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White Light/White Heat + three songs I love right now + a note about In Rainbows
18 Jan 2008, 20:55
I love The Velvet Underground’s first album with Nico. There’s some really neat stuff on there. Venus In Furs is an ethereal S&M drone, Sunday Morning is a perfect pop song and All Tomorrow’s Parties is just flat-out greatness. But their second album, White Light/White Heat, in my humble opinion, is for the most part even better. However, one track is so terrible that it very nearly overshadows the rest of the album. 
Sister Ray, which inexplicably forms half the album, is a stupid blues-jam thing that’s a rip on something Pink Floyd did so much better on their debut the year before. Honestly, I can’t say how much I hate that song. It’s an abomination. It’s putrid, vile, disgusting, drugged-out, no-thought-at-all noise.
That track's really a shame, because it follow's an incredibly awesome first side (in vinyl terms).Lady Godiva's Operation and Here She Comes Now are two really neat little songs. White Light/White Heat is an OK 50’s-style rocker that glorifies amphetamines. The Gift, my personal favourite on the album, combines a short story narrated by John Cale in one channel with a jam that actually does something interesting in the other. So, all in all, there's a really great EP on this album, then a big blustering noise signifying nothing that I'll just pretend doesn't exist.
The Clash -Straight to Hell
From the same LP that unleashed the AOR classicsShould I Stay or Should I Go? and Rock the Casbah on the western world, this ethereal gem is the band’s best song. Utterly transcendent from its staccato guitar intro onward, Straight to Hell paints a chilling portrait of atrocities committed by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. But the track is most notable for the method of its delivery. Though the song as irate and ferocious in spirit as anything off the band’s debut, its impact is increased tenfold by the dreamy, reggae-tinged music. And before I forget: the song is most of the most simple in the Clash catalog. It floats along on a few simple chord sequences and one gorgeous descending guitar lead. A study in the beauty of simplicity.
Straight to Hell guitar tablature
The Fall -Hip Priest
I have that two-disc hits set, and there’s obviously such a mass of stuff on there that I didn’t really catch everything on the first go. However, I’m almost ashamed that this moody epic escaped me. I really heard it for the first time the other day, and oh. My. God. I’m not even going to try and explain it or analyse it. I’ve just linked to it. Bow down to Mark E. Smith. He is not appreciated.
[url=http://www.[spam nofollow=yes] Priest MP3
M.I.A. - Jimmy
In my best-of-2007 entry, I asserted that M.I.A. looks like the only thing left in pop. With Soulja Boy shattering sales records and Amy Winehouse getting more notice for her hideous hair than for her records, it looks more and more like that’s the case every day. This week, Jimmy is my obsession, and I think it shows more balls than any other track on Kala, which is pretty difficult. Maya Arulpragasam is many things, but she is not a singer. But do you think that would stop the woman who references the PLO in song and sings lines like ‘credentials are boring/I left them at the burial ground’ would really care about something like that? Of course not, so we get the perverse multi-culti pop of Jimmy, which samples an old Bollywood movie, marries it to sleek Euro-disco, tosses in some cheeky references to genocide tours and features a vocal not dissimilar to 1980s Yoko Ono. On paper that sounds like hell but in practice it works marvelously.
Click here to view the ‘Jimmy’ promotional film
One last thing
I’m starting to wonder if In Rainbows will stand the test of time. I listened to it this morning, then about an hour ago,I Might Be Wrong came up in shuffle, and honestly, it’s better than anything on In Rainbows, with the possible exception of Reckoner.
ALSO:
[url=http://www.[spam nofollow=yes] Bush’s cover of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’
Sister Ray, which inexplicably forms half the album, is a stupid blues-jam thing that’s a rip on something Pink Floyd did so much better on their debut the year before. Honestly, I can’t say how much I hate that song. It’s an abomination. It’s putrid, vile, disgusting, drugged-out, no-thought-at-all noise. That track's really a shame, because it follow's an incredibly awesome first side (in vinyl terms).
Lady Godiva's Operation and Here She Comes Now are two really neat little songs. White Light/White Heat is an OK 50’s-style rocker that glorifies amphetamines. The Gift, my personal favourite on the album, combines a short story narrated by John Cale in one channel with a jam that actually does something interesting in the other. So, all in all, there's a really great EP on this album, then a big blustering noise signifying nothing that I'll just pretend doesn't exist. The Clash -
Straight to HellFrom the same LP that unleashed the AOR classics
Should I Stay or Should I Go? and Rock the Casbah on the western world, this ethereal gem is the band’s best song. Utterly transcendent from its staccato guitar intro onward, Straight to Hell paints a chilling portrait of atrocities committed by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. But the track is most notable for the method of its delivery. Though the song as irate and ferocious in spirit as anything off the band’s debut, its impact is increased tenfold by the dreamy, reggae-tinged music. And before I forget: the song is most of the most simple in the Clash catalog. It floats along on a few simple chord sequences and one gorgeous descending guitar lead. A study in the beauty of simplicity.Straight to Hell guitar tablature
The Fall -
Hip PriestI have that two-disc hits set, and there’s obviously such a mass of stuff on there that I didn’t really catch everything on the first go. However, I’m almost ashamed that this moody epic escaped me. I really heard it for the first time the other day, and oh. My. God. I’m not even going to try and explain it or analyse it. I’ve just linked to it. Bow down to Mark E. Smith. He is not appreciated.
[url=http://www.[spam nofollow=yes] Priest MP3
M.I.A. - Jimmy
In my best-of-2007 entry, I asserted that M.I.A. looks like the only thing left in pop. With Soulja Boy shattering sales records and Amy Winehouse getting more notice for her hideous hair than for her records, it looks more and more like that’s the case every day. This week, Jimmy is my obsession, and I think it shows more balls than any other track on Kala, which is pretty difficult. Maya Arulpragasam is many things, but she is not a singer. But do you think that would stop the woman who references the PLO in song and sings lines like ‘credentials are boring/I left them at the burial ground’ would really care about something like that? Of course not, so we get the perverse multi-culti pop of Jimmy, which samples an old Bollywood movie, marries it to sleek Euro-disco, tosses in some cheeky references to genocide tours and features a vocal not dissimilar to 1980s Yoko Ono. On paper that sounds like hell but in practice it works marvelously.
Click here to view the ‘Jimmy’ promotional film
One last thing
I’m starting to wonder if In Rainbows will stand the test of time. I listened to it this morning, then about an hour ago,
I Might Be Wrong came up in shuffle, and honestly, it’s better than anything on In Rainbows, with the possible exception of Reckoner.ALSO:
[url=http://www.[spam nofollow=yes] Bush’s cover of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’
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heaventree22 wrote:
ever hear the live version of straight to hell? i like it even better than the studio version; either way though, i agree it's one of their most powerful songs.
sort of half listened to in rainbows, just once; it didn't really catch me. but then again, neither did kid a when it came out. so who knows.
re: sister ray: joy division's covering that is the worst thing they've ever done.
must check out kate doing marvin. those are two of my favorite voices ever. -
personman_4 wrote:
sister ray is one of the best velvets tracks, and certainly the best on wl/wh; you have to understand that the band's most significant contribution to rock music was through their avant-garde experimentations, and Sister Ray is about as avant-garde as it gets. I don't know if you listen to much fusion - Miles Davis' early 70s output for example - but Sister Ray takes elements from this burgeoning development in jazz (which was happening at the time) and gives it a great big Velvet Underground style kick up the arse. I don't know... maybe you'll like this track more as you give the album repeat listens. I mean, it really just takes the great ideas explored in European Son to the next logical place.
Owen Lucas -
jcjohnson63 wrote:
listened to kate bush,it really is amazing.thanks.i have thought the velvets were a band you had to love or hate.they were very experimental and some songs just sound bizarre. but i love them. -
Paap_Floyd wrote:
Sister Ray is very outstanding. I think it's in my song top 10 of all times and WLWH is my #1 album. But, of course you're allowed to hate that song. I can understand.. it will never get a prize for being the most wonderful song :D -
luishernando wrote:
Sister Ray used to make my head ache. But listen to it a little more and you might see the beauty and order in its roughness and chaos. -
stereo999 wrote:
There's an urban legend that goes that when the Velvets were recording Sister Ray, the producer said to the engineer, Tell me when it's over and left the control room.
(You say putrid, vile, disgusting, drugged-out, no-thought-at-all noise as if that's a bad thing! hehehe...) I always thought of Sister Ray as part of the grand tradition of long-track-to-fill-up-the-vinyl-record-so-it's-a-whole-album which includesGoing Home, Up in Her Room, and We Will Fall. (all great IMHO)
P.S. The best thing about Joy Division's cover of Sister Ray is the end where Ian Curtis tells the audience, You ought to hear us do Louie Louie! -
lmaster65 wrote:
If it wasn't for Sister Ray, my appreciation for that record would drop staggeringly. And what is this I hear about a Joy Division cover of Sister Ray? I wasn't aware of this. -
lmaster65 wrote:
If it wasn't for Sister Ray, my appreciation for that record would drop staggeringly. And what is this I hear about a Joy Division cover of Sister Ray? I wasn't aware of this. Hard for me to picture what that sounds like.
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Scott_H wrote:
Kate Bush's Gaye cover is good, but nowhere near as goodas Jack Black's in High Fidelity.
And Sister Ray is fantastic. But that's only my opinion -
RettAlexis wrote:
I've never heard a bad thing about Sister Ray either. It hurts me deep inside.
