WAITING FOR MY MAN";
Joy Division on the other hand were perfect for the Velvet's brooding dark side and this was their only cover song, as a live track on the "Still" album. Done with a very English droll wit, especially the closing brush-off; "You should hear our version of "Louie Louie", Whoa..."
The Runaways; The Runaways were the same age as Eater but they were more musically savvy and their changing of "Rock & Roll" to a stadium rocker manages to outdo Reed's attempts to do the same thing on his bombastic "Rock & Roll Animal" album. Check out how Joan Jett brings the boogie to the original guitar riff. Oh, and Sandy West brings the cowbell. Natch.
THE RUNAWAYS ~ "ROCK AND ROLL";
The Scenics; This artsy first wave punk band from Toronto were obvious Velvets fanatics and they proved it by releasing an entire album of Velvet's covers including a suitably cacophonous trek through "Waiting For My Man".
THE SCENICS ~ "I'M WAITING FOR MY MAN";
R.E.M.; Known in their early years for their variety of covers including a soulful version of "Pale Blue Eyes"
R.E.M. ~ "PALE BLUE EYES";
Simple Minds; It's actually from Lou's solo album "Berlin" rather than a Velvet's track but the Scottish artsy New Wavers did a lovely version of "Street Hassle" on their "Sparkle In The Rain" album. Much later they did a more perfunctory version of "All Tomorrow's Parties".
SIMPLE MINDS ~ "STREET HASSLE"
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO LIVE 1967;
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