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. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

I held back from doing this for ages, a mix just containing cover versions, because it felt a bit lazy, a bit uninspired but the recent covers of Nick Drake by Joao Leao and The Velvet Underground by Thurston Moore twisted my arm into it. There are potentially more cover versions mixes to come. All these are relatively recent, although now I think about it Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes album came out in 2009 which is sixteen years ago and Calexico's in 2003 which is twenty two years ago- but the rest are all fairly recent. This mix leans towards the garage/ psyche/ guitar side of things. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

• Andy Bell: Smokebelch
• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Calexico: Alone Again Or
• Rowland S. Howard: Life's What You Make It
• Moon Duo: Planet Caravan
• Moon Duo: No Fun
• The Liminanas: Angles And Devils
• Thurston Moore: Temptation Inside Your Heart

Andy Bell's cover of The Sabres Of Paradise's Smokebelch was begun on the day of Andrew Weatherall's death, 17th February 2020, and finished in late summer/ early autumn 2023 when I emailed Andy to ask him if he had a track for our then unreleased pipe dream album Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. Andy's reply contained the completed cover and as soon as we listened to it, we knew it would close the album. Smokebelch itself began life as a cover version of L.B. Bad's New Age Of Faith.

Joao Leao's bossa nova flecked cover of Nick Drake's One Of These Things First, a song from Nick's 1971 album Bryter Later, came out as a 7" single on Toronto's Local Dish label and was posted here two weeks ago. 

Calexico's cover of Love's 1967 classic Alone Again Or doesn't stray too far from the original- Calexico were surely destined to cover it through with their combination of desert indie and mariachi horns. I thought I had a dub version of Alone Again Or- it sounded superb, dub groove, those horns and a snatch of vocal but I must have dreamt it. 

Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes was the former Birthday Party guitarist's second solo album. He was undergoing treatment for liver cancer at the time and died two months after it was released. Under those circumstances Talk Talk's Life's What You Make (second line, 'can't escape it') takes on a different meaning. Rowland's guitar playing- in fact just the way he held and approached the guitar- is pretty unique. His roiling guitar lines and feedback, the metallic clang and grim vocal delivery take the song into new places- which is what a cover version should do really. 

Moon Duo are represented twice here. First their cover of Black Sabbath's Planet Caravan was a summer 2020 release, their version of the 1970 original a chilled and weightless cosmic take. Their version of The Stooges' No Fun is from a 2018 12" single with Alan Vega's Jukebox Babe on the other side. Sonic Boom produced it. Again, a blank eyed, calmed down take on Iggy's 1969 proto- punk classic. 

The Liminanas released a compilation of singles and other rarities in 2015, I've Got Trouble In Mind Vol. 2 which included this cover version of Angels And Devils, an Echo And The Bunnymen B-side. The Liminanas, French psyche/ garage band par excellence, take The Bunnymen's Mo Tucker stomp and turn it Gallic. 

Thurston Moore's cover of The Velvet Underground's Temptation Inside Your Heart came out in September, a song he's been playing live for some time, MBV bassist Debbie Goodge plays the bass (as she does when Thurston plays live). Lou Reed's song first saw the light of dark on the 1985 outtakes album VU and has been a favorite of mine since the late 80s. Thurston more than does it justice.

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. 

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). 

Endings and Beginnings

Today is a big day for me. I'm leaving my current workplace after a long term of service. I moved to a new job in a school in a former mill town north of Manchester back in 2001. I was thirty one. Isaac was three and Eliza had not been born. In 2008 the school was closed and new academy replaced it and I've been there ever since. I didn't plan on staying in one place for so long and within the school I've done several different jobs and held several different roles. Isaac died in November 2021 and in January 2022 I went back to work. I was off work for five weeks in total. I think part of going back to work was partly about getting some routine and familiarity back into my life, which had changed beyond all recognition. Going back was very difficult. I was on a reduced role and timetable. At times I wondered to myself, sometimes out loud, 'what the fuck am I doing?', but I kept going and my closest colleagues (some of whom I've worked with since 2001) were very helpful and supportive. I look back now at those first six months after he died and don't know how anyone manages in such a situation but you do find a way to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. In the summer of 2022 I stepped down from my then role on the leadership team and went back to the job I was doing when I first arrived there in 2001, Head of History, which had a neat circularity to it if nothing else.

Without going into any detail and washing some very dirty laundry in public, my workplace has had a very rough time over the last five years, gone through a number of structural and leadership changes, changes that are still taking place, and it has been at times a very difficult place to work. Schools in challenging circumstances are hard work and working with good people alongside you is the thing that gets you through some days. I'm leaving behind a group of colleagues who are friends and who I've spent a lot of time with. We've been through a lot together. Thank you, you know who you are.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go

I knew a couple of years ago I needed a change, a new start, to be somewhere else, that something had to change and that it had to be change that I chose. We've had so much change forced on us since November 2021 and I wanted to be the one that made a decision, choosing to change my life. Getting out and getting a new job has taken me some time and while living with grief it's taken finding the energy to do it as well. A year ago I thought I was stuck, too old and too expensive compared to the younger and cheaper teachers that were being appointed ahead of me. At the end of May I was interviewed for my new job and got it. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right job, the right place, the right people, to fall into place. 

When I leave at 12.30 pm today I'm leaving a lot behind me and it's going to be a wrench in lots of ways. There will be tears and goodbyes and a sense of leaving something which has been a massive part of my life but also I am really looking forward to being somewhere else, closer to home (you have no idea how much I'm looking forward to not being on the M60 every day this winter), in new surroundings. When I got the phone call in May to offer me the job the sense of relief I felt was enormous, the proverbial weight being lifted. Today is an ending and a goodbye. I have a few weeks off and then a new beginning. Wish me luck. 

Beginning To See The Light (Alternative Version)

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. 

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.

Fifty Four

I am 54 today- and all of a sudden the mid- fifties have arrived. I have tried to put together a number 54 based Sunday mix. It turns out 54 isn't a particularly popular musical number. As so often happens Mr Weatherall came to my rescue along with The Clash and a very famous and debauched New York nightclub and a blinding reggae song. This mix is as a result somewhat varied stylistically and gets even more random towards the end- maybe that's a metaphor for one's 50s.

Forty Five Minutes Of Fifty Four

• Grace Jones: Nightclubbing
• Tom Tom Club: Genius Of Love
• The Clash: Ivan Meets G.I. Joe
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Shack 54 (Joe Mckechnie Remix)
• Patrick Cowley and Sylvester: Menergy (Rich Lane 'Too Hard' Cotton Dub)
• Big Audio Dynamite II: The Globe (Studio 54 Remix)
• The Velvet Underground: I Can't Stand It (2014 version)
• The Rolling Stones: All Down The Line
• Toots And The Maytals: 54- 46 That's My Number

Studio 54 was a New York nightclub located at 254 West 54th Street, midtown Manhattan. It was converted from a theatre to a club in 1977 and for a while was the world's premier disco nightclub, a place with a famously loose approach to sex, drugs and extravagance. It had apparently the world's most difficult entry policy but once in 'the dancefloor was a democracy'. A list of Studio 54's celebrity clientele includes Grace Jones, Woody Allen, Bianca Jagger, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Bowie, Cher, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Lou Reed, John Travolta, Margaret Trudeau, Divine, Farrah Fawcett, Faye Dunaway, Jack Nicolson, Liza Minelli, Rick James and many more. Some of those people were thusly shoehorned into my mix above. Chic famously were turned away at the door and went home and wrote Freak Out, a disco track which started with the phrase 'Fuck You!' chanted as the chorus instead of the eventual title. 

Grace Jones, a Studio 54 devotee, released her album Nightclubbing in 1981, an early 80sunk/ reggae/ post- punk/ new wave/ disco masterpiece, recorded at Compass Point in the Bahamas. The title track is a cover of Iggy Pop's 1977 song, an ode to numbed out nighttime adventures on the floor. It's Grace's birthday today as well- happy 76th birthday Grace.

Tom Tom Club's Genius Of Love is also from 1981, a brilliant slice of New York post- disco/ synth- pop/ art rap that nods its head to a cast of black musicians- James Brown, Sly and Robbie, Hamilton Bohannon, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Bob Marley- and was a big tune at Studio 54. Its creators, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz only went a couple of times, they claim, preferring the Mudd Club or Danceteria. 

The Clash went to Studio 54 once and Joe Strummer said they were observed by the Warhol crowd like animals in a cage. Joe wrote The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too about the experience. Ivan Meets G.I. Joe is from Sandinista!, and includes the line 'so you're on the floor at 54', imagining the Cold War as a competition on the nightclub's dancefloor, a Soviet- America disco face off, sung by Topper Headon. It's not my favourite Clash song but it fits this mix. 

Shack 54 was on Two Lone Swordsmen's Wrong Meeting Part 2, a 2007 album with Weatherall and Tenniswood by this pint deep into live rock 'n' roll/ garage rockabilly territory. It was great fun, Andrew once again turning on a sixpence and wrong footing people who expected him to keep doing the same thing. This remix of Shack 54 by Joe Mckechnie is I think unreleased. 

Patrick Cowley and Sylvester were both Studio 54 attendees. For his Cotton Dub edit Rich Lane ramps up the campness and Hi NRG to the max on a song that wasn't exactly lacking in either. 

Big Audio Dynamite II's The Globe was the best single the second incarnation of the band released, a  1991 single that samples Mick's most well known Clash riff. It was a Mick Jones and Gary Stonnage co- write and produced by Mick and Andre Shapps (making both of them related to current Tory Minister Grant Shapps, a man I sincerely hope loses his seat and his deposit come election day).  The Studio 54 remix adds some disco strings and keys and has never been officially released but is on the bootleg series The B.A.D. Files. 

The Velvet Underground have Studio 54 connections via Lou Reed and Andy Warhol but there's a big disconnect between the sound of the Velvets and Studio 54 so really this was just an excuse to shoehorn in this 2014 version of a Lou reed song that should be played daily by everyone, Lou and Sterling taking the Bo Diddey beat and rhythm guitar to its logical limit. The part where Lou counts down from 8 is among my favourite moments on any song. 

Bianca Jagger once rode into Studio 54 on the back of a white horse, an eye- opening way to celebrate one's birthday (a party for Bianca thrown by fashion designer Halston). Bianca later said she didn't ride the horse to or in the club, she just sat on its back once it was already inside. I was going to say, with a knowing smirk, hey, we've all been there- but then I remembered that at the Golden Lion last November at the end of a night David Holmes played at the pub there was a horse at the bar having a pint with its owner, so actually, maybe we have all been there. Bianca was married to Mick from 1970 to 1978, a period The Stones made their final absolute classic album, 1973's Exile On Main Street from which All Down The Line is one of four superb songs that make up the album's fourth side. 

Toots And The Maytals released reggae classic 54- 46 Was My Number in 1968. 54- 46 was Toots' prison number when he was jailed for possession of marijuana and for the next 365 day trip around the sun, 54 is my number. 

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. 

Saturday Live

Standing in Probe Records in Liverpool on Wednesday afternoon, browsing the record sleeves, I had a bit of a moment. This may have been partly due to a sudden rush of emotions connected to it being Lou's birthday, Isaac being gone and being back in Liverpool, partly due to it being thirty five years since I first went to Liverpool as an eighteen year old starting at university there, and partly due to the in shop soundtrack, a live recording of The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed and the band making their singular, ramshackle and beautiful way through Beginning To See The Light (I'm assuming it was the post- John Cale, Doug Yule incarnation of the group). Everything piled up a little bit for me. I stayed there for a while, going through the racks and enjoying the Velvets in full flow c1969, another song came on (shamefully I can't remember which one now) and then the tremulous introduction to All Tomorrow's Parties kicked in and I had genuine shivers and went a bit teary. I pulled myself together and went outside. 

There is hardly any footage of The Velvet Underground playing live in the 1960s apart from this clip, the band playing outdoors at The Moratorium To End The War In Vietnam at White Rock Lake, Dallas, 15th October 1969. In the surviving clip the group play I'm Waiting For The Man and Beginning To See The Light but the audio is very patchy. In the clip below the uploader has taken the audio from the Matrix Tapes performance of Beginning To See The Light and overlaid it (the Matrix audio is from San Francisco in late November 1969, only a month later and therefore probably very close to how they sounded outdoors at White Rock Lake). 'Some people work very hard/ But still they never get it right/ Well I'm beginning to see the light' sings Lou and the guitars go for that VU all trebly and at the double sound, Mo thumps away with the backbeat and Doug plonks in the bass. In the clip people mill about, Sterling Morrison is pulled for an interview at one point and any members of the crowd that are there for the music stand around chatting, looking fairly unbothered that one of the greatest groups in the history of rock 'n' roll are playing on a balcony just yards in front of them.

There may be little film footage of the group but there are lots of recordings of The Velvet Underground playing live. The Reed/ Tucker/ Morrison/ Yule band played a double header The Matrix in San Francisco on the 26th and 27th November 1969. The versions of songs below are in some ways more relaxed that the recorded ones, the guitars are still beautifully trebly and a little wired but the feel is loose and smokey rather than amphetamines and feedback. Lou is in good form, joking with the audience about the songs. Before Rock 'n' Roll he asks them to 'imagine it with a hundred guitars'. No need- when you have Lou and Sterling, two is more than enough. 

I'm Waiting For The Man (Live at The Matrix, November 1969)

Lisa Says (Live at The Matrix, November 1969)

Rock 'n' Roll (Live at The Matrix, November 1969)

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 

More Bands In Places They Shouldn't Be: A Vinyl Villain Guest Edition

I spent last Thursday evening in the company of JC, the man behind the long running, standard setting blog The Vinyl Villain. He'd travelled down from Glasgow overnight and we met for a few drinks and a catch up taking in two legendary Manchester pubs- The Briton's Protection (grade II listed, serving beer since 1806- the year not the time- with a mural of the Peterloo Massacre down one wall) and The City Arms (a pre- Hacienda haunt for many back in the day, situated just across the road from Fac51). Earlier this week JC sent this to me. A few weeks ago I started an irregular series of Bands In Places They Shouldn't Be including Echo And The Bunnymen on Wogan, Prefab Sprout at Alton Towers, Ice T on The Late Show and Aztec Camera on Pebble Mill. I've got a few ideas lined up for further editions in the series but in the meantime JC has stepped in with a Bands In Places They Shouldn't Be Scottish Edition. Without further ado, then, over to JC...

I was quite tickled by Adam’s previous posts in which he dug out some classic video clips of performances or appearances in the most unlikely of places.  So much so, that I’ve come up with a few more, all of which feature singers/bands from Scotland.

First up are Aztec Camera and a rendition of Walk Out ToWinter that was broadcast on Switch, a series aired on Channel 4 between March and September 1983.  It basically took over the Friday evening slot that had been occupied by The Tube, starting one week after the end of the first series and ending one week before the second series began.

Look closely and you’ll see that the normally immaculate Roddy Frame and his bandmates are wearing identical and hideous tracksuits.  That’s because the footage was from the afternoon rehearsals when they did their bit to help the camera operators and lighting technicians do their thing, returning later on for the actual performance that was broadcast.  Only thing is, the band decided not to perform the new single and thus leaving the record label a tad upset. Which is why, no doubt after much pleading with the producers of Switch, this footage was shown a few weeks later. 

Back in the days when the BBC actually were half-decent at putting out music shows, they came up with the idea of a 24-hour broadcast across BBC 2 and Radio 1, which was given the imaginary title of Rock Around The Clock.  I think there may actually have been a couple of these, with the shows being a blend of live performances from concert venues, studio performances, interviews, videos and specially commissioned film clips.   It also saw musicians dropping in for chats, as was the case when Edwyn Collins, Paul Quinn and Zeke Manyika were interviewed, from recollection around 1am, and it’s fair to say they were up for having a bit of fun.

I’ll divert for a few minutes, as the same show also had Billy Bragg and Echo & The Bunnymen in the studio at an even later hour.  They teamed up for an unforgettable cover of a Velvet Underground number.

Turning now to the first band ever to play at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, the cavernous venue on the banks of the River Clyde to which all the big names would flock after the legendary Glasgow Apollo was closed down and demolished.  History records that UB40 were the first to play in what became known as Hall 4 in 1985, but the truth of the matter is that a little-known local act called Snakes of Shake were the first as evidenced by this clip which went out on The Tube in 1984:-

OK….the building was still under construction, but let’s not split hairs.

That clip was part of a special on Scottish music that was broadcast by The Tube.  You’ll have to bear with me on the next one as I can’t find a segment where it’s just the song.  

It’s a seven-minute piece of film, in which presenter Leslie Ash turns up on a very wintry day in Dundee for a chat down in the dockside area with Billy Mackenzie.  The interview takes place on what appears to be a tug boat, while Billy then mimes outrageously to the Associates song ‘Waiting For The Loveboat’ on board the HMS Unicorn, a 200-year old frigate that operates as a museum/visitor attraction in Dundee.  The music begins around 4 mins and 24 seconds in.

You’ll have spotted by now that many of these clips are courtesy of the hard work of an individual who goes by the name of ScottishTeeVe who has taken hundreds of hours to take his VHS etc recordings and put them up on YouTube for our enjoyment.  All the clips thus far, I also have on dozens of different videotapes that are in boxes in a cupboard beneath the stairs, but I just don’t know how to now put them in places where they can be shared and enjoyed more widely.

I’ll finish off with a cheat.

It’s a clip that doesn’t feature anyone from Scotland, but it was filmed in Glasgow on 3 June 1990.

The location is Custom House Quay on the banks of the Clyde. It was part of ‘The Big Day’,  one of the centrepiece events in a year-long set of festivities to celebrate Glasgow being designated as the European City of Culture.  An all-day music festival that was free of charge across various locations, with the big-name acts performing on stages at the main civic square or in the largest of our inner-city parks.  Some more niche acts were put on at Custom House Quay, one of whom was Billy Bragg.  He didn’t let on that he was going to be joined for part of his set by some friends from America:-

You can see that the location is full to capacity, with maybe a couple of hundred folk sitting down and maybe as many again standing up at street level.  No mobile phones, so no way of letting anyone know that Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant were singing their hearts out.  I don’t have this clip on video, for the simple reason that I was out on the streets that day, among what was estimated to be a crowd of 250,000.  Nor did I see it on the day…..I was half-a-mile away enjoying the one stage where the music was quite eclectic, watching the likes of Aswad, Nanci Griffith and Les Negresses Vertes put on great shows.  It wasn’t until the next day, reading the newspapers, did I learn about the Custom House Quay happening.  The performance has become the Glasgow equivalent of the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1976 with thousands claiming to have been there.

Massive thanks to JC for this time capsule, a hugely enjoyable post. 

Saturday Live

Galaxie 500- Dean Wareham, Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski- made all sorts of waves with a trio of albums between 1988 and 1990 (Today, On Fire and This is Our Music) before splitting up in 1991. On Fire in particular got acres of coverage the music press, Dean's high pitched vox and slowcore psychedelic guitars matched by the gentle push of the bass and drums, from opening song Blue Thunder through to the closing Isn't It A Pity (a George Harrison cover), forty minutes of reverb- laden, spectral, fragile splendour. 

In 1990 while in London they were filmed playing for MTV's 120 Minutes, a three song excerpt here opening with a cover of The Velvet Underground's Here She Comes Now, a brief bit of self- conscious interviewing, Tell Me and finally Strange (both from On Fire). 

The same year they played Club Lingerie in Hollywood where they performed their cover of Ceremony. On the whole, New Order's songs don't end up being covered well but Galaxie 500's version of Ceremony is stunning, a slowed down version that summons the spirit of both Joy Division and early New Order. A studio version came out on the Blue Thunder EP in 1990

As an extra, in 2021 Dean released his first solo album since 2014, a record titled I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of L.A. which had everything you'd want from a Dean Wareham album, warm indie guitar songs, good lyrics, Dean casting his eye over the state of the USA under Trump (among other topics) and Dean's distinctive voice. 

Red Hollywood

What Costume Shall The Poor Girl Wear?

Three Nico and The Velvet Underground coincidences came to me recently and I don't ignore these things when it comes to writing posts for the blog. First, the latest issue of Mojo (the music magazine for middle aged men) has a feature on the 50 Best Lou Reed and Velvet Underground songs in it, in which the song below features (as you'd expect). Second, the day after reading this countdown I played a clip to my GCSE History class about opposition to the Vietnam War. As the footage of students demonstrating, soldiers fixing bayonets and tear gas blowing about played the familiar and thrilling sounds of All Tomorrow's Parties came into earshot, John Cale's treated piano powering its way into my classroom as Moe Tucker's drums bashed away. Nico's deadpan, monotone vocal just about started as the clip finished. I had a little moment quietly to myself in front of a class of fifteen and sixteen year olds, a small shudder of 'fuck me, that was good', almost like hearing it for the first time again.

All Tomorrow's Parties

It is by any standards an amazing song, discordant and adrenaline filled, with nagging, off key guitar lines (Lou's famous ostrich guitar tuning) and claustrophobic production. The song is about Andy Warhol's clique at The Factory, a place where everyone said the 'most astonishing things, the craziest things, the funniest things, the saddest things', while Andy just watched. Cale later said it was about a girl called Darryl, 'a beautiful, petite blonde with three kids, two of whom were taken away from her'. Which is one of the saddest things as an observation on its own. 

Lou Reed and the others didn't want Nico in the band. Andy pushed her in, believing she could be a star. All Tomorrow's Parties was written partly to give her something to do on stage. But she makes it- her flat, accented, dead eyed, double tracked vocals are as important to this song as any other element of it. 

The third part of the triptych of coincidences was that not long ago I finished reading Nico, Songs They Never Play On The Radio, an account of Nico and her life from 1982- 1988, by James Young, the pianist in her touring band in the 80s. It's really well written recreation of the demi- world of Manchester musicians, hangers on and promoters who orbited around her, while she existed on heroin, red wine and cigarettes. There's no money, few gigs, no seems to enjoy themselves apart from occasionally very briefly, Nico hates everyone she's stuck with, especially the musicians- sometimes she appears on stage on her own with her harmonium, reluctant to let her ban join her. Occasionally they play a gig somewhere in Europe and an uber- fan appears which pisses her off as much as no one turning up. Touring is the only way to make any money but it disrupts her drug habit. James witnesses it all, participates in the gigs and recordings, writing sympathetically and making it clear there's little romance in this world (somehow though, even the absolute lack of romance has its own grimly romantic appeal). The book finishes with Nico's sad death in Ibiza in 1988 and her funeral in Germany, the mystery of her father and what happened to him and what he did during the war all wrapped up as part of Nico's allure. Highly recommended if you're after something to read. 

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 Ever Had A Heart

The last week has been soundtracked much of the time by this hour long mix from Jesse Fahnestock, a promotional mix for Brighton's Higher Love who have released Jesse's recent single Kissed Again (in his 10:40 guise). You can find Higher Love 059 at the Balearic Ultras Mixcloud  page and it's an absolute beaut, a meandering shuffle round some blissed out chugginess, some dub tinged delights, some indie- dance and some loose and lovely Balearica with half the tracks in the mix Jesse's own work as 10: 40. It drifts in with Rich Lane's Coyote, atmospherics, ambience and slide guitar and then Margo Timmins voice appears just below the surface, singing Sweet Jane from The Trinity Sessions back in the late 80s- quite the pairing. Matt Gunn, Kusht and Coco Rosie follow and then a run of unreleased 10:40 tracks before a euphoric section running from Cosmikuro into a re- edited Charlatans song from 1994, then into Kissed Again and then Jesse's re-edit of Hugh Masakela's Strawberries, all multi-coloured, dreamy splendour. Highly recommended.

Tracklist

• Rich Lane/Cowboy Junkies: Coyote Tan/Sweet Jane
• Matt Gunn: Lost in the Drohne
• Kusht: Trippin’ Out Back
• CocoRosie: Good Friday
• 10:40: Coat Check
• 10:40: [Unreleased]
• 10:40: [Unreleased]
• MAKS: North (Yarni Remix)
• Cosmikuro: Gum
• The Charlatans: Come in Number 21 (10:40’s Number 21 with a Bullet Edit)
• 10:40: Kissed Again
• Hugh Masakela: Strawberries (10:40’s Cream Edit)
• Florence & The Scream Machine: Don’t Fight The Love (10:40’s Machine Mash)
• 10:40: See Me Through

As an addition I thought I'd post two songs that provided Jesse with some of his source material. Back in 1988 Canada's Cowboy Junkies recorded an album that seemed to appear out of nowhere and crossed all kinds of boundaries over here. The album pulled together their own songs and some covers with the spectral presence of the church they were recorded in- the natural reverb of Toronto's Holy Trinity church is as important as any of the wood and metal instruments played by the group. The recording was made using a single microphone to pick up all the players and Margo's voice. On Sweet Jane they chose to cover the version from The Velvet Underground's 1969 Live album rather than the one from Loaded. Apparently even professional curmudgeon Lou Reed loved the Cowboy Junkies cover. 

Sweet Jane

By 1994 The Charlatans were a looking a little lost and out of time and their third album Up To Our Hips didn't set the world alight- the next big things of Britpop were already stirring and The Charlatans looked a bit like yesterday's men (many of their contemporaries had already run out of road). The album, produced by Steve Hillage, has endured though, has a groove and feel to it and some of the songs are real fan favourites, songs like Can't Get Out Of Bed, Jesus Hairdo and I Never Want An Easy Life If Me And He Were Ever To Get There. It opens with Come In Number 21, a song that sounds like they've just arrived, plugged in and turned all the switches on, a rehearsal where suddenly things come together on the spot. The guitars are lower in the mix, the drums less obviously based around the 1990 beat, Tim's singing surrounded by the swampy bass, organ and guitars. Time definitely not up. 

Come In Number 21

I Can't Stand It

This fine piece of political discourse is painted on the railway bridge behind my place of work (a school in a former mill town in the north west of England that has seen its fair share of post- industrial decline and the problems associated with it and yet inexplicably is represented by a Tory MP). I like to think a student or former student is responsible. 

Back in February 1985 Verve records released a ten song compilation of rescued Velvet Underground recordings. Back in 1969 the band had recorded an album's worth of songs for what was intended to be their fourth album. A new broom came in at Verve/ MGM, an executive called Mike Curb and he took the decision to drop all the unprofitable groups from their roster. The Velvets were among those and were released from their contract. On the shelf they left behind the tapes containing five songs from the John Cale- era Velvets and fourteen for the unreleased album. These recordings were re- discovered in the 80s and the 'best' were released as VU. Most of the songs were in the master tape, multi- track format so some of Verve's top engineers were able to 'clean up' and remix the songs. VU is a treasure trove, a record that was partly responsible for the indie boom in the UK in the mid- 80s. As an album it hangs together and sounds coherent despite two of the songs being Cale period songs and the rest Doug Yule period songs. Some of the songs were re- recorded for Loaded and some were already known to Lou Reeds' audience due to him recycling them on various 1970s solo albums but these were the source material, the songs as recorded by Lou, John or Doug, Sterling and Mo (with some typically 80s gated reverb on the drums added by Verve to make the recordings more contemporary). In many ways VU is as vital a Velvet Underground release as any of their four official studio albums and when exploring the group as we all were in the mid- to- late 80s, VU was an essential purchase. In 1986 the rest of the songs were released as Another VU, a marginally less essential nine song album that rounded the set off. 

In 2014 when the Velvet's record company were celebrating the forty- fifth anniversary of their self- titled third album with a super deluxe box set they went back to the songs that made up VU/ the unreleased 1969 album and remixed them again, this time much more sympathetically. The 2014 version of I Can't Stand It especially was a revelation- the drums especially- and the restored Lou Reed vocal countdown, backwards from eight to one starting at two minutes twelve seconds, just after the vicious guitar solo and before the choppy rhythm guitar parts come back in, is ridiculously good. This is as good a song as any they recorded. 

I Can't Stand It (2014 Mix)

There are many things I cannot stand at the moment, things that easily top living with thirteen dead cats and the purple dog that wears spats in Lou's lyrics, but listing them will only irritate me more. As it is I'll just echo what the Manic Street Preachers said in their 1992 song Repeat, 'Useless generations/ dumb flag scum/ repeat after me/ fuck Queen and country'. Scum is admittedly a strong word but the rest I can't find any fault with.