#THE VELVET UNDERGROUND SUNDAY MORNING CRACK#

The acute pain you can feel when a public figure whom you have no personal connection to dies is a weird feeling. No mixtape or playlist is complete without him. And his music itself has been a vital cornerstone of my collection, not just for its historical value, but for its personal meaning and influence. Music aside, Reed’s thoughts on modern music, influence on other musicians, critical support of new artists, and complete inability to play it safe have been constantly inspiring. interesting collaboration album Lulu). It’s been a long, rich career, filled with ups and downs and surprises and disappointments, but it’s never been a boring one to follow. The Velvet Underground made three more amazing albums: one more with Cale (the distressing and even more experimental White Light/White Heat) and a further two with Reed, the considerably poppier self-titled The Velvet Underground and Loaded. Reed went on to have an immensely eclectic solo career that embraced straight-up pop/rock with a Warhol Factory twist (I suspect most people know him best for the song ‘ Walk on the Wild Side‘), noise and drone (1975’s Metal Machine Music), conceptual rock operas (1973’s Berlin), and Metallica (2011’s…. I wouldn’t even have any problems with calling The Velvet Underground & Nico one of the world’s first punk albums, predating similar noisy garage efforts by bands like MC5 and The Stooges. Reed’s lyrics are today considered a revolutionary turning-point in rock-music lyricism, taking as they did the grittier subjects that authors and poets at the time made their specialty (think Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Raymond Chandler) and transforming them into song. Multi-instrumentalist Cale was heavily influenced by recent movements in the art music world, particularly minimalism and non-standard use of instruments (the viola, especially), and experimented heavily with the use of repetitiveness and drones throughout the album. Reed’s guitar playing simply doesn’t sound like anything else that was being played at the time, thanks to his down-tuning, use of feedback, and experimental ‘ ostrich guitar‘ style. It sounds like it was recorded in someone’s garage, for starters. It lacks the soaring, slickly-produced psychedelia that was becoming so popular at the time. The Velvet Underground & Nico is a strange beast. Listening to it now and comparing it against the likes of Pink Floyd, The Doors, and The Beatles, it’s not hard to see why. Lou Reed, who founded the band alongside John Cale and who served as its principal songwriter, singer, and guitarist was later quoted as saying that it took five years for the album to sell its first 30,000 copies. Into all this came Andy Warhol‘s pet band, The Velvet Underground, and their debut album. (Or nearly as long.) Psychedelic rock was getting big, guitarists were figuring out new ways to play their instruments, and I think there was a real feeling that rock could be art, too. It’s probably been following you on the radio for as long as you’ve been alive.

#THE VELVET UNDERGROUND SUNDAY MORNING CRACK#

And even if you’re unfamiliar with the names, if you were to crack their cases open and listen to the music, you’d recognize it. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band love them or hate them, we still know the names of these albums for good reasons.

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Forever Changes, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Are You Experienced, The Doors, Sgt. I can say this with complete confidence without having been around to experience it. My history with Lou Reed began, as it probably did with most of his fans, with The Velvet Underground‘s The Velvet Underground & Nico.

The velvet underground sunday morning