Why, it seems like only yesterday [cue harp and wavy, out-of-focus visuals] when you could pore over an album's liner notes and not have to squint to garner an embarrassment of riches and a treasure trove of tidbits...
“You’ve never really known life until you’ve fucked death in the gallbladder.” It isn’t immediately apparent how this warm and fuzzy homily from the crap-and-camp film Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein is related to such music in which the figure of one song, as Lou Reed would have it, "started dancin' to that fine fine music / You know her life was saved by rock 'n' roll."
But if anyone can put a death-mask on celebratory vigor it would be the avant guardian who splattered a soupçon of soup-can consumer culture on canvas and called it art. Indeed, as Andy Warhol produced them on their 1967 self-titled debut, the Velvet Underground and Nico — way before death metal and goth — stuck out from the Summer of Love like a Winter of Discontent.
With songs such as "The Black Angel's Death Song" and lyrics that deal matter-of-factly with the slipstreaming surrender to "nullify my life" while "closing in on death" ("Heroin"), the dark realism of a group who brought their tried-and-true brand of experience and experimentalism to this innovative album extends to the liner notes as well.
Those observations came in the form of newpaper excerpts from chomping-at-the-bit arts and music reviewers bending over backwards and soundboards to wallow in Warhol's mixed-media/performance art ensemble, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable — a psych-out extravaganza designed to introduce VU to a potentially waiting world. As it turns out, the all-boffo commentary prominently featured in The Velvet Underground and Nico overstates a wide variety of preening pretentiouness as creative juices overflow.
Some writers stick to the expected hyperbole for the times, and concern themselves with the show-bizzy rock particulars. "At the Plastic Inevitable it is all Here and Now and the Future." One, more taciturn, takes his turn with "Three-ring psychosis"; perhaps "like Berlin in the decadent '30s" fits the bill; or "fused together into one magnificent moment of hysteria."
Article comments
1 - Vern Halen
Amazing as this album is....so's White Light/White Heat....as well, the third eponymous release. Nico's Chelsea (sp?) Girl & Marble Index, made after her departure from the VU are standouts as well. This is simply a superficial comment here: any in-depth discussion of the Velvets could take up a whole website in itself.
2 - Mark Saleski
nice.
1. i love old-fashioned liner notes
2. spiffy: soupçon of soup-can
3. i hate the word "chanteuse"
3 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thanks, Vern. I'm thinking of going on to Lou Reed soon enough. I may be one of the few who really like his first pop-oriented solo album--the anti-Metal Machine Music.
4 - Vern Halen
MMM got discussed on BC about a year ago on BC if you wan to find the thread. I had it on 8 track (!).
5 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thanks Mark--I kind of like, instead of "chanteuse," "a cooler Dietrich for another cooler generation" for a billing. A litte wordy, but every group should have one...
6 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Vern--You had an 8-track of "Metal Machine Music"? I hope it was Quad, 'cause that's the only way to experience all the subtleties and nuances.
I think I might've resurrected MMM here as a topic at one or two points last year. Once, when I was relating my experience of working in a record store and, in sampling all four sides in disbelief, unwittingly unleashing it industrial-strength din-in-a-drum force on an ungrateful customer base for a few minutes.
7 - Mark Saleski
i have MMM on vinyl.
AND i've listened all the way through!
8 - Vern Halen
No quad - but I wish I knew where that 8 track was - I'm sure it'd be worth something as a novelty item.
Yes, I heard it all the way through - makes Neil Young's Arc sound (almost) melodic.
Hmmmmm.... now that I think about it, I think I'm going to record a cover version of MMM - bring it into the 21st century, y'know - maybe rap over it & use some samples. Or perhaps a straight bluegrass version would be kinda interesting.....
9 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Listened to Metal Machine all the way through? Did you guys lose a bet or something?
10 - Mark Saleski
i have a high tolerance for weird.
11 - Vern Halen
And I'm eternally hopeful - I kept thinking maybe there was a great song buried as a hidden track or something in there somewhere. Normally, I'd look at the grooves for some clues to sonic changes, but as I said, it was an 8 track.
12 - Mark Saleski
nope. hellacious noise.
i looked on ebay today...no MMM on 8track.
dang.
13 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
doesn't have a good beat, can't dance to it...
I appreciate the wayward experimentalism of the whole project -- but even more, I love the idea of Reed convincing the record company to go to the extra expense with a two-record set. Because one record wouldn't be sufficient to get the shock, if not awe, across?
Would've loved to be the the room for that conversation.