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Volume CXXXII, Number 16 |
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Nico's neato, naughty, and nice
SEAN TURLEY
STAFF WRITER
Okay, I wanted to write a piece about the Velvet Underground without getting all into tributes and awe-struck adulation. Let's see how I do.
I'll begin with a history-this part of their story may be belabored but its worth telling-The Velvet Underground were not flower power saviors. They were street fighting rock titans (albeit, artsy fragile street fighters). Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale (later Doug Yule), and Maureen Tucker released their first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, back in 1967 when we were all living other lives God knows where, when hippies ruled and all the freaks were banished to the streets.
How important was this album? Well, I have read loads about how this is the most influential album ever made-truly an explosion of genius afoot in Lou Reed's songwriting, Tucker's basic but accentuating rhythm, and Cale's jagged viola.
In the liner notes to the deluxe edition (recently released as a two CD set, including a mono and stereo mix of the album) Dave Thompson raves about its colossal impact as an undercurrent to everything in modern rock: "The Velvet Underground and Nico might well be the best-kept secret in rock n' roll history, its audience a self-perpetuating secret society which slips through the shadows...a lot of albums are life changing, but The Velvet Underground and Nico is one of them which has literally changed lives." Since I was born after the piece completely changed the course of rock and roll, I'll refrain from such hyperbole.
But what I do know is that this album will mess with your head; it is like literally hearing decadence-not in the rolling-around-in-money sense but in terms of overindulgence, in not living for tomorrow or even the next five seconds but for right now because we're all going to overdose and take the world with us.
Offsetting the unremitting viola and feedback attack with Nico's singing on four tracks was undeniably brilliant. The chanteuse's delicate, victimized vocals add a glimmer of light to the abyss; there's strength in her beautifully aloof voice because you know she is in all the mess, the darkness, the debauchery, and she is surviving.
Now this brings me to another point. The Velvets have always been known as dope-shooting maniacs, but I've always taken this in the metaphorical sense that they fuck themselves up and fuck you up in the process.
On The Velvet Underground and Nico they conjure up the dirtiest sound, a driving beat that picks you up, throws you in a dim alley somewhere and then drags you back kicking and screaming.
My words cannot do the album justice. It's just sonic bliss, a musical Armageddon in every rise and fall and in every driving monotonous section that simply does not let up. The band's creation is dynamic without getting ostentatious or self-conscious.
It's simply vampiric: "Cut mouth bleeding razors forget in the pain / antiseptic remains coo goodbye / so you fly / to the cozy brown snow of the east / gone to choose, choose again."
The Velvet Underground and Nico is an inescapable void that begins and terminates somewhere on the raging streets-a place from which you could never ever return for you would be but a shell of a person, completely drained of all recognizable life.
The songs on the disc must be considered as a part of an album; it would be misleading and unfair if I analyzed them individually.
I hope it suffices to say that in 11 tracks the Velvets will explode your mind and leave you in shambles; there is no redemption, no end, just the sound as the shards and dust settle.
Okay, I am going to have to stop now for truly I have crossed into the realm of excessive flattery which simply will not do.
The Velvets do not need my praise; the volatile noise that changed music forever speaks for itself. It speaks to hundreds of fans and it speak well. Be sure to give them a listen if you haven't already.
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