Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Short circuit (if eating peas improves virility, shovel them into your pants). 

I responded to this fairly instantly and without much lateral thinking going on- Fred Wesley and The JBs and their 1973 single More Peas, and Secret Circuit's Jungle Bones from 2012, two dance tracks forty years apart. There was more going on in the comments box. Lizarus suggested musical nonsense and the 'wilful horny chaos' of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Keith offered The Spitting  Song, Ernie went for Groin Strain and Keith Hudson,  Rol opted for Goober And The Peas and Chris went with Natural Life's Natural Life. All of which led me back to I, Ludicrous and their Preposterous Tales. 

This week's card says this- Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do.

It made me think of a famous John F. Kennedy speech from 1961, ''We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." 

Maybe it was the recent Artemis space mission, maybe it's because I've recently taught a lesson on the space race and The Cold War, maybe its just an oblique connection. What Kennedy was saying is the opposite of Eno and Schmidt's advice but I guess the point of the Oblique Strategies is you go where you with it, you follow the suggestion. In this case it took me here- Steinski and Mass Media in 1986. 

The Motorcade Sped On

More details just arrived... Mrs Kennedy jumped up, she called 'oh no'... The world is very different now... The energy, the faith, the devotion... Oswald has been shot!... The motorcade sped on...

From there it was a short hop to The Wedding Present in 1989...

Kennedy

Have you lost your love of life? Too much apple pie. 

From that to this, a Lou Reed song from his 1982 album The Blue Mask. I'm not sure this counts among Lou's best work. Last year I did an irregular series where I worked my way through his solo back catalogue and found a lot to enjoy in the 1970s but the 80s was slim pickings until New York in 1989. This isn't the best song on The Blue Mask but it's not the worst either. 

The Day John Kennedy Died

Feel free to make your own suggestions and responses in the comment box. Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do...

The Blue Mask

At the start of this year I undertook the totally self- imposed decision to explore the world of Lou Reed's back catalogue with fresh ears and an open mind. This was based on a post at The Vinyl Villain at the tail end of 2024 where JC posted the songs from a 1980 Lou Reed compilation and some of them, songs I hadn't heard for decades, really caught my attention. I went back to some albums unplayed for ages and found much to enjoy. Berlin I opined, is a masterpiece. I then decided to do Lou Reed solo, album by album, on second hand vinyl wherever possible. Not long after I was in a second hand record shop- dangerous places I know- and Lou's self titled debut album was in the rack. I bought it, listened to it several times and then wrote about it here. After that Transformer (one I already had on vinyl). Then I bought a copy of Sally Can't Dance and was not disappointed. Sally Can't Dance but Lou Can Write. 

And that was as far as I got. Summer drifted on and I was looking for a copy of Coney Island Baby, the next logical place to go but I couldn't find a copy at a price I was happy with. Then, while browsing the Lou Reed/ Velvets section in a second hand shop I found a copy of The Blue Mask for under a tenner. This meant jumping out of the 70s and into the 80s. Lou Reed, like many other 60s stars had a very bad 80s- but, some Lou Reed fans speak highly of The Blue Mask, an 80s highlight, one to play alongside the best of his solo albums. 

I can't completely agree. The Blue Mask has some good moments and with Robert Quine on guitar some really good playing, Lou's guitar in the right hand channel and Robert's in the left. Lou sounds alive, sarcastic, snarly, full of New York skronk and grime and when it's good, it's good enough. The run of songs towards the end of side two are good- Waves Of Fear is nasty (in a good way), with squally guitars and feedback, lyrics of  revulsion, panic and alcoholism. Lou has cleaned up, got married and is looking at two decades of squalor and drug addiction in the rear view mirror.

Waves Of Fear

It's followed by The Day John Kennedy Died which is I suppose well meaning but there's something about the simplistic, spoken word lyrics that don't quite work for me- although the sound and feel of his 1989 album New York can be found in the song. He ends with the line 'I dreamed that I could comprehend that someone shot him in the face' (which is for the record, historically wrong- JFK was hit in the top of the head and the throat. Pedantry maybe but it jars).  

The Day John Kennedy Died

It finishes with Heavenly Arms which is a good song, a nod to the sound of Transformer (along with the front cover shot). 

Side one was a struggle though, I nearly took it off. Opener My House is good, sympathetic twin guitars, lead bass and Lou singing about his house out of the city near the lake, a new found domestic lifestyle, his luck at having a wife, house and motorcycle- and the spirit of Delmore Schwartz haunting him. 

Women is knuckle bitingly bad. 

'I love women/ I think they're great/ They're a solace to a world in a terrible state'. 

'I love women/ We all love women'

This is from the man who wrote All Tomorrow's Parties, The Black Angel's Death Song, Heroin, Pale Blue Eyes, Foggy Notion, Sad Song, Satellite Of Love and I Can't Stand It. The Gun is a mess. I'm sure Lou's satirising gun owners and gun culture but he does with such a display of deadpan machismo it's difficult to tell. Average Guy is awful. It's like he's deliberately writing shit to see if he can get away with it. 

The Blue Mask hasn't exactly sent me scurrying into Lou's 80s with a spring in my step. If this is a good 80s Lou Reed album, I'm not looking forward to the bad ones. I'm still on the look out for the rest of the 70s ones though, I haven't given up and there's still Street Hassle to do too. I'll try to leave The Blue Mask on a positive note. Robert Quine said they hardly rehearsed and everything was first or second take with few overdubs. If that's the case the playing is remarkably focused and the twin guitars and playing on this song are right up there. 

Underneath The Bottle

Her Life Was Saved By Rock & Roll

I've been listening to The Velvet Underground a lot recently, partly due to my 2025 dive into the Lou Reed solo back catalogue and partly due to them being one of the cornerstones of my record collection since the late 1980s. In 2017 the record company Verve released an album called The Velvet Underground 1969. This is not the self titled third Velvet Underground nor the much loved Live 1969 album but a twenty song, four sides of vinyl album pulling together the group's recordings from 1969, some of which made up the self titled third album, some of which came out on Loaded a year later, some of which didn't come out until the VU album in the mid- 80s, some of which were reworked and re- recorded as Lou Reed solo songs and some of which are/were unreleased off cuts and extras. 

1968- 1969 was a tumultuous time for the group. Reed wanted John Cale sacked after White Light/ White Heat. Lou wanted to be more recognition and success, Cale wanted to be more experimental. Lou's songs at the tail end of '68 were heading in a poppier direction, songs like Stephanie Says and Beginning To See The Light. John had a viola drone song, Hey Mr. Rain. Lou told Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker that if Cale wasn't sacked he would dissolve the Velvets and though neither was happy with it they went along with Lou. Doug Yule was invited in as bassist and the group recorded The Velvet Underground, a gentle, after hours, chilled out affair with some of Lou's best songs- What Goes On, Jesus, Pale Blue Eyes, Some Kinda Love, Candy Says, Beginning To See The Light... It's an almost perfect album, brought down only slightly by The Murder Mystery which has two vocals running simultaneously in the two stereo channels and is messy. It's then redeemed by the Mo Tucker sung After Hours. 

The so called 'lost VU album' released in 2017 is filled with great VU songs that highlight what a superb band they were. There are some Cale moments which remind you why the first two VU albums are so good, the viola droning away on Hey Mr. Rain and some organ playing too. There is some stunningly primitive but brilliant Mo Tucker drumming and Doug Yule's playing shows why he was a key part of the Velvets in the 1968- 1970 period. Mainly, running all the way through from start to end, there is the magical guitar interplay of Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison. It's difficult sometimes to know where one starts and the other takes over, who is rhythm and who is lead or if they're both playing different rhythm parts. 

Foggy Notion, I Can't Stand It, Temptation Inside Your Heart, Stephanie Says, Beginning To See The Light, Ocean- all are present, all from different sources and all ending up on a variety of releases and all among the best songs of the period by anyone. There is also this, the full length version of Rock & Roll, the song which came out on Loaded in 1970 in slightly shorter form (4. 47 rather than the 5.15 on 1969), a song with the best choppy guitar riffs and rhythm playing, sheer joyousness in the singing and in the lyrics, the story of Jenny (but really Lou) whose life was saved by rock & roll.

Rock & Roll  (Original 1969 Mix)

Thee is also this song, Lou's tribute to Coney Island, the seaside resort at the end of the line in Brooklyn. In 1976 Lou would write and record an entire solo album about Coney Island, a love letter to his partner Rachel and to 'a Coney Island of the mind'. In 1969 Lou's first run at it is a two and half minute song, ragged guitars and the 'nice/ ice' rhyme he'd come back to in the 70s. There's a line about his childhood and parents- 'like a sister and brother/ who cling to each other/ when they realise their parents are mad'-  and then the guitars chop away as Lou and Doug croon the days of the week

Coney Island Steeplechase (2014 Mix)

Coney Island Steeplechase originally saw the light of day in 1986 on Another VU, a follow up to 1985's VU- two collections of unreleased Velvets songs that kick started the whole rediscovery of the group and played a huge part in creating the sound of the UK's indie scene. The Another VU version has very muffled, compressed vocals. The 2014 mix is much clearer and rattles along beautifully. Lou's songwriting at this point was at its VU peak and the 'lost 19769 album' is  wonderful collection of songs, an alternate view of the group that year- I wouldn't give up the third album in favour of it but 1969 is a welcome companion piece (even though the vinyl pressing is annoyingly much too quiet). 

Sally Can't Dance No More

At the start of this year I decided to undertake a trawl through Lou Reed's solo back catalogue. My long standing received wisdom is that it's the definition of uneven, a hit and miss, zig- zag of styles, disappointments and comebacks with a few iffy live albums and a handful of pearls in among the sand. On re- listening, at a couple of decades distance, to the 1980 greatest hits collection A Walk On The Wild Side I found a lot to enjoy and was really taken with some songs I'd not heard since my tape collection got broken up in the early 90s- I had cassette copies of several Lou Reed solo albums from the 70s and  have a few on vinyl and/ or CD, Transformer of course, New York, Street Hassle. 

This is less of a deep dive into Lou's solo albums, more a shallow paddle or a slow meander. I decided that to make this work I needed to pick up copies of the albums on second hand vinyl. I don't know yet whether this will sustain itself into the 80s. The thought of handing over actual money for Mistrial scares me. I've decided too to avoid the live albums- someone lent me Rock 'n' Roll Animal in the late 80s and I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever heard, dreadful heavy rock/ metal versions of classic songs. I've no need or desire to go back there. 

Since January I've bought, listened to and written about Berlin ('Lou's masterpiece'), his solo self- titled debut ('flawed but with some really good moments') and Transformer ('everyone knows/ has a copy of Transformer- and rightly so'). At this rate I'll be getting to New York in 2030. Recently I found a copy of 1974's Sally Can't Dance second hand. The vinyl plays fine, no scratches or jumps, perfect condition and half a century old. The sleeve smells like it's been in someone 's garage since the mid- 70s however but nevermind. 

I approached Sally Can't Dance with some trepidation. I had it on cassette a long time ago and didn't remember it being that good. It was the first Lou solo album without any Velvets era songs on it and the first recorded in New York. Weirdly it was Lou's biggest solo album and was very much seen as a hit. In 1976 Lou, never the best judge of his own work maybe and not a reliable interviewee at all at that point- contrary is putting it mildly- described it as a 'piece of shit from beginning to end'. It's not. He didn't like Steve Katz's production either and the reviews were critical on release. With some caution I dropped the needle on the record...

Ride Sally Ride comes in with piano and horn and that familiar Lou Reed Weimar/ New York feel, torch songs with a little crooning, tumbling drums and female backing vox. 'Ooh isn't nice/ When your heart is made out of ice', Lou sings, rhymes confusion with contusion as the brass parps away and all is good in Lou Reed world. Relaxed- it's the Quaaludes maybe- and easy. Animal Language follows, Lou's bleach blonde hair from the (horrible) sleeve painting and glam rock strutting to the fore, a song about Miss Riley who had a dog and Miss Murphy who had a cat and their neighbour's complaints. The chorus- 'ooh meow meow, ooh bow wow'- is hilarious, the guitars squeal and Lou Reed is surely taking the piss. 

Next is Baby Face, a slow blues with guitar and bass locked in and Lou singing softly, close to the mic. Lou's voice is so distinctive and very limited really, two notes, a snarl, a drawl or a croon but he always makes the most of it. The voice is Lou Reed. Baby Reed is a snarky song but well worth sticking with. It's written from the point of view of his ex- wife- 'Jim, livin' with you is not such fun/ You're not the only one/ You don't have the looks/ You're not the person you used to be/ There are people on the street that would go for me...'

Side one finishes with N.Y. Stars. It's amazing and refreshing how short albums used to be- eight songs, not much more than thirty minutes. N. Y. Stars kicks in with a gnarly guitar part (David Weiss I think) and then a full band, some echo, a Bowie feel, and Lou turning his caustic glare on the next generation, the '4th rate imitators', with Lou becoming increasingly bitchy. 'I'm just waiting for them to hurry up and die', he sings, the guitars and drums gathering pace. It's sleazy and wired and alive. 

Turn Sally Can't Dance over and side two gives us Kill Your Sons, a key Lou Reed solo song. Crunchy guitar riffs and a processed vocal. Lou's lyric dissects his parents' decision to send a young Lou to a psychiatric hospital to be cured of his proclivities- which included ECT. Lou sneers at the two bit psychiatrists and the electric shocks, the inability to read a book past page 17 because he couldn't remember where he was or what he'd read. He turns his aim at his mum and dad and his sister and her husband (which his sister thought was very funny apparently). As he lists the drugs they put him on the guitars ring out and the song fades into a buzz of feedback and Lou singing 'they're gonna kill your sons...' After that the mood changes with Ennui, another slice of Lou Reed cabaret/ supper club music with a late period Velvets feel and more scores being settled, more aging and waiting for death. 

The title track comes next, Sally Can't Dance, horns and New York cool, guitar solos and one of Lou's character songs, Sally who can't get off the floor and can't dance no more. Lou paints a portrait in a few lines, 'she was the first girl in the neighborhood to wear tie die pants... that had flowers painted on her jeans... now she kills the boys and acts like a son'. It's a groove and a blast, it's sassy and pulls apart a New York face, maybe Edie Sedgwick. It's about decadence and lifestyle choices, regrets and depravity and it being too late to pull back from the flame. 

Sally Can't Dance

After that there's just the five minutes of Billy. Acoustic guitar and sax and Doug Yule on bass, a lovely recording of the bass guitar, the much maligned Doug invited by Lou to play on the song because Lou thought it would suit him.  Billy is a story song. Lou and Billy went to school together, best friends since nine years old. Billy was the football player, Lou the do- nothing. Billy studied hard. They both went to college. Billy went for a PhD. Lou dropped out. Billy became a doctor and then war broke out. Billy went to Vietnam and Lou didn't ('mentally unfit they say'). The sax wails away, needlessly but brilliantly, over the top. The acoustic guitar is scrubbed as much as played. Billy comes back from the war not quite the same and it leaves Lou wondering, 'which of us was the fool?' 

My caution and trepidation were unfounded. There's very little wrong with Sally Can't Dance- mid- 70s Lou is still very much in the driving seat and his talent is undoubted. RCA put pressure on him to repeat the trick, give them another big hit. This annoyed Lou so he gave them Metal Machine Music (an album memorably described by Tony Wilson as 'the sound of your fridge switching on and off'). Lou Reed- contrary much?

I Love To Watch Things On TV

A few months ago I  committed myself to a dive into Lou Reed's solo album back catalogue, a journey to be undertaken with a bit of caution I've always felt- there is some variability in the quality in his solo career. This was inspired by a post at The Vinyl Villain at the tail end of 2024. He posted the songs from a 1981 Lou Reed Best of called Walk On The Wild Side and I listened to some songs with fresh ears- Wild Child and I Love You from his 1972 solo debut, How Do You Think It Feels from Berlin, Sally Can't Dance and Coney Island Baby, both the title tracks from 1970s albums that I hadn't heard for decades. I decided that where possible I should revisit Lou's solo career in the format it should be heard as far as possible- vinyl (or cassette but I have no functioning cassette player and am not about to buy one). Since then I've done Berlin  back in February (Lou's masterpiece more or less I said) and his solo debut, Lou Reed (a mixed bag, good/ great songs, marred by some strange production and mixing choices). 

I was going to skip Transformer. It felt too obvious. Everyone knows and loves Transformer. If you only have one Lou Reed solo album, it's Transformer. It had a massive 90s resurgence too due to Trainspotting and the BBC. I was going to move onto Sally Can't Dance and/ or Coney Island Baby but to date haven't tracked down second hand vinyl copies at acceptable prices and there's surely a limit to the number of solo Lou Reed albums one person should buy on second hand vinyl in a fairly short period of time. I had both on cassette in the late 80s but those are long gone. I do however own Transformer on vinyl, 1972 vinyl too, bought in the late 80s/ early 90s. Transformer it is then...

Transformer came out in November 1972, just six months after his overcooked solo debut. That album was stacked with songs that dated from Velvets days. Transformer has four songs are from the VU period although the band played them only in demo or live form. The big difference in sound fromt he debut to Transformer is what David Bowie and Mick Ronson bring. Lou's debut had been a commercial disappointment. Bowie, very much a rising superstar in 1972, was a big fan and used his fame and clout to help Lou out. Ronson's playing (guitar, piano, backing vox) and co- production are key to the album's sound. It's glam- ish rock crossed with Lou's New York scuzz and street smarts but beautifully produced- it sounds alive, it's not overloaded or weighed down by too many guitars, there is space and distance between the instruments, it has a great feel. The sleeve art is equally important, a Mick Rock shot, cropped and overexposed with some early 70s street cool on the back- the man's tightly stuffed jeans apparently the result of a banana being stuffed down them for the shoot. Peel slowly and see.

The songs are among Lou's solo best too. Walk On the Wild Side complete with the famous Herbie Flowers bassline is his best known but its matched by others. Vicious is a stunning opening song, the lyric suggested to him by Andy Warhol, Lou being told to write a song about being vicious. 'What kind of vicious?' said Lou. 'Oh, you know, vicious like I hit you with a flower', replied Andy. Meanwhile Ronson's guitar fires off squalls of electricity over Lou's perfect three chord VU trick. 

Vicious

The album rattles by, never outstaying its welcome, songs passing by like NY subway trains. Andy's Chest and Hangin' Round come either side of Perfect Day- a song that enjoyed a huge second life in Trainspotting and then as an all star BBC advert. Separated from all of that now Perfect Day sounds like what it is- classic Lou Reed, minor chords, soft piano, Lou's downbeat, sombre vocal about spending the day in Central Park, drinking sangria and then home. Walk On The Wild Side takes us to the end of side one in under twenty minutes. 

Flip Transformer over and there's the whimsy of Make Up, a celebration of androgyny, cross dressing, gender identity and then Satellite Of Love...

Satellite Of Love

Satellite Of Love has piano, drums, strings, and Lou in romantic mode, serenaded by the backing vocals, wondrous melodies and a sense of awe, Lou/ the narrator watching the launch of a satellite on TV coupled with a change of tone as his feelings of jealousy about his partner being bold with Harry, Mark and John kick in. Bowie's touch is all over it- a magical, cosmic song. 

Wagon Wheel and I'm Set Free add to the fun, Lou sounding unleashed and happy. New York Telephone Conversation is a bit of humour, a slightly bitchy, tongue in cheek novelty. Goodnight Ladies romps us to the end, some oom pa pa to bring the curtain down. Lou would go much further with Berlin, a Weimar descent into squalor and domestic abuse, drugs and violence. On Transformer everything sounds up and more carefree, even the more sombre moments, Bowie and Ronson bringing some light to Lou's shade. It really is one of those albums everyone should own.

Perfect Day (Acoustic Demo)

When I Think Of All The Things I've Done

A few weeks ago I decided to start working my way through Lou Reed's solo albums, sparked by a Lou Reed post at The Vinyl Villain last year and then by my rediscovery of his 1973 album Berlin, an album that is possibly his 70s masterpiece but also a heavy trip into the netherworld story of Jim and Caroline- drugs, domestic abuse, children being taken into care, ending with death. An album that makes some people fell that they need to brace themselves for before dropping the stylus on the vinyl. 

I'd decided that this irregular, meandering Lou Reed extravaganza should be done as far as possible by listening to the albums on second hand vinyl, surely the most Lou Reed of all the formats. I was planning to move on to Sally Can't Dance or Coney Island Baby but while walking out from work a couple of weeks ago to pop to the post office I noticed that the fools have opened a second hand record shop just round the corner from my school. Why would they do that? Don't they know the last thing I need is the opportunity to buy records near my workplace? Luckily it was closed but when I walked past/ went back a few days later it was open and flicking through the Lou Reed/ Velvet Underground section saw a copy of Lou's self- titled 1972 solo debut. And that was how I ended up owning a copy of a rather overlooked and unfancied Lou Reed solo album- and also how I realised that I was taking this Lou Reed trip seriously.

Lou's solo debut is a curious record. It seems it was largely seen as disappointing, a damp squib, on release. Lou was two years on from leaving The Velvet Underground, still signed to RCA/ Victor and put into a studio in Willesden, London with a load of session musicians including Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe of Yes. The album's sessions took place between December '71 and January '72, usually in close to total darkness (at Lou's request). Eight of the ten songs are leftovers from The Velvets, some of them unreleased in their original until the mid 80s when VU came out. The production is odd, it sounds unbalanced. Guitars and drums leap around in the mix, sometimes too murky and sometimes too bright, the drums and cymbals ridiculously loud and present in the mix on some songs. Lou is in good voice and the songs are among some of his best. I approached the album with an open mind- once I'd got past the fairly awful front cover, a very early 70s airbrush painting of a Faberge egg and a duckling about to be engulfed by a wave swooshing down a New York street- and found that it has a lot to enjoy inside its fifty three year old grooves. 

I Can't Stand It is one of my favourite Velvets songs, the 2014 remixed version especially, Bo Diddley guitars and drums and Lou's nonsense lyrics about it being hard to be a man and living with thirteen dead cats. The version that opens Lou's solo album is blunt early 70s rock, session men electric guitars and drums, Lou's familiar sneer intact but supported by female backing vocals. It kicks along, no nonsense style. Going Down follows, piano and country guitar, Lou's voice now in gentle, three in the morning mode, seeing things clearly- 

'Time's not what it seems/ It just seems longer when you're lonely in this world/ Everything, it seems/ Would be brighter if your nights were spent with some girl'

It shifts at two minutes and he's crooning now, the backing vocals lower in the mix and the drums tumbling. Lovely stuff. Walk It And Talk It purloins the riff from Brown Sugar and surrounds it with session musician rock, the players trying to sound sloppy- the production is all over the place, partly muddy and partly trebly. Lisa Says follows, a gorgeous song, Lou and piano and the band more sympathetic now, a late night basement cabaret feel- at three minutes everything changes, the song stops and restarts as a show tune. It should be ridiculous but Lou pulls it off and then slips back into the original song at the end, Lou and the backing singers coming together, 'Lisa says...'. Side one ends with Berlin, the song that would be the fulcrum of the album of the same name a year later, Lou again crooning and sounding great over five minutes of the song, candle light and Dubonnet and 'it was very nice'.

Side two really works (despite the production flaws). I Love You is a minor gem, the simplest love song he wrote, a swirl of country guitars and acoustics and Lou's voice- then the drums thump in and we're exactly where early 70s, post- Velvets Lou Reed should be.

I Love You

It's followed by Wild Child, a electrifying rocker with arch, observational lyrics about Chuck, Bill, Betty and Ed and the wild child of the title, a song that could sit on any of his more celebrated 70s albums. 

Wild Child

Love Makes You Feel is also great even if the odd decision to mix the drums and cymbals really high in the mix nearly spoil it- Lou at his street poet best with Steve Howe's guitars fizzing around the speakers. Lou sings the chorus line, 'love makes you feel ten foot tall', the drums and guitars crash around, and everything sounds alive and vital. Ride Into The Sun, yet another unreleased Velvets song, ringing guitars and cardboard box drumming, two note vocals and the messy production actually adding rather than taking away. Lou Reed finishes with Ocean, a song the Velvets recorded in 1969 but didn't release and which wouldn't see the light of day until VU in 1985. Ocean is a key Reed/ Velvets song, arguably as good as any that he and they wrote and recorded. Lou's solo version opens with a gong and splash cymbals, then the bass and guitar sound that would inspire dozens of groups not yet even formed, the swirl of instruments sounding, yes, like the waves crashing on the shore, and Lou singing adrift on a raft, down by the sea. Drama and despair, New York cool up against London session men. 

Lou Reed is an album which feels flawed but has some good moments at its core, and which would have benefitted from better production and possibly from less accomplished musicians at times, but which catches fire more often than it doesn't. It's very much a period piece and an outlet for songs he'd been sitting on for a few years. But it's fair to say, it also does not necessarily sound like an album by a man who's going to light up the early/ mid 70s with some of its most distinctive rock songs.

Which is what happened a few months later he released Transformer. 

Monday's Long Song

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Lou Reed's solo albums, from his self- titled debut in 1972 through to New York in 1989 and the meandering quality of what Lou released in between those two records. At the time, inspired by a post at The Vinyl Villain about a 1981 Lou Reed best of album called Walk On the The Wild Side I thought I should commit to delving into Lou's solo releases further than I have before and see what I could discover. There is a view of Lou's solo career that there's a lot of duff material, a lot of chaff among the wheat. For every Transformer there's a Mistrial. This deep dive into the Lou Reed back catalogue may take months and may splutter out at some point but I thought I should give it a go and went back in with 1973's Berlin, the follow up to Transformer (I will at some point do his solo debut, the May 1972 album that bombed on release but as I noted last time, included the wonderful Wild Child among its treasures- I don't own a copy of the album yet. I could do it digitally but feel that committing to this Lou Reed project requires the acquisition of vinyl, the format it was recorded to be played on). 

I had Berlin back in the late 80s, bought on cassette cheaply in the first flush of Lou Reed and Velvet Underground fandom. My memories of it were pretty scant but had been reawakened by the song from Walk On The Wild Side, How Do You Think It Feels, which is a superb song, a cabaret/ Weimar/ 70s New York crossover with stop- start dynamics, a killer guitar solo and the always arresting line, 'How do you think it feels?/ To always make love by proxy'. Listening again, three and a half decades later, Berlin blew me away. It was intended to be a sixty minute double album with longer versions of many of the songs but RCA pulled the plug on that and insisted it be cut down to a single disc. What was left was a killer ten song album that tells the story of a pair of New York addicts Jim and Caroline and their decline into drugs, domestic abuse, prostitution and suicide. So Lou Reed. Some of the songs, as was the case throughout the 70s, were Velvets leftovers- Oh Jim, Caroline Says II, Sad Song and Men Of Good Fortune were all played live or demoed by the band at some point. 

Lou tells Jim and Caroline's story, playing acoustic guitar with Bob Ezrin producing (and the production is uniformly excellent). There are electric guitars, piano, trombones, organs, trumpets and sax, Mellotron, bass by Jack Bruce and a spectral choir. The title track opens with a cacophony of noise, voices, cabaret piano, a mass singing of Happy Birthday and then the song appears, piano notes and lush echo and then Lou, half singing, half speaking of candlelight and Dubonnet on ice, 'oh honey it was paradise'. Lady Day kicks in with organ and drums, the seedy world of Lou, and of Jim and Caroline, brought to life. The sound and music builds on the game- raising drama that Bowie and Mick Ronson brought to Transformer the previous year and takes it into new territory. Men Of Good Fortune and Caroline Says I continue the story, Lou diving into the grime and depression of Jim and Caroline's lives- 'Caroline says that I'm not a man/ So she'll go and get it where she can... But she's still my queen'

Oh Jim at the end of side one is heartbreaking, a five minute song with tumbling drums and squelching organ, droning trumpets and slashes of guitar, Lou singing of two- bit friends and being like an alley cat. It builds into squealing guitars before breaking down in the second half, just an acoustic guitar and Lou close to the mic, singing as Caroline, 'Oh Jim/ How could you treat me this way?/ You know you broke my heart ever since you went away'. 

Side two goes further and harder. Caroline Says II is a ghostly starting point, more acoustic guitars and Lou singing softly. The cabaret sound re- appears, as Lou croons for Caroline, 'She's not afraid to die/ All of her friends/ They call her Alaska/ When she takes speed they laugh and ask her/ What is in her mind?' followed by the violence of the line' You can hit me all you want but I don't love you any more', the orchestral backing at odds with the lyrics. The Kids follows, Caroline's children being taken away because 'they say she is not a good mother'. When the sound of two children crying comes in it's too much- the story goes that the children crying were told by Reed and Evrin that their mother had actually left them and they then pressed record. If true, they'd quite rightly be done for neglect and abuse themselves. The early 1970s; they were different times. 

The Bed follows, fading out of the ending of The Kids, side two really a side long medley. In The Bed Jim lies in the bed where their children were conceived and where 'she cut her wrists'  and Lou sings as Jim, 'and I say oh oh oh oh/ What a feeling' (a line later sampled by A Certain Ratio on their 1990 single Good Feeling). We're deep into theatre and storytelling now, the ghostly choir swirling around a lone acoustic guitar, Jim alone in the apartment, everything lost, Caroline dead. 'I never would have started if I'd known that it would end this way', Lou sings as Jim- but follows it with the emotionally dead Jim singing that he's not sorry that it ended this way. Jim has no remorse. 

Berlin ends with the seven minute song Sad Song, the conclusion of the album's tale, Jim and Caroline's horrific story, the song fading in from the choir and FX that swell out of The Bed's ending. Sax breaks in, dancing around quirkily. A bass bumps up and down. Trumpets. Lou singing of a picture book where 'she looks like Mary Queen of Scots', horns parping and drums thumping, the guitar solos and the strings sweep and then Lou breaks into the song's title, utterly dead pan, just the two words, 'sad... song', Jim's lack of remorse and amorality still the centrepiece of Lou's lyrics. Then we are treated to a long, gloriously melancholic but weirdly uplifting fade out, the strings with Lou and the choir, 'Sad song/ Sad song'. 

Sad Song 

Berlin is a masterpiece. My re- discovery of it recently reveals it as good as anything else Lou Red did post- The Velvet Underground, a fully realised work of art that doesn't flinch from the world it depicts, Lou's songwriting at its best and the production and playing pushing Lou beyond the early 70s guitar rock of his debut and Transformer. It was slagged on release, declared a disaster and panned as depressing. Lou always liked it. He resurrected it in 2008 for some live shows and was asked if he felt vindicated. 'For what?', he replied, never a man to suffer journalists gladly. 'I always liked Berlin'. I don't know yet what's coming next in my Lou Reed solo deep dive but it'll have to be good to match Berlin. 

200 More Miles

Sometimes a band come around who create an album that is a perfect encapsulation of a sound, of those people in that room making those songs at that exact point in time. They may go on to make further records and albums, some of them very fine, but nothing they do will ever come close to that one off capturing of the moment. In November 1988 the Canadian band Cowboy Junkies did that with their album The Trinity Session. The album was mostly recorded in one night, 27th November 1987 live in Toronto, at the Church of The Holy Trinity, with the band all sitting round one microphone. They played a hushed, spooky but beautiful set of songs, originals, traditional songs and covers, with the voice of Margo Timmins a ghostly presence on top. The covers famously included perhaps the definitive version of The Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane (Lou Reed was of that opinion). But apart from Margo's voice, the brushed drums, the stripped back electric guitar, and the other instruments- fiddle, pedal steel, harmonica, accordion- the biggest presence on the album is the natural reverb of the church, the echo that surrounds the group as they move around, towards and away from the sole microphone. 

Their previous album, Whites Off Earth Now!, saw them tour the south of the USA and the music they heard down in the Deep South states, country and western, informed the song writing and selection for The Trinity Session.  Their own song, 200 More Miles, is a song about life on the road...

200 More Miles

The 1990 follow up to The Trinity Session, The Caution Horses, was a good album. Their cover of Neil Young's  Powderfinger, the opening song and single Sun Comes Up, It's Tuesday Morning and a few other songs were good and it had the same slowed down style and hushed approach but it was more polished and as a result lost a little of what made The Trinity Session so special. 

These two clips came my way recently and I don't believe I've ever seen them before. First is Cowboy Junkies in London at MTV's studios playing live and being interviewed for 120 Minutes, a ten minute clip with Margo talking and a stripped down version of the band playing.

But there's also this if you've got the time and inclination, a full live performance by the band from 1990 in Koln, Germany, filmed for German TV. Slow music and slow TV in front of a fairly subdued audience. If you're in a rush and want the sweet hit of Sweet Jane, it's starts at 53.01. 

I Was Talking To Chuck In His Genghis Khan Suit

At the tail end of last year JC over at The Vinyl Villain posted a 1981 Lou Reed solo album, Walk On The Wild Side: The Best Of Lou Reed. I dug my vinyl copy out having not played it for years- I often go back to the Velvet Underground but rarely Lou's solo career.It's neither original nor revelatory to suggest that Lou's solo career is patchy, with a few gems, some albums that have some moments and some real clunkers. Trainspotting's Sick Boy held forth with what is a fairly commonly held view-

Mark (Renton/ Rent Boy): 'Lou Reed? Some of his solo stuff's nae bad'

Sick Boy: 'No, it's nae bad but it's nae good either. And in your heart you know that although it sounds alright, it's actually just shite'. 

Trainspotting of course made a hit out of Lou's song Perfect Day, a song which is very much neither nae bad or nae good but fucking brilliant. Despite the Trainspotting view orthodoxy there are always Lou Reed fans who will make claims for albums that some of us had written off or passed over. Eventually you'll meet someone who'll claim that Mistrial is a lost gem. 1982's The Blue Mask is regularly acclaimed as a return to form (I think this view may hold water). The Vinyl Villain returned to Lou Reed's solo career earlier this week with a ten track compilation of Lou's solo stuff written by Walter, going up to and including 1989's New York- a genuine Lou Reed back to his solo best album. 

Listening to Walk On the Wild Side: The Best Of Lou Reed after a considerable gap was a bit of a revelation to me. Some of the songs I hadn't heard for a very long time. Some of them transported me back to when I first heard them, in the late 80s. Some of them are songs that I have been playing frequently since JC's post last year, Lou's back catalogue re- entering my daily listening habits. 

This one is from his solo debut, a self titled album from 1972. It was recorded in Willesden, London with a band of session musicians including Rick Wakeman. The twin guitars tone, basic drums and Lou's flat, spoken New York vocals are post- Velvets highlights. The album flopped but Wild Child is fantastic, a blur of words and imagery and white knuckle guitar playing. 

Wild Child

Lou's 1970s saw him frequently re- visit songs he had from Velvets days, songs that he recycled and re- recorded. There were eight on the solo debut including Wild Child (which was never recorded by the band but was played live in 1970). His 1970s albums were all available cheaply in the 1980s and it was a lottery. The sleeves were often dreadful. There was precious little advice anywhere, no internet sites or magazine articles. But many of them have moments of Lou Reed brilliance. Transformer is obviously one, an album packed with great songs and elevated by Bowie and Mick Ronson, by their production, playing, arranging and sheer presence. But that album's follow up Berlin has a lot going for it too (although I recommend skipping The Kids). How Do You Think It Feels is one of his best, up there with any top ten Lou solo songs- piano, 70s sleaze and cabaret decadence and a guitar part that is vicious, a song for people who are 'speeding and lonely'. 

How Do You Think It Feels  

I used to have cassette copies of both Sally Can't Dance (1974) and Coney Island Baby (1975) but they've long gone and I never replaced them in any other format (and may well do now even though both have truly dreadful sleeve art). After that we're into the minefield of solo Lou, albums I've never heard, albums I've swerved, albums I know via other people, albums with songs I know but haven't heard in full- all the way up to New York which like everyone else I bought and loved. 

I own a copy of 1978's Street Hassle, a semi-legendary album if only for its impact on Spacemen 3 who borrowed from it heavily. The title track, a three song, eleven minute suite/ tone poem about New York street life, Lou Reed staple material but done so well with a line stolen from Brice Springsteen (who was recording downstairs at the same time, and who came up to sing the line- 'tramps like us, baby we born to pay'). It's a superb piece of music and there's no one else who could have made it. 

Street Hassle

• A Waltzing Matilda
• B Street Hassle
• C Slipaway

Then there's The Bells, Growing Up In Public, The Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts, New Sensations, City Lights and Mistrial and frankly, in some of those cases your guess is as good as mine. But on the basis of my Lou Reed solo re- awakening and the spirit of rediscovery, I'm open to recommendations. I suspect The Blue Mask comes next. 

In 1989 Lou released New York, an album that saw him back to his best and touring the songs to large and appreciative crowds I saw him at Wembley Arena, traveling down to London after my first year at university ended specifically to see the man play live. He made a comment on stage about all the music being played by 'real musicians, no samples or tapes', which many of us there sniggered at, our heads already turned by music made solely using samples, but hey it was Lou Reed. He played some of the hits too. 

Dirty Blvd.

Herbie Flowers

Herbie Flowers, session musician and bassist, died at the weekend aged 86. In 1972 he played the bass on the sessions that would become Lou Reed's Transformer, an album produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson. On Lou's most famous Herbie came up with an instantly recognisable bass part, the song's main hook in many ways, for which he was paid a session fee of £17. 

Walk On The Wild Side

In the song Lou celebrated all kinds of New York outsiders and misfits, the late 60s and early 70s demi- world around Reed, Warhol and all the rest brought to life in a few beautifully crafted lines- transgender actresses Holly from Miami FLA and Candy Darling, Little Joe, the Sugar Plum Fairy (Joe Campbell, a dealer) and Jackie (Curtis). Throw in some references to drugs and oral sex and you have the perfect slice of transgressive pop music. It's the sort of song that you can remember the first time you heard it, the door to another world opening slightly. 

Herbie played loads of other sessions, over 20, 000 apparently, and created loads of other basslines including Space Oddity and Diamond Dogs for Bowie. But Walk On The Wild Side remains the one. 

In 1990 New York hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest sampled the bassline for what became their best known song, the call and response sample- fest/ piece of genius that is Can I Kick It? As well as Lou/ Herbie it samples Lonnie Smith, Ian Dury and The  Blockheads and Prokofiev. Lou Reed took pretty much all the profits from the sales apparently. Such is the music business. 

Can I Kick It?

Herbie Flowers RIP.

Christmas Day Long Song

Happy Christmas! Hope you're all having a lovely Christmas Day- or at least a better one than Lou Reed and John Cale were having. 

If not, don't worry. It'll all be over soon. 

Oh! Sweet Nuthin'

The Velvet Underground closing Loaded in 1970 with the cooled down, chilled out sounds of Oh! Sweet Nuthin', a seven minute tale of Jimmy Brown, Ginger Brown, Pearly May and the girl who ain't got nothing at all, Doug Yule taking lead vocals. Maybe that's why Lou was so pissed off at Christmas. 

Take A Drag Or Two

More Velvet Underground following yesterday's Sunray/ Sonic Boom/ Ocean post. Today's post has The Velvets via Liverpool and Barking. The photo above is of Eric's in Liverpool, not the original Eric's- that closed a long time ago, 1980- but a live venue on Mathew Street under the same name and logo. Since The Vinyl Villain's guest post here a few weeks ago I've been vaguely obsessed with one of the performances in his post- Echo And The Bunnymen, a group firmly connected to Eric's, playing live with Billy Bragg, covering The Velvets' Run, Run, Run on OGWT in 1985. 

Will and Billy have the Velvet twin guitar drone/ wired lead line nailed with Pete's thumping backbeat covering the Mo Tucker thump. Ian McCulloch gives it the full big hair, big coat, alternative rock star frontman, kicking off with 'show me the way to go home' and squealing/ crooning/ grunting as required. 

In 1985 The Bunnymen set out for a tour of Scandinavia, a tour Ian has referred to as 'the last great Bunnymen tour'. They played support act to themselves, playing a set of covers every night, then going off for a break before returning to play their own songs. Many of the covers were chosen by Will Sergeant- Action Woman and She Cracked- along with Bunnymen favourites by Dylan, Television, The Doors and The Velvets. This take of Run, Run, Run was recorded onstage in Gothenburg by Swedish radio.

Run, Run, Run (Live in Gothenburg)

Will has also spoken of his enjoyment of the Scandinavian tour, playing the support set of covers through practice amps in small halls with no stage, staying at the promotor's house and having breakfast with them. 'I think', Will said, 'it was the last time we were a band really. The next tour we played was stadiums. I hated that. Playing places like Wembley... was everything the Bunnymen wasn't about'.

Run, Run, Run was on The Velvet Underground's debut, the banana album/ The Velvet Underground And Nico. Lou Reed wrote in on the back of an envelope while on the way to a gig at Cafe Bizarre. It's a belter of a song, with those speed freak guitars, rumbling rhythms and lo- fi, reverb production. Lou''s cast of characters- Teenage Mary, Margarita Passion, Seasick Sarah, Beardless Harry- are all on the streets of New York looking for a fix and/ or to be saved, drugs and religion mixed up. Lou's guitar solo is unlike other guitar solos from 1967, a trebly, wired, atonal freak out. 

Run, Run, Run

Monday's Long Song

Edit: this should have published eight hours ago but gremlins prevented it. Apologies to anyone eager for today's post- better late than never. 

Back in 2006 Sunray recorded a single with Sonic Boom, a cover of Ocean by The Velvet Underground. Sunray's cover is a thirteen minute voyage of blissed out drones, led by organ and wobbly guitars, Sonic Boom on board all the way for the slo- mo, frazzled psychedelia. Epic in every sense. 

Ocean

Lou Reed wrote Ocean around the time of the sessions for Loaded but it didn't make the album. It turned up on his self titled debut in 1970, then on the 1974 Velvets live album 1969: The Velvet Underground Live and then the studio version finally seeing the light of day on VU in 1985. The tripped out lyrics- waves crashing down by the shore, the sea as a drug- are thrown into disarray by the second verse with its lines about insects, selfish men, Lou being driven nearly crazy and being a lazy son. The playing is superb, splashy cymbals and spindly guitars with a backwash of organ. The Velvets studio version, recorded in 1969, is much shorter than Sunray's cover, a mere five minutes- but what a way to spend five minutes.

Ocean 

200 More Miles

Cowboy Junkies' 1988 album The Trinity Session was one that almost everyone seemed to be listening to when it came out, rave reviews in the NME, Sounds and Melody Maker enough to cut through to the different crowds of the late 80s. Recorded in the Church Of The Holy Trinity in Toronto with the musicians all round a single microphone and with Margo Timmins' vocal coming through the PA system left behind by the previous band to play in the church, the presence and natural reverb of the building is as important as the instruments and Margo's voice. The album was almost recorded in one session with no overdubs (except for Margo adding her a capella chanting for Mining For Gold a week later. As they ran out of time they had to pay the security guard on site an extra $25 to let them stay a little longer and record Misguided Angel). 

The album is one of those perfect moments, a record they were never going to match again no matter what, where and when they recorded. The follow up, 1990's The Caution Horses, had some good songs but was more polished and didn't have the unique, one off beauty of that day/ night in that church in Toronto. This song, 200 More Miles, was inspired by the group's never-ending life on the road. Michael Timmins' scratchy lead guitar and accompanying pedal steel guitar are a joy. 

200 More Miles

The album gained a lot of interest because of the cover of Sweet Jane, but the version from 1974's 1969: Velvet Underground Live rather than the more familiar one from Loaded. Lou Reed is said to have preferred the Cowboy Junkies one to the Velvets' ones and who can fault him? I've posted it before fairly recently so instead offer this, a completely unofficial Mojo Filter re- edit of Cowboy Junkies cover. Your tolerance of it may depend on whether you think the achingly beautiful, spectral 1988 cover version needed an AOR sheen and mid tempo club/ disco drums- I can imagine situations where it could work. 

Sweet Jane (Mojo Filter Re-love)

Linger On

'Sometimes I feel so happy/ Sometimes I feel so sad', Lou Reed croons softly at the start of Pale Blue Eyes, the most brokenly beautiful song on the most brokenly beautiful Velvet Underground album. Written and demoed with John Cale in May 1965 it wasn't released until 1969 by which point Cale had left the band. 'Thought of you as everything/ I had but couldn't keep', Lou goes on and in the final verse it becomes clear this isn't just about lost love but infidelity too- 'It was good what we did yesterday/ And I'd do it again/ The fact that you are married/ Only proves that you're my best friend/ But it's truly, truly a sin'. In his memoir, Lou Reed said he wrote it for his first love, Shelley Albin, a married woman (who had hazel eyes  but poetic license and making lines scan saw her eyes change to blue). 

Pale Blue Eyes

It's one of those songs that is so right, so perfect- the singing, the playing, the production, the tone of the guitar and the repeating riff, the tambourine rattle, the solo- that you wouldn't want to change a note or a second of it. But it also cries out to be covered. This cover came back to me recently while I was looking through my 10" singles (looking for something else but it caught my eye). I put it on and it jumped out of the speakers, simplicity of the song hurtled forwards from the late 60s to 2012 by The Kills, a raw version of the song. Alison Mosshart's husky, small hours vocal is spot on, the drums thump and shake and Jamie Hince's guitar snarls as the amp distorts. You can smell the practice room. The guitar break and the juddering effect between the second and third verses is electrifying and the way they cut back in for the 'skip a light completely/ Stuff it in a cup' verse is thrilling.

Pale Blue Eyes

In 1984 Edwyn Collins and Paul Quinn released a version as a single, taken from the soundtrack to the film Punk Rock Hotel. Edwyn croons, really croons, and the country and western guitar takes The Velvets to Nashville. The guitar solo is a joy and the song swells to the end, filled out and lush.

Edit: it is of course Paul Quinn crooning while Edwyn plays guitar. Thanks to JC for noting my error. 

Pale Blue Eyes

In the same year R.E.M. recorded a version that first saw the light of day as the B-side on the So. Central Rain 12" single and then later when it was compiled onto the Dead Letter Office album, a record that pulled together odds, ends, B-sides and drunken rehearsal room takes. Michael Stipe's voice was made for Pale Blue Eyes and Peter Buck's guitar is drenched in reverb. In the sleeve notes to Dead Letter Office Peter Buck says it was recorded live to two track and notes he added 'an exceedingly sloppy guitar solo'. Sloppy sounding just fine on this occasion. 

Pale Blue Eyes

Here R.E.M. play it live in New Jersey in 1984, the band caught brilliantly half a lifetime ago. 

Anyone Who's Ever Had A Dream

Another Velvet Underground on Sunday post today. In 1988 Toronto's Cowboy Junkies rescued Sweet Jane from the countless butcherings it had received at the hands of the man who wrote it. Their album The Trinity Sessions was recorded in a church and somewhere in that building the people involved and the church's natural echo and reverb summoned up something magical. Margo Timmins' voice, her brother Michael's guitar and the rest of the band, all gathered around a single mic, recast Sweet Jane in the mould of the 1969 Live version rather than the Loaded one, retrieving the earlier lyrics and the 'Heavenly wine and roses/seem to whisper to me when you smile...' section (some lyric sites have this line as 'heavenly widened roses' but I've always heard the former and that's what I'm sticking with). Lou Reed later said that Cowboy Junkies had made his favourite version. Mine too.

Sweet Jane

Street Hassle

Back in the day (the late 80s day specifically) getting into Lou Reed's solo career was a dangerous game. Transformer was the obvious place to start and set a standard which was difficult to follow. From there it was a New York lucky dip. Rock 'n' Roll Animal is still one of the worst albums I have ever heard and you'll never convince me it has any merits. Berlin is distressing. Coney Island Baby is a joke. Without the internet there was no way to try before you bought. A lot of his albums were available on the Mid-Price range which made them cheap and tempting and there were always fellow travellers willing to give advice along the lines of 'yeah, that one's shit but you should try The Blue Mask/Mistrial/New Sensations'.

The scene in Trainspotting where Sick Boy explains his theory about life, having it and then losing, is spot on. Renton replies to Sick Boy's theory that some of Lou Reed's solo stuff is 'no bad'. Sick Boy counters that although it's alright it's not great either which means that 'actually it's just shite'.



Let's make an exception for one eleven minute long song he put out in 1978, a three part tone poem that explores the underbelly of New York with prostitutes, drug dealers, the death of a woman and an uncredited spoken word section from Bruce Springsteen. It's been suggested that Street Hassle is also a response to the end of Lou's relationship with Rachel, a trans woman he had been seeing for three years. Street Hassle is a remarkable, moving piece of music with the same riff being played first on cello, guitar and bass. Reed's ambition for the song was that it was something that could have been written by Tennessee Williams, Raymond Chandler or William Burroughs set to music and I think he pulled it off. In typical Lou Reed fashion it is followed by I Wanna Be Black, a bemusing song which has nothing going for it at all and then a re-recorded Velvet Underground song. But in a solo career that up to his resurgence in the 1990s is wildly erratic, Street Hassle (the song) is a major achievement and a truly great song. I don't have an mp3 of it and my vinyl is in poor condition so can only provide you with the Youtube version.

Certainly Not Your Average Girl

I've had this song going round and round in my head recently- I think it's Pete Astor's fault. She's My Best Friend was recorded by The Velvet Underground in May 1969 and wasn't good enough (!!!) to make any of their proper albums. Eventually it came out on VU in the 1980s as you surely know but it's pretty much as good as anything else the post-Cale group recorded. It demonstrates the brilliant simplicity of Lou Reed's song writing perfectly- and what's more it was sung by Doug Yule.

She's My Best Friend

It's Hard Being A Man

I was in the record shop in town on Saturday looking at the 45th anniversary boxed set of the third velvet Underground album (my favourite of theirs, a record I can come back to umpteen times). I didn't buy it. I haven't bought it. Yet. But I came home and played VU while cooking tea, the 1985 album that rounded up some unreleased songs (some found in a bin at the record company). The opening song is I Can't Stand It, which is unsurpassed, an absolute template, a song beyond compare. The rhythm guitars are tinny and choppy, Sterling Morrison's guitar solo is unhinged and Lou's drawled delivery is superb- as are the nonsense of the lyrics with those thirteen dead cats, a purple dog wearing spats, the mop assault and Shirley or Shelley (who won't come back).

I Can't Stand It

The boxed set has cleaned up the songs. The 80s version of I Can't Stand It is the one we're all familiar with but the 2014 mix might just be even better.



Meanwhile I am still reeling from reading in a review that it was Doug Yule who sang Candy Says, not Lou Reed. Should I have known this?

Candy Says

Today's song is a beautiful cover of the Velvet Underground's Candy Says by British folk star Kathryn Williams. I had this on a compilation cd but can't find it, can't even remember what the cd was, it came with a magazine I think but I didn't get around to buying the album. Anyway, this is quite lovely. I always thought it funny that she didn't hit the high notes that Lou Reed did.

Candy Says