Forty Five Minutes Of Velvet Underground Cover Versions

Listening to Michael Stipe's slim catalogue of post- R.E.M. songs recently led me to a 2021 tribute album, I'll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute To The Velvet Underground And Nico- an album of covers of all the songs from the banana sleeved 1967 album that invented as many bands as The Beatles or Kraftwerk did. It's a hit and miss affair as these tribute albums often are but there are a few highlights and Michael Stipe's cover of Sunday Morning is one of them with strings by Hal Willner, the New York producer who worked with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithful among others. Stipe's sister Lynda sings backing vocals on the song, the opening tune on an album that is one of his top three records of all time (one of the others being Patti Smith's Horses and the third possibly Television's debut). 

It led to me going through my collection in search of other Velvet Underground cover versions- there are many. In the mid- 80s the release of V.U. and Another V.U. gave the Velvets a further shot in the arm, the new slew of previously unreleased songs inspiring a new generation of bands. This is a forty five minute mix of Velvets covers with one unofficial edit- remix thrown in. There are so many I've left out a second edition could easily follow. The Velvet Underground never get old, never get tired, familiarity never breeds contempt. They are a band that keeps giving. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Velvet Underground Cover Versions

• Michael Stipe: Sunday Morning
• Lovekittens: What Goes On (Orbient Mix)
• Nhii: What Goes On (Nhiii Remix)
• The Kills: Pale Blue Eyes
• Thurston Moore: Temptation Inside Your Heart
• Cowboy Junkies: Sweet Jane (Mojo Filter Junkie Re- Love)
• Matt Berninger: I'm Waiting For The Man
• Kurt Vile: Run Run Run
• R.E.M.: After Hours (Live 1989)

Michael Stipe's cover version of Sunday Morning is a low key joy, clarinet and guitar leading us in and then Stipe's voice, making the most of Lou Reed's melodies and pop song sensibilities. The bassline is the one from Walk On The Wild Side, a nice little touch. 

Lovekittens were a an early 90s indie band who released two singles, one a cover of What Goes On which The Orb produced and then also remixed. Ambient house Velvets with cooing vocals. 

Nhii is a Brooklyn producer and musician who remixed/ edited What Goes On in 2020. What Goes On is a key Velvets song, two chords and some psyche organ and that endless Velvets groove. Nhii's edit rumbles in on Mo Tucker's drums and then splices a new rhythm and beat into it, 2020 dance music with a scuzzy edge. There's some acid thrown too and then Lou's vocal arrives, 'Baby be good/ Do what you should/ You know it'll be alright'.

The Kills cover of Pale Blue Eyes is a B-side from a 2012 single, The Last Goodbye. Jamie's guitar tone is perfect, a gnarly, distorted sound that works his amp beautifully. The bit n the middle where the whole song stutters is really cool too. There are loads of covers of Pale Blue Eyes- R.E.M. and Paul Quinn with Edwyn Collins both did memorable versions. 

Thurston Moore is on the I'll be Your Mirror tribute album,a cover of heroin with Bobby Gillespie on vocals. This cover from last year is better though, a Thurston Moore live favourite finally recorded in 2025 and then released on Sterling Morrison's birthday (29th August). 

Cowboy Junkies cover of Sweet Jane (as edited here Balearic style by Mojo Filter) turned up in last Sunday's mix too, a song I played at The Golden Lion back in February. Cowboy Junkies based their version on the one The Velvets did on the 1969 live album rather than the one from Loaded. Lou Reed approved of this. 

Matt Berninger (from The National) and his cover of I'm Waiting For The Man are from the I'll Be Your Mirror tribute. Velvet Underground songs are so well known and so them that bringing something new to them is difficult. Berninger strips the song down into a two chord clank, metal on metal drumming, and his weary, worn voice sounding like he knows exactly what it's like and how it goes when you're waiting for your man. 

Kurt Vile's cover of Run Run Run is also from I'll Be Your Mirror. He'd appeared on this blog once before this weekend, one post in fifteen and a half years. Now he's been on it twice more in two days. His cover of Run Run Run is a thrilling take on the song- it's a song that inspired a million bands to play dirty, distorted two chord rock 'n' roll, a fun song to play and Kurt sounds him and his band are having fun. Lou wrote the song on the back of an envelope on the way to a gig and its got one of those casts of Lou reed characters in the lyrics, Teenage Mary, Uncle Dave, Margarita Passion, Seasick Sarah and Beardless Harry all on the hunt for drugs. 

We started with Michael Stipe and we finish with him too, this time singing with R.E.M. in 1989 on the Green tour. They were still in the habit of playing covers for encores on this tour- I saw them at Liverpool Royal Court and they did this song there, the last one they did that night. They released four covers Velvets songs during the 80s, three of them rounded up on the Dead Letter Office B-sides album from 1987. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

One more cover version Sunday mix then I'll leave it alone for a while. I've been finding cover versions in all sorts of places since I started the first mix four weeks ago, songs springing to mind at random moments. Most of the ones I've chosen do something with the source material, take it somewhere else emotionally or stylistically. Some rip the original to shreds, some pay their respects but still tear it up. Some nod their head to their influences or pay something back. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Four

• Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End
• Spiritualized: Any Way That You Want Me
• The Kills: Pale Blue Eyes
• One Dove: Jolene
• Galaxie 500: Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
• John Cale: All My Friends
• Monkey Mafia: As Long As I Can See The Light
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker

Sonic Boom formed Spectrum after Spacemen 3 split up and his cover of Daniel Johnson's True Love Will Find You In The End is a gorgeous, angelic take on the song. Released in 1992 as a single and later included in two versions on a Sonic Boom/ Spectrum compilation.

Two years earlier Jason Pierce/ J Spaceman flew the Spacemen 3 coop first, releasing the first Spiritualized single, a cover of The Troggs 1966 single. Jason doesn't radically alter it but he makes it a Spiritualized song all the same. 

The Kills cover of The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes is gloriously ragged and fuzzed up, the guitar stuttering and ripping a hole in the speaker while Alison gives deadpan vocals. It was a B-side to their 2012 The Last Goodbye single.

One Dove's dubbed out, trippy reggae cover of Dolly Parton is a blast, Dot's beautifully off key vocals perfect for the band's blissed out but slightly on edge comedown re-imagining of the song. It came out as one of the B-sides to the 1993 single release of Why Don't You Take Me.

Galaxie 500 recorded several fantastic covers- their take on New Order's Ceremony may be the best NO cover ever recorded. Their cover of Jonathan Richman's Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste is superb, Jonathan's ninety second original stretched to to seven minutes, a thrilling Galaxie performance, the rumble of drums and bass matched by Dean's trebly, overdriven guitar. They only existed for four years, 1987 to 1991, but what a great band they were. 

John Cale covered LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends for LCD's own release of the single back in 2007- it came out as the B-side on 7" along with a sister 7" that had  Franz Ferdinand cover of the same song. Cale's version, piano, clipped krautrock guitars and his lived in, baritone voice give James Murphy's song a new dimension- when Cale sings, 'where are your friends tonight?', it conjures all sorts of imagery. 

Monkey Mafia's cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's was a 1998 single, a late 90s revisiting of a 1970 song, a call out to the weary travelers and wanderers, a song about going home. Pre- millenial tension?

Raz and Afla's cover of Aphex Twin's Windowlicker came out this year, a fantastic synths and percussion Afro- electronic floor filler- well, I can imagine some floors that it might fill. 

Make Something Of All The Noise

Back in the 00s there were a lot of two person bands,  some maybe inspired by the sudden ascent of The White Stripes who proved that less could be more (and put a lot of bass players out of work perhaps). One of them were The Kills, formed in 2001 by singer singer Alison Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince. Between 2003 and 2011 they put out four albums- Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow, Midnight Boom and Blood Pressures. In 2016 they released a fifth, Ash & Ice. I dipped in and out and can't remember what the first thing I heard by them was but I think it came from a music blog- they always strike me as an early days of music blogs band.

The Kills were dark and messy, four track/ eight track recordings, garage blues and Velvets sounds, Jamie's gnarly guitars and basic drum machine programming and Alison's chain smoking vocals. In 2011 I heard this song and it became one of the songs of the year for me...

Baby Says

Jamie's guitar playing is superb, the tone and ringing, fuzzy lead line endlessly brilliant. Alison comes in with one of those gutter punk love song lyrics, instantly conjuring the Chelsea Hotel, leather jackets and dirty jeans, a life shot in grimy black and white- 'Baby says/ A howl of romance I'll get/ From all your sleeping dogs/ You thugs of God/ I'll get one yet'. Eat your heart out Allen Ginsberg. 

They released The Last Goodbye as a single from Blood Pressures too which had a cover of Pale Blue Eyes on it- so many bands have covered The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes but The Kills bring manage to something of themselves to it, a scratchy, lo fi, rickety version.

Pale Blue Eyes

Last week Thurston Moore released his own Velvets cover to mark Sterling Morrison's birthday, a version of Temptation Inside Your Heart. Debbie Googe (ex- MBV) plays bass on it. Thurston's been playing the song live for ages and its probably about time he committed it to tape...

Thurston plays that riff like its all that matters and his NY drawl is perfect on this. The Velvets version didn't come out until 1985 when it was on the VU album and is one of my fvaourite VU songs- Lou is all the place vocally, funny asides, laughter and goofy lines thrown about. Lou starts off saying, 'somebody shut the door', and, 'somebody get her out of here'. Later on he chucks out, 'electricity comes from other planets', and there's more nonsense at the end- 'the pope in the silver castle'. The 'wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong' backing vocals are a joy too. Sterling and Lou's guitars are locked into each other in a way that makes the Velvet Underground in 1968/ 9, the perfect guitar band. 

Temptation Inside Your Heart

Alison Mosshart turned up last week too on the latest preview from Daniel Avery's forthcoming album Tremor. Greasy Off The Racing Line is dark electronic blues, a grimy, overloaded bassline, synth noise explosions and Mosshart back at the mic, ten chain smoked cigarettes in and falling down a deep hole. 

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. 

Moss

Last post in the join-the-dots sequence of this week and it's a hop,a skip and jump from DJ Shadow on Monday to Kate Moss today. Kate collided with pop culture in 1990, the Third Summer Of Love issue of The Face magazine (Spike Island, rave, De La Soul etc) and a football and music fashion shoot in April 1990 (E For England, World In Motion etc). I had the Brazil jersey from the range she's modelling above and wore it to Spike Island. Since then she's floated around the music world, dipping in and out. Yesterday's post included Jack White's Raconteurs. Jack has at least two connections to Croydon's supermodel- in his primary band, The White Stripes, Kate starred in the video for I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself, an ace, raw cover of the Dusty Springfield song. Your enjoyment of this video will depend on whether the prospect of Kate Moss pole-dancing in her underwear interests you at all.



Ahem. Moving on.
Another of Jack's projects, The Dead Weather, saw him playing drums behind Alison Mosshart, whose day job was singing in The Kills. I've posted Baby Says before but that's no reason not to do it again. Stunning song.



Alison's musical partner in The Kills is Jamie Hince, Kate Moss's husband. She sang vocals on Primal Scream's 2002 cover version of Some Velvet Morning (originally sung by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra). This song, and the Disco Heater Dub version which followed it, were produced by, and you knew this was coming surely, Andrew Weatherall. I'm not sure it's any of those involved's finest hour but there you go. I've more or less managed a Dry January- no, not alcohol, that would be stupid- a Dry January of no Weatherall and no Clash/BAD etc. Abstinence until today.

Linger On

Drew posted The Kills cover version of Pale Blue Eyes earlier this week, a song I've been listening to a lot recently- both The Kills version and the original. It is the best song of it's type that there is. A major chord or two, a couple of minors, some sparse backing and Lou Reed's lyrics of time, paper cups, feeling happy and feeling sad and infidelity. Wondrous thing really.

The fact is that it survives being covered often as well, not something that too many Velvets songs benefit from. There's a shaky 2-in-the-morning version by R.E.M. I like, The Kills blistering take and this beautifully played and sung one from Edwyn Collins and Paul Quinn.

Bagging Area End Of Year Review #3

List time.
I did think about not doing a list but couldn't help myself, partly because when I sat down and started to make a list I realised that I've listened to a reasonable amount of new music this year, surprising myself somewhat. At blogs where more than one person contributes or yer proper music magazines there always seems to be an attempt to get some balance into their end of year lists- here at Bagging Area there's just me so there's not so much balance, just a list of 40 songs, singles and albums that have had repeated plays through my record player/cd player in the kitchen/car stereo/mp3 player between January 1st 2012 and yesterday. I couldn't get my head around ranking them so they're in alphabetical order, rather than any attempt to say which is the best.

Andrew Weatherall- Masterpiece (compilation)
Cat Power- Cherokee (album track)
Chuck Prophet- Play That Song Again (album track)
Clock Opera- Once And For All Andrew Weatherall Remix
Daniel Avery- Movement Andrew Weatherall Remix
Daniel Avery- Fabric Live 66 (compilation)
Dexys- One Day I'm Going To Soar (album)
Django Django- Django Django (album)
Fuxa- Our Lips Are Sealed (single)
Hollie Cook and Prince Fatty- The Dub Goes On (album)
Hooded Fang- Tosta Mista (album)
Jack White- Love Interrruption (single)
JD McPherson- Signs And Signifiers (album)
Johnny Marr- The Messenger (album pre-release)
Le Carousel- Lose Your Love Andrew Weatherall Remix
Lightships- Electric Cables (album)
Madness- Death Of A Rude Boy Andrew Weatherall Remix
Mark Lanegan- Ode To Sad Disco (album track)
Orbital- Wonky (album)
Paul Weller- That Dangerous Age (single)
Public Image Ltd- This Is PiL (album, well most of it)
Public Service Broadcasting- Everest (single)
Public Service Broadcasting- Everest The Centaurs Remix
Public Service Broadcasting- The War Room (mini-album)
Savages- Husbands (single)
Scott Fraser- A Life Of Silence/A Life Of Silence Timothy J Fairplay Remix (12")
Slighter- Our Own End (single)
Tim Burgess- Oh No I Love You (album)
Toy- Dead And Gone (album track)
Toy- Dead And Gone Andrew Weatherall Remix
The Horrors- Moving Further Away Andrew Weatherall Remix
The Kills- Pale Blue Eyes (ep B-side)
The Orb and Lee Perry- Presents The Orbsetter (album)
Timothy J Fairplay- The Final Reel/The Final Reel Andrew Weatherall Remix (12")
Tindersticks- The Something Rain (album)
Underworld- Rez High Contrast Remix
Various- Isles Of Wonder London 2012 Opening Ceremony (compilation)
Various- On The Road (Original Soundtrack)
Various- Treasure Hunting (compilation)
Viv Albertine- The Vermillion Border (album)
Wooden Shjips- Crossings Andrew Weatherall Remix (ep)

All of which shows that about 25% of my list for this year were by this man (I did think about having a separate Lord Sabre list but decided against segregation)

And a fair few others there were connected to him. So here's your song, released on thick vinyl back in January this year-

Wooden Shjips Crossings Andrew Weatherall Remix

Cavernous dub production, clattering drums, filthy bass riff, reverb heavy vocals, trippy disco noises, long enough to lose yourself in; from a man having a third (at least, maybe fourth) purple patch.

As a bonus, this is how to cover a Velvet Underground song you've heard covered any number of times before and make it exciting again- the guitars in this recording are why people still pick up a stupid piece of wood with six strings on it and try to make it sound good.

The Kills Pale Blue Eyes

This time last year we'd bought our tickets for The Stone Roses at Heaton Park, probably half expecting they wouldn't make it even that far. What I really didn't expect was that on a Wednesday evening in May I'd be standing in Warrington's Parr Hall in a crowd of only a thousand waiting to see them at a free gig- and the outpouring of emotion from both band and audience that night, and the songs, will live long in my memory. This clip shows them playing Benicassim in July.



Still not sure about Ian's choice of tracksuit tops. It's worth noting also that they have maintained a total media blackout- not a single interview that I'm aware of. Shane Meadows' film of the whole thing is scheduled for release next year. Part of me is half expecting them to release a new song or single without any warning on Christmas Day or something. Whether you like them or not, approve of their re-union or not, they've managed to pull off some complete surprises and more power to them.

There's Death In These Silver Curls

One of my most listened to songs of this year was released last year but I didn't pick up on 'til January. Since then it's never been far away. Baby Says off The Kills Blood Pressures album adds up to way more than the sum of the parts- overloaded biscuit tin drums, a wonderful, entrancing, snaking guitar line from Mr Kate Moss and Alison's rasping vocal singing lines about Baby; 'she's dying to meet you, to take you off and make your blood hum and tremble like fairground lights' and how 'if ever you see skin as fair or eyes as deep and as black as mine, I'll know you're lying'. Some kind of post-punk, 00s, poetry thing going on there, if you ask me. The rest of the album's good but Baby Says stands out head and shoulders above it and I haven't got anywhere near bored of it yet.

Baby Says

Down For You Is Up

A couple of weeks ago, partly on Drew's advice, a copy of the latest Kills single (on lovely 10" vinyl) dropped through my door. The ep has four songs, The Kills song The Last Goodbye and three covers. Their cover version of The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes is a stunner, Alison's vocal and the guitar sound especially. I thought about posting it but it's still available to buy and decided against it. Listen to it at youtube.

I went back to the Velvet's third album as a result, probably my favourite of theirs with it's smoky, after hours feeling and warm fuzz, nine out of the ten tracks being superb- including this one.

What Goes On

Killing The Music Industry

This is, I think, partly what this blogging thing is supposed to be about. I didn't buy The Kills' Blood Pressures album that came out last year. I just missed it, it passed me by. Last month Drew posted one of the songs from it, saying it was his second most played record of 2011. The song was Baby Says. I downloaded it but only got around to hearing it this week when my mp3 player put it on as I pulled out of the carpark leaving work. I almost pulled over to listen to it properly. Since then I've played it whenever I can. I'm ever so slightly obsessed with it- the snakey Gimme Shelter guitar riff, Alison's vocal delivery, the distorted drums, the whole overloadedness of the production. The video is here.

So now I need to buy the album, which I'll do as soon as payday arrives. I notice Baby Says was a 7" single too, there were dub mixes of lead single Satellite and a recent single with some cover versions on the B-side. So there's a good few records I'll pay for due to Drew posting one song. What's the problem music industry? Isn't this what you want?

I found this one in my d/l folder too, can't remember when or where I clicked on it, probably ages ago and then forgotten about, more fool me- Mad Professor remixing the aforementioned Satellite inna dub stylee.

Satellite (Out Of Orbit Dub!)