The Yardbirds Greatest Hits

The Yardbirds Greatest Hits  
(Epic 24246) 

Released 1966

Shapes of Things
Still I'm Sad
New York City Blues
For Your Love
Over Under Sideways Down
I'm A Man
Happenings Ten Years Time Ago
Heart Full of Soul
Smokestack Lightning
I'm Not Talking

The Yardbirds were a bit of a mystery. They had an eclecticism — the Gregorian chant-ness of the vocals, the melodic diversity, the way they used guitar feedback ... They did things with harmonics — minor thirds and fifths — that created this ethereal, monstrous sound ... The Yardbirds' music is a gold mine waiting to be stumbled upon. (Steven Tyler in Rolling Stone)


The `birds, like most of the British Invasion bands ... like most rock and roll bands, actually, were ultimately a singles band.  They actually only recorded two proper studio LPs in their day - the proto-psychedelic Roger the Engineer and the odd, popped-out Little Games. Both of those are worthwhile albums, but it was their singles from 1964-1966 that remain their definitive body of work.

 The Yardbirds Greatest Hits is not the definitive `birds comp.  That honor would have to go to Rhino's Ultimate!, which collects all the singles, and the best of the b-sides, album cuts and rarities, and adds a nifty little book full of rare pictures and good liner notes, all on two affordable discs, and it's got everything that anyone but the most die-hard Yardbirds fanatic could ever want (did I mention I'm one of the most die-hard Yardbirds fanatics?).

But the great albums tell a story.  And the problem with comprehensive archival collections is, however great they are, they are too inclusive and sprawling to tell a proper story.  We're talking aesthetics here.  I wouldn't part with my copy of Ultimate! for nothin'.  The opportunity to plug in a disc and hear everything from r&b garage demos to overproduced pop failures is too great to let go.   But Ultimate! is a library.  Greatest Hits is a story.  And if it isn't the whole story, that's because The Yardbirds had more than one story in them.  Which means, yeah, there's lots of great Yardbirds tracks that ain't on here.  But don't worry, little ones ... we'll be getting to those...

It kicks off hard, in a most Yardbirds-y fashion; a barrage of hard chords - dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah/dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, then into a "Bolero" like march, all martial drums and and slamming power chords, as Keith Relf intones his fears of the future. 

I have long held the theory that some rock bands are song bands, meaning they have great songs, and some are sound bands, meaning they may have less-than-stellar songs, but they sound great.  This is not to say that a song band might not sound great, or that a sound band might not get their hands on an occasional outstanding song.  But sound bands don't have a strong in-house songwriter.  The Yardbirds are the very definition of a sound band.  Lyrically, "Shapes of Things" is schoolboy poetry.  That isn't to say they're not evocative; a young person's plea not to let our beautiful world die (sad irony, the world outlasted Keith Relf).  But it is the pounding music that puts it across.  Marching like the four horsemen of the apocalypse across the soundscape, then yielding to one of Beck's memorable guitar flip-outs, twisting and bending the notes until they sound like a sheet being wound so tight the fabric will rip.  The song itself, like many `birds originals, seems so slight, so sketchy, it can barely hold the band's relentless sonic attack.  It may be odd to kick off an album with such a doomy track, but it's as good an introduction to The Yardbirds as you could ask.

As if it's cold-war-era fears were not dark enough,  "Shapes" gives way to a dark, gregorian chant.  "See the stars come falling down from the sky ..." intones Keith Relf in his darkest croon, as a lonely acoustic guitar strums out ominous, heavy, dark minor chords, and the backup singers (McCarty/Dreja/Beck?  The mind boggles) groan that gregorian chant behind him.  This is a lost love song out of Edgar Allan Poe.  There would be nothing like it until the Stones "Paint It Black" many months later.  "When the wind blows, we are apart..." Relf farewells.  A strange choice for a bid at the Top Forty.  But The Yardbirds were the definition of strange.  "New York City Blues" is a straight Chicago blues pastiche, with amusing lyrics about a girl, her dad, and a shotgun.  It's amusing and the playing is, as always, stunning.  But it's great strength is instrumental.  It does however, remind us that The Yardbirds cut their teeth as a blues band.

Then the ominous, sustained ring of the harpsichord, and some warning slaps on the tabla, announcing "For Your Love", the Graham Gouldman-penned hit that drove Clapton out of the band.  Clapton may not have liked it, but I've always dug that slinky rhythm, the harpischord's snaking tones, and Relf's sinister vocal.  And when they hit the chorus, its still pure Yardbirds - they stomp it like a grape.

 A winding guitar riff that seems to spin around and around, and shouts in the distance, and we're into "Over Under Sideways Down", their catchiest rocker (allegedly based on "Rock Around the Clock", though damned if I can hear it).  Beck's guitar spins and spins around McCarty/Samwell-Smith's churning rhythm while Relf extols the virtues of the carnal lifestyle; "When I was young, people spoke of immorality/All the things they said were wrong are what I want to be."  This is probably the best lyric Relf ever got his hands on, and the song's relentless drive is irresistible.

That's one side, and we've already covered "Bolero" rhythms, gregorian chants, harpsichord driven avant-pop, basic blues and a winding rocker allegedly based on Bill Haley.  Are you gettin' the idea this band was eclectic?  And yet, all of it a piece.  And all of it rocks.

Side Two (the great albums have sides, did I mention?) kicks it off with another martial beat.  "I'm A Man" is the `birds masterpiece; 2:38 of relentless riddim, driven by blasts of Relf's harmonica and Beck's total guitar wipeout - when he runs out of frets, the fucker just keeps going!  It don't get any hotter than this.

There's only one way to follow such a thing.  Go further.  "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" seems to bring home all the menace and fear evoked on Side One, then stir it into a whirling stew of power chords and winding solos, with Relf intoning ominously about losing his sense of time and self, "sinking deep into the well of time" he chants, over and over, as the band flies around him like a mosh pit.  The mid-break features not only the most crazed soloing Beck had yet laid down, but a sound-collage of hot guit licks from Beck, Chris Dreja and newcomer Jimmy Page, sound effects, Relf laughing maniacally, and a cockney voice babbling insults, presumably at the band ("Pop group are ya?  Where'd you get that long `air?").   This is the descent into the maelstrom.  No other rock and roll band has even come close to it - this is the sound Sonic Youth spent their career chasing.

After that particular blast of sonic insanity, it's back to Beck playing sitar-licks on his guitar, "Heart Full Of Soul", a Top 40er even Chris Isaak couldn't ruin (though he tried).  This picks up where "For Your Love" left off, but is even more signature Yardbirds, with its middle-eastern guitar and chanted, minor-key chorus.  

"Smokestack Lightning" takes them back to the blues, live from the Crawdaddy club in `64.  The sound is rough, bootleggy.  The `birds had power, but the couldn't cut Wolf and his band (who could???).  This gets by on the sinister tune and Relf's hard harp.

 Another barrage of power chords announces Mose Alison's "I'm Not Talking", here taken with punk-level tempo and intensity, Relf barking out Alison's witty lyrics like an angry dog.  This is the second great rocked-up Mose Alsion cover (after The Who's glorious takes on "Blues" aka "Young Man Blues").  The Yardbirds run it down to the ground.

10 tracks, 30 minutes, and The Yardbirds have blown all but their strongest contemporaries, and a couple generations of pretenders out of the water.  If that don't make for a great album, I don't know what does.

 

 

 

 

 

 
   

 

 

 
 

The Beatles - Meet the Beatles

Meet the Beatles  (Capitol ST-2047) 

Released 1964

I Want To Hold Your Hand
I Saw Her Standing There
This Boy
It Won't Be Long
All I've Got To Do
All My Loving
Don't Bother Me
Little Child
Till There Was You
Hold Me Tight
I Wanna Be Your Man
Not A Second Time



A few days after that first perfomance on the Sullivan show I spent the evening with some friends in a cafe in my hometown.  It was, or anyway had been, a folk club.  This night one heard only Meet The Beatles.  The music, snaking through the dark, suddenly spooky room, was instantly recognizable and like nothing we had ever heard.  It was joyous, threatening, absurd, arrogant, determined, innocent and tough... (Greil Marcus)

Conventional wisdom holds that the Parlophone, UK editions of The Beatles catalog are, to a one, the superior artifacts.  Thus, With The Beatles, the Parlophone release from which this US Capitol disc is chipped from, is nominally the definitive article.

Of course, it gets tough.  The unique thing about The Beatles is that their catalog is so strong and so consistent, with even their lesser creations usually being memorable and having something to offer, that you can practically toss together any old mix of single and album tracks and have a better-than-average album on your hands.  In fact, it's been done!

In the case here; With should be, arguably is, the definitive article - it's longer (3 more songs, 7 more minutes), more balanced (more Paul and George, more rock and roll covers) and is, after all, the disc the lads intended it to be.

But I will go against the grain, and say that, for sheer impact, the US knock-off Meet The Beatles, which is 75% With, adding a single and b-side and one track from their first true LP, Please Please Me, is the one I choose.  

The great albums tell a story.  With The Beatles and Meet The Beatles tell the same story, really.  But I think maybe Meet tells it a little bit better.  Meet was the formal introduction for us in US, not counting VeeJay's Introducing The Beatles, which knocked off Please Please Me, and rode the coattails of Meet into the #2 spot.  Meet, driven by the hot single "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was a good as its name.  Here's where we Amurricans got acquainted.  And it tells the story better because it's shorter, harder, direct and to the point.  It doesn't fuck around.

It's the hot single that kicks it off - hard.  A three-chord blast.  Then again.  Then again! Then again!! And then a surging straight into "Oooooh I ---".  All great rock and roll songs grab you by the throat from the first second, then deliver the goods.  This one is no exception.  The songs comes at you in a joyous rush, "the I can't hide" (or is it "I get high"?  It sure sounds like the latter.  Maybe Dylan was right) building and building on itself, much as the "Come on - come on!" in"Please Please Me".  From those first few seconds the record is undeniable.  Then it's the "One - two- three - faaah!" that launches "I Saw Her Standing There".  (Context - I prefer this one as the lead off on Please Please Me.  Practical reality - it's a prime candidate for their Best Song and it sounds just fine here, a one-two punch coming right on the heels of "Hand").

After that it begins to settle down a bit.  "This Boy", the doo-wop-ping b-side of "Hand" is a nice hark back to Album # 1.  But Meet (and With) is no re-hash.  The Fab Ones were burning too fast to look back.  On their first outing they had mastered every rock and roll move up to 1963.  Here they're giving notice of their mastery of this year's model.  Track three (the opener on With) slams home with Motown power; they were listening to the latest hot sounds from Detroit, and learning.  "All I've Got To Do" similarly shuffles and stutters with soul energy.  And a newfound, mature longing creeping into the lyrics, pushing the teenage romance aside (though that transition won't be complete for another year).  

"All My Loving" harks back to last year again.  "Don't Bother Me" is an early George outing with a slightly sinister melody.  "Little Child" a rumbling rocker.  "Till There Was You" another early example of essential Paul balladry (and obsession with square show tunes).  "Hold Me Tight" runs on its mighty, chugging bridge and yelped vocal.  "I Wanna Be Your Man" fills the role of first album's "Boys"; a good slab of Liverpool rockabilly, wailed by Ringo.  It has the same kind of drive ("Boy", however, has the tougher groove).  Then it slams to a close with the urgent, despairing "Not A Second Time" - more Motown riddim, and a threatening sound that's new to their music.

A 27-minute volley, courtesy of Capitol Records A&R department, in the Beatles campaign to conquer the US.  America fell without a fight.  

The Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup

Goats Head Soup  COC-59101

Released 1973

Dancing With Mr. D
100 Years Ago
Coming Down Again
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
Angie
Silver Train
Hide Your Love
Winter
Can You Hear The Music
Star Star

"After Exile, such a beautifully set up list of songs that all seemed to go together, it was difficult for us to get that tightness again. We hadn't been in the studio for a year. But we had some good ideas. "Coming Down Again", "Angie", "Starfucker", "Heartbreaker". I enjoyed making it. Our way of doing things changed while we were recording it, and slowly I became more and more Jamaican, to the point where I didn't leave.'" (Keith Richards, 2010)

Once upon a time, if you'da asked me to rate Goats Head Soup I'd have said it sucked.  One of their worst.  The beginning of the end.  The only copy I ever owned was one i picked up for $1 at a garage sale.  The inner sleeve had been lost, replaced with one from a Hot Tuna album.  It was scratched.  But it had a couple good songs I wanted for the post-Exile Stones comp which I've made and remade many times, always with different track listings.  

Fast-forward to the 00's, and I'm now burning my Stones comp to CD, rather than cassette.  So I get hold of the lesser albums from the library, rip them, and start building my comp from the tracks.

And here, in my late 30's, I discover that, while It's Only Rock and Roll and Black and Blue yield only some tracks (actually, most of Only is pretty good), I really wanted all of Goats Head.  Even the duff tracks.  

"Dancing With Mr. D" - much maligned, I dig it.  Keef's guitar uncoiling the song like a snake (is it really any sillier than the Stones other horror-movie songs?  I think not).  The Stones were always assimilating whatever was going on in the musical world around them, inhaling it and exhaling it, Stones-ified.  They've been doing it since the beginning, taking in The Beatles, Merseybeat, Dylan, Motown, Stax, psychedelia, the Velvets, The Band in the 60's.  In the 70's (and since), they just kept it up.  Goats Head is one big inhale/exhale.  "Mr. D" is Alice Cooper country - but it's all Stones, down to the "Sympathy"-style whoops in the background and Mick's street violence lyrics.  Hidin' in a corner in New York City/Lookin' down a .44 in West Virginny.

It's a slow album.  Even the rockers are slow.  "Dancing" is slinky, not manic.  It gives way to "100 Years Ago", which illustrates another ish.  It's a patchwork song.  Part Band-ish, loping roots, then country lilt on the bridge ("call me ... lazybones"), then veering into a Billy Preston-led jam before falling back to earth.  It's all longing and regret: 

Now all my friends is wearing worried smiles, Living out a dream of what they was; Don't you think it's sometimes wise not to grow up?
Went out walkin' through the wood the other day; Can't you see the furrows in my forehead? What tender days, we had no secrets hid away

Good stuff, and easy to miss, buried in the murk and haze of the album's sound.  Mick has rarely before or since sounded so vulnerable.  

Then Keef answers him.  "Coming Down Again", a lugubrious soul ballad, sung by Mr. No-Sleep, with some gentle backing vocals from Mick ("sky fallin' down").  More regrets.  "Slipped my tongue in someone else's pie; Tasting better ev'ry time;He turned green and tried to make me cry; Being hungry, it ain't no crime."  Was this the story of the Brian-Anita-Keef triangle? 

Things pick up speed.  "Heartbreaker" kicks in with crashing electric piano chords and "Bitch" style horns.  More violence, drugs, New York streets.  Another .44.  Mick in social protest mode - which isn't his strongest.  But the music kicks hard - its the one Stones classic on the record.

"Angie" - the big hit and the big ballad.  Ack!  I used to hate this one, too.  Despite Mick's affected vocal, now I find it affecting.  The air of regret and sadness continues.  The strings work.

Side Two is where things start to break down.  "Silver Train", a loping blues-rocker about a prostitute, with shining Mick Taylor slide.  "Train" seems to be a minor fave of Stones fans (frequently covered), maybe cause its the closest to Stones 101 this album gets.

What's left is one minor classic, two basically filler jams (with interesting qualities), and one Chuck Berry-style rocker that many adore.  The jams are "Hide Your Love", a loping Jimmy Reed on quaaludes blues that sounds fine but never goes anywhere, and the more intriguing "Can You Hear The Music", an odd bit of ethno-musical wandering, shimmering Latin/African/who knows flashing around - the whole track seems to emerge from a strange, drug-fueled haze.  Or enter one.  It doesn't go anywhere, either, but its a fun trip.    The rocker is "Star Star" aka "Starfucker".  This one's much loved by Stonesophiles, mainly cause Mick says "fucker" repeatedly on the chorus.  Me, I've always gone for "honey I miss your two-tone kisses, legs wrapped around me tight/If I ever get back to Fun City girl, gonna make you scream all night".  It also has some of the dirtiest lyrics in the whole Stones catalog (which is saying a LOT!).  But it's no masterpiece.  

In between all this, comes "Winter".  And that's not a masterpiece, either.  But its close.  Very much in the "Moonlight Mile" mode (my favorite Stones ballad).  Strummed open chords.  It's sure, been a long, long winter.  And Mick rolls out his tale of longing and loneliness (on an album loaded with regret and remorse).  


And I wish I'd been out in California 
When the lights on all the Christmas trees went out 
But I been burnin' my bell, book and candle 
And the restoration plays have all gone 'round 

Goats Head may be the least of the Jimmy Miller-era (i.e. the Golden Age) of Stones albums.  It may be lacking in top-of-the-line material.  But its a statement of how strong the band was at that moment that an album of lesser material resonates as powerfully as this.  I keep coming back to it, again and again.  That's a sign.

David + David - Boomtown

Boomtown  A&M SP-5134 

Released 1986

Welcome To The Boomtown
Swallowed By The Cracks
Ain't So Easy
Being Alone Together
A Rock For The Forgotten
River's Gonna Rise
Swimming In The Ocean
All Alone In The Big City
Heroes

"We didn't play a single show until after the record came out, ... I still don't know what happened. I was in a lot of trouble with a lot of different things and I was engaged in this 'young guy catharsis' thing. It was a couple of screw-ups in someone's bedroom with a portastudio, that's all it was.  And talk about an unlikely duo, I was wrestling with paranoia and depression, and he was essentially agoraphobic. One day I was looking at 15 years in prison and he was a set painter at a movie studio, and the next we're being asked our opinion on world events. Both of us were freaked. It was like 'What happened?'". (David Baerwald, 2002)

For me it all started with this girl.  
See, I met her at the barn we had down here in the 80's called One Step Beyond.  It was too big and had lousy sound but I saw a lot of great bands there.  And one night I met this girl.  I was 20 years old.

So I got her number and we spent a week playing phone tag (we didn't call it phone tag back then.  And there were no cell phones or e-mail).  Finally when we did manage to catch each other, she told me she was going to see David+David at One Step Beyond next week, and did I wanna hook up.  So I said yes.

Gulping, because I hated that damn "Boomtown" song that was always playing on the radio in the stockroom where I worked.  I was not impressed with David+David, but I was very impressed with her.  So I made my way down there and hung out with the throng outside the completely sold-out show until some girl sold me a ticket for $12 or something.  And I got in and found her, and I got to see David+David.

***

If I was gonna describe the music on Boomtown, well, think 80's.  I mean, 80's all the way.  So 80's it oughta come packaged in a pair of parachute pants, with a picture of Ronald Reagan embossed on the disc.  It's a time capsule straight from it's era.  More dated, sound-wise, than probably anything else on this blog.  Buried in sythesizers.  Layers of jacked-up guitar.  Mechanical-sounding drums (even with a live drummer).  It's perilously close to - well, no, actually it is, what a friend once referred to as "El Lay Barf Music."  And I hate El Lay Barf Music.  And I hate 80's production and synths and layers of guitars.  But Boomtown, well, there's always an exception.  It has something else.

In part I know it's because, underneath all the glitz and glamour of the production are songs that bite hard and deep.

Ms. Cristina drives a 944
Satisfaction oozes from her pores
She keeps rings on her fingers

Marble on her floor, cocaine on her dresser
Bars on her doors, she keeps her back against the wall

The songs roll out a cast of characters - Handsome Kevin, who deals dope out Denny's, listening to the ground.  The anger-management challenged singer of "Ain't So Easy", who cajoles his lover back after punching her with promises of future happiness, all deeply felt and insincere ("I'm sorry about your eye, I'll find a way to make amends" he says).  The ships-in-the-night lovers of "Being Alone Together" - which does not refer to having private time as a couple.  The mysterious lynch mob in the vaguely gospel-ish "River's Gonna Rise" ("God ain't in his heaven, something ain't right/I hear church bells ringing in the middle of the night/They're dragging a man by his insides/Through the broad daylight).  The adventurer of "Heroes" ("Past the battered old bodies of dead, dead dreamers/Past the tethered and fettered"), the bartender pouring drinks for lonely drunks in "A Rock For The Forgotten", Steve, Eileen, and the unnamed dancer of "Swallowed By The Cracks" ("Me, I became this drunken old whore").  If these lyrics and characters and themes sound awfully close to Velvets territory, its because they are.


Which brings us back to the music.  And this is the puzzle.  Because normally I would, should, and want to, hate any record that sounds like this - "the upscale mixes and faux-soul exaggerations of generic AOR are such a turnoff that I wouldn't have played this twice ..." as Christgau accurately put it.  But he did.  And so did I.   Eventually I wound up buying a copy.  Then it went in the Great Record Purge.  I never wanted to hear such a thing again.  And I didn't even think about it again for probably a decade.  And then I did.  And I wanted to hear it.  Hey, guess what?  As a former Top Forty hit it's in still in print - in a budget-price edition, too!  

The thing is, normally, an album with songs like this, I would regret that it didn't sound the way it should sound.  That the songs weren't something more stripped-down, hardier, edgier sounding - music that backs the lyrics all the way.  Sometimes, I do, almost, feel that.

But then I do, and I realize that's the key to Boomtown.  The sparkly 80's music fits.  Maybe it doesn't back the lyrics all the way, but it sounds right, in a way that a Velvety drone or Stoogey rampage or even sparse acoustic just wouldn't.  Boomtown sounds like its supposed to sound.

*** 

Now, a great way to end it would be to say what a great show D&D put on, and what a magic night it was and how I married the girl.  

Nah.  We went out a few more times and then went our separate ways.  As for David and David - well, they played the whole album - I don't know if it was in order or not, nor do I recall if they played any unreleased stuff.  They did one encore - a rather pointless cover of "My Generation" - a choice I found very odd - which The Who - even the fagged-out Who of 1987, would have no need to worry about.  And then they were gone.

And then they were gone.  David and David never made another album.  Boomtown is their statement.  And it's a good one.

Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power

Raw Power  Columbia 32111

Released 1973, reissued 1997 

Search and Destroy
Gimme Danger
Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell
Penetration
Raw Power
I Need Somebody
Shake Appeal
Death Trip

My insanity bar was raised so high at that point that nothing sounded bent enough - ever. (Iggy)

I already talked about how, at 17, I was going against the grain of every putz at my high school, and blowing my allowance money on albums that were generally regarded as being good or important by the rock crit canon of the time (I had The Rolling Stone Record Guide, Christgau's book, and a few dozen others as road maps).  This sometimes (increasingly) meant I was buying albums no one else at my h.s. (certainly not the meat-headed generation of Sammy Hagar fans I matriculated with) had ever heard of.  What's more, most of them didn't want to hear them, or of them, anyway.

Which is how I came to pick up Raw Power, some time late in `83 (I think).  (As I recall, I bought The Live Kinks and the first Pretenders album, and possibly Mott that day as well.  If I did, I must've had some bucks on me).

Anyway, so I brought home Raw Power.  And I stared at the cover for several days (as I recall, I listened to only one album per day, by choice.  I wanted to savor them).  I looked at its ghoulish-looking cover photo of Iggy, leaning on the microphone, and the back cover, of him scowling with his cheetah jacket, glaring in the mirror, or, bleached-blonde hair and lipstick, grimacing at the camera while (Scott Asheton?) stood in the background, holding a bass, looking on warily.

This album made me nervous.

I knew little about Iggy.  I'd first heard of him in a little paperback bio of Alice Cooper (which I still have) which described him as some kind of raving madman.  I'd once seen him do "Dog Food" on Tom Snyder and watched his bizarre, hyper behavior with Snyder - at the time, he just seemed like kind of an uneducated, deranged clod (I wasn't paying enough attention - you can see the interview here and see how wrong I was on all counts).  All I knew about Iggy was that he was a hard-rocking madman who dwelt as far on the fringe as you could go (so I though, ha ha ha).  And as I looked at Raw Power, I seriously wondered if I was going to get anything but a bunch of lunatic caterwauling.

But one day I came home from school, got up the nerve, drew the curtains (I liked - and still do, actually - to dance around the room when I listen to a record I dig, and I didn't care to have the neighbors watch me) and there, in my dim little teenage bedroom, I lowered needle to groove and got my first taste of The Stooges.

And I needn't have worried.  Cuz by the time "Search and Destroy" was over I knew I liked them, and by the time the album was over, I knew it was a great one.

The music came crashing, ripping out of those cheap Sylvania speakers.  Iggy yowled like a cat in heat.  "I am the world's forgotten boy -" I had heard such adolescent angst before, sure, but never delivered with such fury, such defiance.  Iggy sounded like he knew how much "they" (the straights of society, all those who didn't understand) loathed him - and he was determined to lash out, to do them harm, to make them afraid.  Searching and destroying ... I will hurt you, I will show you fear, those who mock me.

The threat only continued on track two, with its gorgeous little arpeggio (how sophisticated for a band as brutal as this one).  "Gimme danger, little stranger...." Doors-like crooning.  This Iggy guy could really sing!  What's more, he wrote fine lyrics, too -  "there's nothing in my dreams, just some ugly memories .... kiss me like the ocean breeze..." This was clearly not the work of an uneducated clod.  "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell" was like the Stones cranked up to 12, all lust and and rage, while "Penetration" sounded like a nasty S&M masturbation fantasy (what did he want to be penetrated with, exactly?), wherein Iggy shrieked and mewled like an animal in agony (or ecstasy?).  This was clearly beyond any hard rock I'd ever heard.  Side two kicked off with a belch!  That was something new!  And then the band slammed into jumpy, nervous rhythm of the title track, the piano pounding away as the Ig exhorts us listeners "if you're alone and you got the shakes, so have I baby and I got what it takes".  The psycho blues of "I Need Somebody" remains my favorite track to this day.  Over a slow, ominous stomp (Dave Marsh once described it as sounding like Howlin' Wolf beating Mick Jagger to death with a stack of Yma Sumac albums - which doesn't remotely describe the track but is a great image anyway), Iggy extols his loneliness his need ... but as Marsh (again) suggested ... it sounds less like a paean to loneliness ... Iggy isn't saying "I need somebody, too" but "I need somebody to _________________" ... do something so unspeakable he can't even bring himself to say it. "Shake Appeal" rattles like a crazed punk rockabilly, Iggy howling at the moon, with a dick turning into a tree.

Then there's another set of slashing chords.  But this time it's different.  The sound is harsher, meaner.  Williamson sounds like he's playing his guitar with shards of broken glass, slicing and dicing the chords cruelly into slashes of sound.  The sound is atonal, harsh, clattering.  The great albums tell stories.  They have beginnings, middles, and ends.  This is where it ends, The Stooges are saying,  where all the sex and the sleaze and the madness will take you.  Iggy is snarling.  "Sick boy, sick boy ... I will steer you wrong"... the music continues to slash away, relentless, "I'll rip you, you rip me".. Iggy is shrieking "TURN ME TURN ME LOOSE ON YOU!!!"  He sounds like the madman I took him to be.  "Honey we're going down in history".  Even as I first hear it, I knew this had been the band's final album.  Hearing "Death Trip", it was obvious they knew it, too.  "Death Trip" is goodbye.  It's the sound of a car going over a cliff.  But the Ig is taking you with him.

All I knew is ... after this, I could never listen to Sammy Hagar again...

(PS - there is one thing I disliked, though, about Raw Power - the sound.  It sounded shrill, tinny, like a transistor radio turned up way too loud. I am an enthusiastic supporter of Iggy's remix, and am baffled that anyone could prefer Bowie's original disaster mix)

The Velvet Underground - 1969: The Velvet Underground Live

1969: The Velvet Underground Live  Mercury SRM-2-7504 


Recorded 1969 Released 1974 

Waiting For My Man
Lisa Says
What Goes On
Sweet Jane
We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together
Femme Fatale
New Age
Rock And Roll
Beginning To See The Light
Ocean
Pale Blue Eyes
Heroin
Some Kinda Love
Over You
Sweet Bonnie Brown/It's Just Too Much
White Light/White Heat
I'll Be Your Mirror

...captures neatly the often-overlooked ability of the group to rock out gracefully without compromising its music or attitudes (Billy Altman)

At 17, I was haunted by the Velvet Underground.
It's a long story.  Less than a year prior was when I started reading a lot of rock writing; because I was becoming a rock geek.  And it was hard to hear much outside of the usual AOR crap on the radio back then (okay, still is, I suppose).  And I was becoming aware of a whole world of rock and roll that I wasn't hearing.  And a name that kept coming up was The Velvet Underground.  And I read Ellen Willis' essay on them in Stranded, and somehow I just yearned to hear them (because the best rock writing makes us want to go out and listen to the music).  But all I knew of them was that they were from New York in the 60's, and Lou Reed had gotten his start with them.  And all I knew of him was that he did "Walk On The Wild Side", which was an okay song, but not a fave.  Oh and I once saw him on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and found him pretty boring.

But I was haunted by The Velvet Underground.
And I took to staring at their albums in stores (when they had them) and wondering intently what they really sounded like, and trying to imagine what they really sounded like.  And I just had to know.

So on a summer day, the first Saturday after school left out - the 11th grade over at last! - I took my little saved-up allowance and rode the bus to Palo Alto, a town some 10 or so miles from mine, to little hole-in-the-wall Recycled Records, and I spent my hard-earned $7 and change on the big green double album with the sleazy cover.   And I took it home.  And, trepidatiously, I put it on.

Don't you hate it when someone gives you some bullshit line about how a record "changed their life"?  I mean, ferchrissake, you must not have had much of a life.

I guess I didn't.  I mean, I was just a 17-year-old misfit no-hoper.  And the record changed my life.

To a 17-year-old kid whose concept of a rock concert was some big arena event with lasers and video and sound blasting into the stratosphere, the sound of a band playing in a tiny bar (which is pretty much what The End Of Cole Avenue and The Matrix were, I believe) was something truly new.  And to 17 year-old still making the run from bombastic 80's arena rock and only just discovering burning 80's hardcore teen angst, the sound of a band playing intimate, serious, lyrical, and incredibly mature (for rock and roll, but really by any standard) songs about adult subject matter (and I don't just mean the sex-and-drugs shock - all of the Velvets songs were far more adult than adolescent in tone) was more than an eye-opener - it was a total mind-fuck.

I was shocked by this album as I was shocked by every Velvets album I ever heard, each in a different way.  What shocked me about 1969 was that it was a glimpse of a whole rock and roll world I knew nothing of - never even imagined; that it opened possibilities in the music and lyrics I'd never dreamed of.  But what shocked me most of all, I think, was that I loved it.  Instantly.  As I recall, I knew within a few bars of "Waiting For My Man" that I was onto something.  That this group was not overrated.  That this was real.  Real like nothing I'd ever heard before.  1969  became the soundtrack to the summer of 1983 for me (it would be a couple months before I'd pick up the Banana album - and even that didn't entirely displace it, though it was an a-bomb to the brain just as much as 1969, if not more).  It got to the point where I was actually forbidding myself to listen to it, for fear of over-familiarity ruining it for me.

"Good evening," says Lou Reed, his voice gentle and soft.  This was the creepy, leather-clad dude from those solo albums I so often stared at (when I got tired of staring at Velvets albums)?  He sounds pretty normal.  "We're the Velvet Undrground."  And after some idle chit-chat about football, they dig into a loping, grooving version of "Waiting For My Man".  As Altman says, it loses none of its power for being taken at a walk, not a run.  "Lisa Says", all longing and lonely, giving way to barbershop/doo wop interlude before slamming back in to a final chorus.  Then "What Goes On", with its demonic organ courtesy of the ever-underrated Doug Yule.  The hypnotic groove they did so well.  "Sweet Jane" - the slow version, heavenly wine and roses.  "Real Good Time Together" - what a funny song for a band with such a forbidding image.  It used to surprise me that I would put it on to hear that song - but I did.  "Femme Fatale" - a foreboding bit of garage rock and roll (one of the few times they did sound like a normal rock and roll band - I mean that as a compliment), snotty Stones attitude - "see the way she walks, hear the way she talks ... she's just a little tease".  And then the very strange "New Age", a song that mystified me then and still does now.  Lou's best singing, perhaps ever.  "Over the bridge we go"... I always used to imagine a couple walking through some elegant park at night, walking across a curved bridge over a small river or stream, lit by moonlight and streetlamps.  Very romantic and evocative.  I just liked the way he sings about making it with Frank and Nancy (a reference which went over my head at the time).  "Rock and Roll", her life was saved by - Moe's cymbals and cowbell crashing and ringing away.  "Beginning To See The Light", the record REM spent their career trying to make.  

Side Three was the long side.  "Ocean", pure head music, flowing over you - the music and the rhythm of both song and lyrics suggestive of gentle waves.  "Pale Blue Eyes", Lou's greatest love song, and the infamous "Heroin".  Stripped of Cale's viola and the feedback shriek, the song depends on itself and Lou's intense delivery for its power.  On the surface the performance may be more sedate - emotionally its just as/even more powerful.  Sterling Morrison and Clinton Heylin have complained that 1969 is too sedate, that it's not representative of the band.  I call BS.  One of the greatest things about the Velvets is that underneath the atomic-age roar of "Sister Ray" is the gentle folkie doo-wop of "I'll Be Your Mirror".  One of the other greatest things about the Velvets is that under the gentle folkie doo-wop of "I'll Be Your Mirror"is the atomic-age roar of "Sister Ray".  Side Four was always the odd side - a little more doo-wop and straight rock and roll ("Over You", "Sweet Bonnie Brown"), a sweet take on "Mirror" with (my brother) Doug on vocals, an extra-slinky, tough "Some Kinda Love", and 8.5 minutes of "White Light/White Heat", the set's one balls-out rocker.  All groove and drive, Sterl and Lou trading white-hot licks, until the finale, where Lou calls out "higher", and they bludgeon the tune to death.  The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" was a big record for me a year or so before this one.  "Won't Get Fooled" is all build-up - after the first time you mostly listen for the climax - Moon's turns across the toms, Roger's scream - "White Light/White Heat" (which clocks in at the same time as "Won't Get Fooled") is almost the same deal - you listen  for the climax.

They say you never forget your first love, right?  1969 was my first Velvets album and therefore my first favorite Velvets album.  As their studio albums made their way into my collection it would be edged aside.  I haven't listened to it that often in the last ... god, twenty-plus years (interestingly, the Velvets album I listen to the most anymore is Loaded).  But anytime I do I still find myself thinking "damn!  this is good!"