Podcasts about sterling morrison

Send us a textIn this episode, we debut a special theme of Texas Connections, where artists from outside of Texas share a meaningful and notable connection with the Lone Star State. This time, we are looking at the life of Sterling Morrison and the seminal band, the Velvet Underground. Though three of the members were from New York and one from the UK, their unusual story involves a bizarre connection to Texas as Sterling left the band and moved to Texas to become a English professor at the University of Texas and then a Tugboat captain in the Houston Ship Channel. Follow his remarkable life and hear samples of the Velvet Underground's ground breaking music as they become one of the most influential bands of all time.

Andy Warhol starb 1987. Bei einer Trauerfeier begegneten sich die früheren Freunde John Cale und Lou Reed das erste Mal seit den 70er Jahren wieder. Sie beschließen, gemeinsam ein Erinnerungsalbum für ihren verstorbenen Mentor Warhol aufzunehmen. „Songs for Drella“ enthält sparsam instrumentierte Erzählungen von seiner Arbeit, von Traumfantasien und auch von persönlichen Begegnungen mit dem Künstler. Eine kurzfristige Zusammenarbeit der beiden als „The Velvet Underground“ gemeinsam mit Mo Tucker und Sterling Morrison hält nicht lange. Die Wege trennen sich wieder: Lou Reed liefert in den folgenden Jahren mehrfach Musik für Theaterwerke von Robert Wilson. Lou Reed stirbt schließlich 2013. John Cale komponiert weiterhin Soundtracks wie ebenso Rock- und Popmusik, und veröffentlicht diese, hoch anerkannt und verehrt, als Meister vieler Klassen. Bis heute führt er sie scheinbar unermüdlich auch live auf. Musikliste: Lou Reed: Lou Reed (1972): I can't stand it, I love you, Wild child, Ride into the sun Transformer (1972): Vicious, Perfect day, Walk on the wild side, Satellite of love, Goodnight Ladies Berlin (1973): Lady Day, Caroline says II, Sad song Rock 'n‘ Roll Animal (live, 1974) Sally Can't Dance (1974): Baby face, Sally can't dance, Billy Coney Island Baby (1975): Crazy feeling, Charley's girl, Kicks, A gift, Coney Island baby Rock and Roll Heart (1976): I believe in love, Rock and roll heart Street Hassle (1978): Street hassle Live: Take No Prisoners (1978) The Bells (1979): I want to boogie with you Growing Up In Public (1980): How do you speak to an angel, The power of positive drinking The Blue Mask (1982) Legendary Hearts (1983): Legendary hearts, Make up mind, The last shot, Rooftop garden New Sensations (1984) Mistral (1986): Tell it to your heart New York (1989) Songs For Drella (Lou Reed & John Cale, 1990): Style it takes, Nobody but you, Hello it's me Magic And Loss (1992) Set The Twilight Reeling (1996): NYC man, Set the twighlight reeling Ecstasy (2000): Paranoia key of E, Tatters, Turning time around The Raven (2003): Call on me, Hop frog, Who am I John Cale: Paris 1919 (1973) Music For A New Society (1982): Taking your life in your hands, Close watch Wrong Way Up (mit Brian Eno, 1990): Spinning away Fragments For A Rainy Season (live, 1992) Mercy (2023): Story of blood Nico: Chelsea Girl (1967), The Marbel Index (1968), Desertshore (1970), The End…(1974) Unser Podcast-Tipp in dieser Folge: Becoming The Beatles / https://1.ard.de/beatles-podcast?cp

Andrew Dansby is a writer who has worked at Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Texas Music, and Playboy to name a few. He began writing for the Houston Chronicle in 2004 and was the Entertainment Editor until his retirement in January 2025 (This career move left legions of heartbroken readers including one podcast host!). Following his departure, he released a brilliant six part series on the life of Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison. Andrew presently lives in Houston, Texas.

Extrait : « … Tu lis Velvet Underground, automatiquement tu penses à Lou Reed. Accessoirement à Nico. En revanche on oublie un peu vite les autres membres, Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker, et puis bien sûr John Cale, l'irréductible Galois […] Brian Eno, de son vrai nom Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, est probablement le producteur le plus prolifique et essentiel de ces 50 dernières années. Après s'être séparé de Roxy Music en 73, en raison d'une guerre d'égo qui l'opposait à Bryan Ferry … »Pour commenter les épisodes, tu peux le faire sur ton appli de podcasts habituelle, c'est toujours bon pour l'audience. Mais également sur le site web dédié, il y a une section Le Bar, ouverte 24/24, pour causer du podcast ou de musique en général, je t'y attends avec impatience. Enfin, si tu souhaites me soumettre une chanson, c'est aussi sur le site web que ça se passe. Pour soutenir Good Morning Music et Gros Naze :1. Abonne-toi2. Laisse-moi un avis et 5 étoiles sur Apple Podcasts, ou Spotify et Podcast Addict3. Partage ton épisode préféré à 3 personnes autour de toi. Ou 3.000 si tu connais plein de monde. Good Morning Music Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Label: Sundazed 201Year: 2009Condition: MPrice: $75.00Here's a beautiful, limited-edition box set honoring New York's legendary Velvet Underground. This new, sealed set includes all of the group's very rare 7" vinyl output in their original mono versions, featuring exact reproductions of the labels and, in two cases, with their original picture sleeves. The box set includes rare vintage photos and new liner notes by Rolling Stone's David Fricke. The Velvet Underground whose membership included Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker, Doug Yule and Nico introduced numerous sonic and thematic innovations that laid much of the groundwork for punk and alternative rock. Although they're now acknowledged as one of the most influential bands in rock history, during their existence the Velvets barely registered on mainstream radar, and were often reviled by mainstream observers as well as hippie-era arbiters of cool. But, as Fricke writes in the new set's liner notes, "Somewhere, in another rock & roll universe, the Velvet Underground are more than a legendary band. They are stars, with hit singles, the original seven-inch masterpieces inside this box." Although they never came close to scoring a hit, the Velvet Underground was ideally suited to the 7" single format. "The Velvet Underground were a great singles band," David Fricke notes, adding that the Velvets "invented modern rock with searing guitar distortion, throbbing improvisation and brutally realistic tales of life on the wild side. But they did it all in these classic pop songs�compact miracles of raw drive, intimate beauty and Top 40 ecstasy, heard again in the original, thrilling mono single mixes." The seven singles included in The Velvet Underground Singles 1966�69 comprise the four Velvets singles originally released in the U.S. on the Verve and MGM labels, plus an additional pair of singles that were prepared for release but never made it to the marketplace and a special radio-only promotional single. The singles feature alternate mono versions that differ in significant ways from the songs' better-known stereo album versions. For instance, the band's 1966 debut single "All Tomorrow's Parties" appears here in a special mono edit that amplifies the song's melodic beauty and sonic tension, and a mono mix of their sophomore single "Sunday Morning" emphasizes the song's haunting quality. Meanwhile, the mono single version of "White Light/White Heat" exemplifies the vintage Velvets' stark, distortion-laden fury, while a mono edit of "What Goes On" accentuates that song's inherent pop jangle. Here is a listing of the included singles: All Tomorrow's Parties / I'll Be Your Mirror—Verve VK-10427 Sunday Morning / Femme Fatale—Verve VK-10466 White Light/White Heat / Here She Comes Now—Verve VK-10560 White Light/White Heat / I Heard Her Call My Name—Cancelled single Temptation Inside Your Heart / Stephanie Says—Cancelled single What Goes On / Jesus—MGM K-14057 VU Radio Spot / VU Radio Spot—MGM VU-1

En este episodio conversamos sobre “White Light/White Heat”, el segundo álbum de The Velvet Underground, lanzado el año 1968.

Rafa Cervera trae la historia de la Velvet Undergorund, la banda que formaron Lou Reed y Sterling Morrison. Un libro con rigor y ritmo literario.Escuchar audio

En este episodio de El Álbum Esencial conversamos sobre “Loaded”, el cuarto álbum de The Velvet Underground, lanzado el año 1970.

Episode 164 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "White Light/White Heat" and the career of the Velvet Underground. This is a long one, lasting three hours and twenty minutes. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-three minute bonus episode available, on "Why Don't You Smile Now?" by the Downliners Sect. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I say the Velvet Underground didn't play New York for the rest of the sixties after 1966. They played at least one gig there in 1967, but did generally avoid the city. Also, I refer to Cale and Conrad as the other surviving members of the Theater of Eternal Music. Sadly Conrad died in 2016. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Velvet Underground, and some of the avant-garde pieces excerpted run to six hours or more. I used a lot of resources for this one. Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story by Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga is the best book on the group as a group. I also used Joe Harvard's 33 1/3 book on The Velvet Underground and Nico. Bockris also wrote one of the two biographies of Reed I referred to, Transformer. The other was Lou Reed by Anthony DeCurtis. Information on Cale mostly came from Sedition and Alchemy by Tim Mitchell. Information on Nico came from Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon by Richard Witts. I used Draw a Straight Line and Follow it by Jeremy Grimshaw as my main source for La Monte Young, The Roaring Silence by David Revill for John Cage, and Warhol: A Life as Art by Blake Gopnik for Warhol. I also referred to the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of the 2021 documentary The Velvet Underground.  The definitive collection of the Velvet Underground's music is the sadly out-of-print box set Peel Slowly and See, which contains the four albums the group made with Reed in full, plus demos, outtakes, and live recordings. Note that the digital version of the album as sold by Amazon for some reason doesn't include the last disc -- if you want the full box set you have to buy a physical copy. All four studio albums have also been released and rereleased many times over in different configurations with different numbers of CDs at different price points -- I have used the "45th Anniversary Super-Deluxe" versions for this episode, but for most people the standard CD versions will be fine. Sadly there are no good shorter compilation overviews of the group -- they tend to emphasise either the group's "pop" mode or its "avant-garde" mode to the exclusion of the other. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I begin this episode, there are a few things to say. This introductory section is going to be longer than normal because, as you will hear, this episode is also going to be longer than normal. Firstly, I try to warn people about potentially upsetting material in these episodes. But this is the first episode for 1968, and as you will see there is a *profound* increase in the amount of upsetting and disturbing material covered as we go through 1968 and 1969. The story is going to be in a much darker place for the next twenty or thirty episodes. And this episode is no exception. As always, I try to deal with everything as sensitively as possible, but you should be aware that the list of warnings for this one is so long I am very likely to have missed some. Among the topics touched on in this episode are mental illness, drug addiction, gun violence, racism, societal and medical homophobia, medical mistreatment of mental illness, domestic abuse, rape, and more. If you find discussion of any of those subjects upsetting, you might want to read the transcript. Also, I use the term "queer" freely in this episode. In the past I have received some pushback for this, because of a belief among some that "queer" is a slur. The following explanation will seem redundant to many of my listeners, but as with many of the things I discuss in the podcast I am dealing with multiple different audiences with different levels of awareness and understanding of issues, so I'd like to beg those people's indulgence a moment. The term "queer" has certainly been used as a slur in the past, but so have terms like "lesbian", "gay", "homosexual" and others. In all those cases, the term has gone from a term used as a self-identifier, to a slur, to a reclaimed slur, and back again many times. The reason for using that word, specifically, here is because the vast majority of people in this story have sexualities or genders that don't match the societal norms of their times, but used labels for themselves that have shifted in meaning over the years. There are at least two men in the story, for example, who are now dead and referred to themselves as "homosexual", but were in multiple long-term sexually-active relationships with women. Would those men now refer to themselves as "bisexual" or "pansexual" -- terms not in widespread use at the time -- or would they, in the relatively more tolerant society we live in now, only have been in same-gender relationships? We can't know. But in our current context using the word "homosexual" for those men would lead to incorrect assumptions about their behaviour. The labels people use change over time, and the definitions of them blur and shift. I have discussed this issue with many, many, friends who fall under the queer umbrella, and while not all of them are comfortable with "queer" as a personal label because of how it's been used against them in the past, there is near-unanimity from them that it's the correct word to use in this situation. Anyway, now that that rather lengthy set of disclaimers is over, let's get into the story proper, as we look at "White Light, White Heat" by the Velvet Underground: [Excerpt: The Velvet Underground, "White Light, White Heat"] And that look will start with... a disclaimer about length. This episode is going to be a long one. Not as long as episode one hundred and fifty, but almost certainly the longest episode I'll do this year, by some way. And there's a reason for that. One of the questions I've been asked repeatedly over the years about the podcast is why almost all the acts I've covered have been extremely commercially successful ones. "Where are the underground bands? The alternative bands? The little niche acts?" The answer to that is simple. Until the mid-sixties, the idea of an underground or alternative band made no sense at all in rock, pop, rock and roll, R&B, or soul. The idea would have been completely counterintuitive to the vast majority of the people we've discussed in the podcast. Those musics were commercial musics, made by people who wanted to make money and to  get the largest audiences possible. That doesn't mean that they had no artistic merit, or that there was no artistic intent behind them, but the artists making that music were *commercial* artists. They knew if they wanted to make another record, they had to sell enough copies of the last record for the record company to make another, and that if they wanted to keep eating, they had to draw enough of an audience to their gigs for promoters to keep booking them. There was no space in this worldview for what we might think of as cult success. If your record only sold a thousand copies, then you had failed in your goal, even if the thousand people who bought your record really loved it. Even less commercially successful artists we've covered to this point, like the Mothers of Invention or Love, were *trying* for commercial success, even if they made the decision not to compromise as much as others do. This started to change a tiny bit in the mid-sixties as the influence of jazz and folk in the US, and the British blues scene, started to be felt in rock music. But this influence, at first, was a one-way thing -- people who had been in the folk and jazz worlds deciding to modify their music to be more commercial. And that was followed by already massively commercial musicians, like the Beatles, taking on some of those influences and bringing their audience with them. But that started to change around the time that "rock" started to differentiate itself from "rock and roll" and "pop", in mid 1967. So in this episode and the next, we're going to look at two bands who in different ways provided a model for how to be an alternative band. Both of them still *wanted* commercial success, but neither achieved it, at least not at first and not in the conventional way. And both, when they started out, went by the name The Warlocks. But we have to take a rather circuitous route to get to this week's band, because we're now properly introducing a strand of music that has been there in the background for a while -- avant-garde art music. So before we go any further, let's have a listen to a thirty-second clip of the most famous piece of avant-garde music ever, and I'll be performing it myself: [Excerpt, Andrew Hickey "4'33 (Cage)"] Obviously that won't give the full effect, you have to listen to the whole piece to get that. That is of course a section of "4'33" by John Cage, a piece of music that is often incorrectly described as being four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence. As I've mentioned before, though, in the episode on "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", it isn't that at all. The whole point of the piece is that there is no such thing as silence, and it's intended to make the listener appreciate all the normal ambient sounds as music, every bit as much as any piece by Bach or Beethoven. John Cage, the composer of "4'33", is possibly the single most influential avant-garde artist of the mid twentieth century, so as we're properly introducing the ideas of avant-garde music into the story here, we need to talk about him a little. Cage was, from an early age, torn between three great vocations, all of which in some fashion would shape his work for decades to come. One of these was architecture, and for a time he intended to become an architect. Another was the religious ministry, and he very seriously considered becoming a minister as a young man, and religion -- though not the religious faith of his youth -- was to be a massive factor in his work as he grew older. He started studying music from an early age, though he never had any facility as a performer -- though he did, when he discovered the work of Grieg, think that might change. He later said “For a while I played nothing else. I even imagined devoting my life to the performance of his works alone, for they did not seem to me to be too difficult, and I loved them.” [Excerpt: Grieg piano concerto in A minor] But he soon realised that he didn't have some of the basic skills that would be required to be a performer -- he never actually thought of himself as very musical -- and so he decided to move into composition, and he later talked about putting his musical limits to good use in being more inventive. From his very first pieces, Cage was trying to expand the definition of what a performance of a piece of music actually was. One of his friends, Harry Hay, who took part in the first documented performance of a piece by Cage, described how Cage's father, an inventor, had "devised a fluorescent light source over which Sample" -- Don Sample, Cage's boyfriend at the time -- "laid a piece of vellum painted with designs in oils. The blankets I was wearing were white, and a sort of lampshade shone coloured patterns onto me. It looked very good. The thing got so hot the designs began to run, but that only made it better.” Apparently the audience for this light show -- one that predated the light shows used by rock bands by a good thirty years -- were not impressed, though that may be more because the Santa Monica Women's Club in the early 1930s was not the vanguard of the avant-garde. Or maybe it was. Certainly the housewives of Santa Monica seemed more willing than one might expect to sign up for another of Cage's ideas. In 1933 he went door to door asking women if they would be interested in signing up to a lecture course from him on modern art and music. He told them that if they signed up for $2.50, he would give them ten lectures, and somewhere between twenty and forty of them signed up, even though, as he said later, “I explained to the housewives that I didn't know anything about either subject but that I was enthusiastic about both of them. I promised to learn faithfully enough about each subject so as to be able to give a talk an hour long each week.” And he did just that, going to the library every day and spending all week preparing an hour-long talk for them. History does not relate whether he ended these lectures by telling the housewives to tell just one friend about them. He said later “I came out of these lectures, with a devotion to the painting of Mondrian, on the one hand, and the music of Schoenberg on the other.” [Excerpt: Schoenberg, "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte"] Schoenberg was one of the two most widely-respected composers in the world at that point, the other being Stravinsky, but the two had very different attitudes to composition. Schoenberg's great innovation was the creation and popularisation of the twelve-tone technique, and I should probably explain that a little before I go any further. Most Western music is based on an eight-note scale -- do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do -- with the eighth note being an octave up from the first. So in the key of C major that would be C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C: [demonstrates] And when you hear notes from that scale, if your ears are accustomed to basically any Western music written before about 1920, or any Western popular music written since then, you expect the melody to lead back to C, and you know to expect that because it only uses those notes -- there are differing intervals between them, some having a tone between them and some having a semitone, and you recognise the pattern. But of course there are other notes between the notes of that scale. There are actually an infinite number of these, but in conventional Western music we only look at a few more -- C# (or D flat), D# (or E flat), F# (or G flat), G# (or A flat) and A# (or B flat). If you add in all those notes you get this: [demonstrates] There's no clear beginning or end, no do for it to come back to. And Schoenberg's great innovation, which he was only starting to promote widely around this time, was to insist that all twelve notes should be equal -- his melodies would use all twelve of the notes the exact same number of times, and so if he used say a B flat, he would have to use all eleven other notes before he used B flat again in the piece. This was a radical new idea, but Schoenberg had only started advancing it after first winning great acclaim for earlier pieces, like his "Three Pieces for Piano", a work which wasn't properly twelve-tone, but did try to do without the idea of having any one note be more important than any other: [Excerpt: Schoenberg, "Three Pieces for Piano"] At this point, that work had only been performed in the US by one performer, Richard Buhlig, and hadn't been released as a recording yet. Cage was so eager to hear it that he'd found Buhlig's phone number and called him, asking him to play the piece, but Buhlig put the phone down on him. Now he was doing these lectures, though, he had to do one on Schoenberg, and he wasn't a competent enough pianist to play Schoenberg's pieces himself, and there were still no recordings of them. Cage hitch-hiked from Santa Monica to LA, where Buhlig lived, to try to get him to come and visit his class and play some of Schoenberg's pieces for them. Buhlig wasn't in, and Cage hung around in his garden hoping for him to come back -- he pulled the leaves off a bough from one of Buhlig's trees, going "He'll come back, he won't come back, he'll come back..." and the leaves said he'd be back. Buhlig arrived back at midnight, and quite understandably told the strange twenty-one-year-old who'd spent twelve hours in his garden pulling the leaves off his trees that no, he would not come to Santa Monica and give a free performance. But he did agree that if Cage brought some of his own compositions he'd give them a look over. Buhlig started giving Cage some proper lessons in composition, although he stressed that he was a performer, not a composer. Around this time Cage wrote his Sonata for Clarinet: [Excerpt: John Cage, "Sonata For Clarinet"] Buhlig suggested that Cage send that to Henry Cowell, the composer we heard about in the episode on "Good Vibrations" who was friends with Lev Termen and who created music by playing the strings inside a piano: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] Cowell offered to take Cage on as an assistant, in return for which Cowell would teach him for a semester, as would Adolph Weiss, a pupil of Schoenberg's. But the goal, which Cowell suggested, was always to have Cage study with Schoenberg himself. Schoenberg at first refused, saying that Cage couldn't afford his price, but eventually took Cage on as a student having been assured that he would devote his entire life to music -- a promise Cage kept. Cage started writing pieces for percussion, something that had been very rare up to that point -- only a handful of composers, most notably Edgard Varese, had written pieces for percussion alone, but Cage was: [Excerpt: John Cage, "Trio"] This is often portrayed as a break from the ideals of his teacher Schoenberg, but in fact there's a clear continuity there, once you see what Cage was taking from Schoenberg. Schoenberg's work is, in some senses, about equality, about all notes being equal. Or to put it another way, it's about fairness. About erasing arbitrary distinctions. What Cage was doing was erasing the arbitrary distinction between the more and less prominent instruments. Why should there be pieces for solo violin or string quartet, but not for multiple percussion players? That said, Schoenberg was not exactly the most encouraging of teachers. When Cage invited Schoenberg to go to a concert of Cage's percussion work, Schoenberg told him he was busy that night. When Cage offered to arrange another concert for a date Schoenberg wasn't busy, the reply came "No, I will not be free at any time". Despite this, Cage later said “Schoenberg was a magnificent teacher, who always gave the impression that he was putting us in touch with musical principles,” and said "I literally worshipped him" -- a strong statement from someone who took religious matters as seriously as Cage. Cage was so devoted to Schoenberg's music that when a concert of music by Stravinsky was promoted as "music of the world's greatest living composer", Cage stormed into the promoter's office angrily, confronting the promoter and making it very clear that such things should not be said in the city where Schoenberg lived. Schoenberg clearly didn't think much of Cage's attempts at composition, thinking -- correctly -- that Cage had no ear for harmony. And his reportedly aggressive and confrontational teaching style didn't sit well with Cage -- though it seems very similar to a lot of the teaching techniques of the Zen masters he would later go on to respect. The two eventually parted ways, although Cage always spoke highly of Schoenberg. Schoenberg later gave Cage a compliment of sorts, when asked if any of his students had gone on to do anything interesting. At first he replied that none had, but then he mentioned Cage and said “Of course he's not a composer, but an inventor—of genius.” Cage was at this point very worried if there was any point to being a composer at all. He said later “I'd read Cowell's New Musical Resources and . . . The Theory of Rhythm. I had also read Chavez's Towards a New Music. Both works gave me the feeling that everything that was possible in music had already happened. So I thought I could never compose socially important music. Only if I could invent something new, then would I be useful to society. But that seemed unlikely then.” [Excerpt: John Cage, "Totem Ancestor"] Part of the solution came when he was asked to compose music for an abstract animation by the filmmaker Oskar Fischinger, and also to work as Fischinger's assistant when making the film. He was fascinated by the stop-motion process, and by the results of the film, which he described as "a beautiful film in which these squares, triangles and circles and other things moved and changed colour.” But more than that he was overwhelmed by a comment by Fischinger, who told him “Everything in the world has its own spirit, and this spirit becomes audible by setting it into vibration.” Cage later said “That set me on fire. He started me on a path of exploration of the world around me which has never stopped—of hitting and stretching and scraping and rubbing everything.” Cage now took his ideas further. His compositions for percussion had been about, if you like, giving the underdog a chance -- percussion was always in the background, why should it not be in the spotlight? Now he realised that there were other things getting excluded in conventional music -- the sounds that we characterise as noise. Why should composers work to exclude those sounds, but work to *include* other sounds? Surely that was... well, a little unfair? Eventually this would lead to pieces like his 1952 piece "Water Music", later expanded and retitled "Water Walk", which can be heard here in his 1959 appearance on the TV show "I've Got a Secret".  It's a piece for, amongst other things, a flowerpot full of flowers, a bathtub, a watering can, a pipe, a duck call, a blender full of ice cubes, and five unplugged radios: [Excerpt: John Cage "Water Walk"] As he was now avoiding pitch and harmony as organising principles for his music, he turned to time. But note -- not to rhythm. He said “There's none of this boom, boom, boom, business in my music . . . a measure is taken as a strict measure of time—not a one two three four—which I fill with various sounds.” He came up with a system he referred to as “micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure,” what we would now call fractals, though that word hadn't yet been invented, where the structure of the whole piece was reflected in the smallest part of it. For a time he started moving away from the term music, preferring to refer to the "art of noise" or to "organised sound" -- though he later received a telegram from Edgard Varese, one of his musical heroes and one of the few other people writing works purely for percussion, asking him not to use that phrase, which Varese used for his own work. After meeting with Varese and his wife, he later became convinced that it was Varese's wife who had initiated the telegram, as she explained to Cage's wife "we didn't want your husband's work confused with my husband's work, any more than you'd want some . . . any artist's work confused with that of a cartoonist.” While there is a humour to Cage's work, I don't really hear much qualitative difference between a Cage piece like the one we just heard and a Varese piece like Ionisation: [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Ionisation"] But it was in 1952, the year of "Water Music" that John Cage made his two biggest impacts on the cultural world, though the full force of those impacts wasn't felt for some years. To understand Cage's 1952 work, you first have to understand that he had become heavily influenced by Zen, which at that time was very little known in the Western world. Indeed he had studied with Daisetsu Suzuki, who is credited with introducing Zen to the West, and said later “I didn't study music with just anybody; I studied with Schoenberg, I didn't study Zen with just anybody; I studied with Suzuki. I've always gone, insofar as I could, to the president of the company.” Cage's whole worldview was profoundly affected by Zen, but he was also naturally sympathetic to it, and his work after learning about Zen is mostly a continuation of trends we can already see. In particular, he became convinced that the point of music isn't to communicate anything between two people, rather its point is merely to be experienced. I'm far from an expert on Buddhism, but one way of thinking about its central lessons is that one should experience things as they are, experiencing the thing itself rather than one's thoughts or preconceptions about it. And so at Black Mountain college came Theatre Piece Number 1: [Excerpt: Edith Piaf, "La Vie En Rose" ] In this piece, Cage had set the audience on all sides, so they'd be facing each other. He stood on a stepladder, as colleagues danced in and around the audience, another colleague played the piano, two more took turns to stand on another stepladder to recite poetry, different films and slides were projected, seemingly at random, onto the walls, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg played scratchy Edith Piaf records on a wind-up gramophone. The audience were included in the performance, and it was meant to be experienced as a gestalt, as a whole, to be what we would now call an immersive experience. One of Cage's students around this time was the artist Allan Kaprow, and he would be inspired by Theatre Piece Number 1 to put on several similar events in the late fifties. Those events he called "happenings", because the point of them was that you were meant to experience an event as it was happening rather than bring preconceptions of form and structure to them. Those happenings were the inspiration for events like The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, and the term "happening" became such an integral part of the counterculture that by 1967 there were comedy films being released about them, including one just called The Happening with a title track by the Supremes that made number one: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "The Happening"] Theatre Piece Number 1 was retrospectively considered the first happening, and as such its influence is incalculable. But one part I didn't mention about Theatre Piece Number 1 is that as well as Rauschenberg playing Edith Piaf's records, he also displayed some of his paintings. These paintings were totally white -- at a glance, they looked like blank canvases, but as one inspected them more clearly, it became apparent that Rauschenberg had painted them with white paint, with visible brushstrokes. These paintings, along with a visit to an anechoic chamber in which Cage discovered that even in total silence one can still hear one's own blood and nervous system, so will never experience total silence, were the final key to something Cage had been working towards -- if music had minimised percussion, and excluded noise, how much more had it excluded silence? As Cage said in 1958 “Curiously enough, the twelve-tone system has no zero in it.” And so came 4'33, the piece that we heard an excerpt of near the start of this episode. That piece was the something new he'd been looking for that could be useful to society. It took the sounds the audience could already hear, and without changing them even slightly gave them a new context and made the audience hear them as they were. Simply by saying "this is music", it caused the ambient noise to be perceived as music. This idea, of recontextualising existing material, was one that had already been done in the art world -- Marcel Duchamp, in 1917, had exhibited a urinal as a sculpture titled "Fountain" -- but even Duchamp had talked about his work as "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice". The artist was *raising* the object to art. What Cage was saying was "the object is already art". This was all massively influential to a young painter who had seen Cage give lectures many times, and while at art school had with friends prepared a piano in the same way Cage did for his own experimental compositions, dampening the strings with different objects. [Excerpt: Dana Gillespie, "Andy Warhol (live)"] Duchamp and Rauschenberg were both big influences on Andy Warhol, but he would say in the early sixties "John Cage is really so responsible for so much that's going on," and would for the rest of his life cite Cage as one of the two or three prime influences of his career. Warhol is a difficult figure to discuss, because his work is very intellectual but he was not very articulate -- which is one reason I've led up to him by discussing Cage in such detail, because Cage was always eager to talk at great length about the theoretical basis of his work, while Warhol would say very few words about anything at all. Probably the person who knew him best was his business partner and collaborator Paul Morrissey, and Morrissey's descriptions of Warhol have shaped my own view of his life, but it's very worth noting that Morrissey is an extremely right-wing moralist who wishes to see a Catholic theocracy imposed to do away with the scourges of sexual immorality, drug use, hedonism, and liberalism, so his view of Warhol, a queer drug using progressive whose worldview seems to have been totally opposed to Morrissey's in every way, might be a little distorted. Warhol came from an impoverished background, and so, as many people who grew up poor do, he was, throughout his life, very eager to make money. He studied art at university, and got decent but not exceptional grades -- he was a competent draughtsman, but not a great one, and most importantly as far as success in the art world goes he didn't have what is known as his own "line" -- with most successful artists, you can look at a handful of lines they've drawn and see something of their own personality in it. You couldn't with Warhol. His drawings looked like mediocre imitations of other people's work. Perfectly competent, but nothing that stood out. So Warhol came up with a technique to make his drawings stand out -- blotting. He would do a normal drawing, then go over it with a lot of wet ink. He'd lower a piece of paper on to the wet drawing, and the new paper would soak up the ink, and that second piece of paper would become the finished work. The lines would be fractured and smeared, broken in places where the ink didn't get picked up, and thick in others where it had pooled. With this mechanical process, Warhol had managed to create an individual style, and he became an extremely successful commercial artist. In the early 1950s photography was still seen as a somewhat low-class way of advertising things. If you wanted to sell to a rich audience, you needed to use drawings or paintings. By 1955 Warhol was making about twelve thousand dollars a year -- somewhere close to a hundred and thirty thousand a year in today's money -- drawing shoes for advertisements. He also had a sideline in doing record covers for people like Count Basie: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Seventh Avenue Express"] For most of the 1950s he also tried to put on shows of his more serious artistic work -- often with homoerotic themes -- but to little success. The dominant art style of the time was the abstract expressionism of people like Jackson Pollock, whose art was visceral, emotional, and macho. The term "action paintings" which was coined for the work of people like Pollock, sums it up. This was manly art for manly men having manly emotions and expressing them loudly. It was very male and very straight, and even the gay artists who were prominent at the time tended to be very conformist and look down on anything they considered flamboyant or effeminate. Warhol was a rather effeminate, very reserved man, who strongly disliked showing his emotions, and whose tastes ran firmly to the camp. Camp as an aesthetic of finding joy in the flamboyant or trashy, as opposed to merely a descriptive term for men who behaved in a way considered effeminate, was only just starting to be codified at this time -- it wouldn't really become a fully-formed recognisable thing until Susan Sontag's essay "Notes on Camp" in 1964 -- but of course just because something hasn't been recognised doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and Warhol's aesthetic was always very camp, and in the 1950s in the US that was frowned upon even in gay culture, where the mainstream opinion was that the best way to acceptance was through assimilation. Abstract expressionism was all about expressing the self, and that was something Warhol never wanted to do -- in fact he made some pronouncements at times which suggested he didn't think of himself as *having* a self in the conventional sense. The combination of not wanting to express himself and of wanting to work more efficiently as a commercial artist led to some interesting results. For example, he was commissioned in 1957 to do a cover for an album by Moondog, the blind street musician whose name Alan Freed had once stolen: [Excerpt: Moondog, "Gloving It"] For that cover, Warhol got his mother, Julia Warhola, to just write out the liner notes for the album in her rather ornamental cursive script, and that became the front cover, leading to an award for graphic design going that year to "Andy Warhol's mother". (Incidentally, my copy of the current CD issue of that album, complete with Julia Warhola's cover, is put out by Pickwick Records...) But towards the end of the fifties, the work for commercial artists started to dry up. If you wanted to advertise shoes, now, you just took a photo of the shoes rather than get Andy Warhol to draw a picture of them. The money started to disappear, and Warhol started to panic. If there was no room for him in graphic design any more, he had to make his living in the fine arts, which he'd been totally unsuccessful in. But luckily for Warhol, there was a new movement that was starting to form -- Pop Art. Pop Art started in England, and had originally been intended, at least in part, as a critique of American consumerist capitalism. Pieces like "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" by Richard Hamilton (who went on to design the Beatles' White Album cover) are collages of found images, almost all from American sources, recontextualised and juxtaposed in interesting ways, so a bodybuilder poses in a room that's taken from an advert in Ladies' Home Journal, while on the wall, instead of a painting, hangs a blown-up cover of a Jack Kirby romance comic. Pop Art changed slightly when it got taken up in America, and there it became something rather different, something closer to Duchamp, taking those found images and displaying them as art with no juxtaposition. Where Richard Hamilton created collage art which *showed* a comic cover by Jack Kirby as a painting in the background, Roy Lichtenstein would take a panel of comic art by Kirby, or Russ Heath or Irv Novick or a dozen other comic artists, and redraw it at the size of a normal painting. So Warhol took Cage's idea that the object is already art, and brought that into painting, starting by doing paintings of Campbell's soup cans, in which he tried as far as possible to make the cans look exactly like actual soup cans. The paintings were controversial, inciting fury in some and laughter in others and causing almost everyone to question whether they were art. Warhol would embrace an aesthetic in which things considered unimportant or trash or pop culture detritus were the greatest art of all. For example pretty much every profile of him written in the mid sixties talks about him obsessively playing "Sally Go Round the Roses", a girl-group single by the one-hit wonders the Jaynettes: [Excerpt: The Jaynettes, "Sally Go Round the Roses"] After his paintings of Campbell's soup cans, and some rather controversial but less commercially successful paintings of photographs of horrors and catastrophes taken from newspapers, Warhol abandoned painting in the conventional sense altogether, instead creating brightly coloured screen prints -- a form of stencilling -- based on photographs of celebrities like Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and, most famously, Marilyn Monroe. That way he could produce images which could be mass-produced, without his active involvement, and which supposedly had none of his personality in them, though of course his personality pervades the work anyway. He put on exhibitions of wooden boxes, silk-screen printed to look exactly like shipping cartons of Brillo pads. Images we see everywhere -- in newspapers, in supermarkets -- were art. And Warhol even briefly formed a band. The Druds were a garage band formed to play at a show at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, the opening night of an exhibition that featured a silkscreen by Warhol of 210 identical bottles of Coca-Cola, as well as paintings by Rauschenberg and others. That opening night featured a happening by Claes Oldenburg, and a performance by Cage -- Cage gave a live lecture while three recordings of his own voice also played. The Druds were also meant to perform, but they fell apart after only a few rehearsals. Some recordings apparently exist, but they don't seem to circulate, but they'd be fascinating to hear as almost the entire band were non-musician artists like Warhol, Jasper Johns, and the sculptor Walter de Maria. Warhol said of the group “It didn't go too well, but if we had just stayed on it it would have been great.” On the other hand, the one actual musician in the group said “It was kind of ridiculous, so I quit after the second rehearsal". That musician was La Monte Young: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Well-Tuned Piano"] That's an excerpt from what is generally considered Young's masterwork, "The Well-Tuned Piano". It's six and a half hours long. If Warhol is a difficult figure to write about, Young is almost impossible. He's a musician with a career stretching sixty years, who is arguably the most influential musician from the classical tradition in that time period. He's generally considered the father of minimalism, and he's also been called by Brian Eno "the daddy of us all" -- without Young you simply *do not* get art rock at all. Without Young there is no Velvet Underground, no David Bowie, no Eno, no New York punk scene, no Yoko Ono. Anywhere that the fine arts or conceptual art have intersected with popular music in the last fifty or more years has been influenced in one way or another by Young's work. BUT... he only rarely publishes his scores. He very, very rarely allows recordings of his work to be released -- there are four recordings on his bandcamp, plus a handful of recordings of his older, published, pieces, and very little else. He doesn't allow his music to be performed live without his supervision. There *are* bootleg recordings of his music, but even those are not easily obtainable -- Young is vigorous in enforcing his copyrights and issues takedown notices against anywhere that hosts them. So other than that handful of legitimately available recordings -- plus a recording by Young's Theater of Eternal Music, the legality of which is still disputed, and an off-air recording of a 1971 radio programme I've managed to track down, the only way to experience Young's music unless you're willing to travel to one of his rare live performances or installations is second-hand, by reading about it. Except that the one book that deals solely with Young and his music is not only a dense and difficult book to read, it's also one that Young vehemently disagreed with and considered extremely inaccurate, to the point he refused to allow permissions to quote his work in the book. Young did apparently prepare a list of corrections for the book, but he wouldn't tell the author what they were without payment. So please assume that anything I say about Young is wrong, but also accept that the short section of this episode about Young has required more work to *try* to get it right than pretty much anything else this year. Young's musical career actually started out in a relatively straightforward manner. He didn't grow up in the most loving of homes -- he's talked about his father beating him as a child because he had been told that young La Monte was clever -- but his father did buy him a saxophone and teach him the rudiments of the instrument, and as a child he was most influenced by the music of the big band saxophone player Jimmy Dorsey: [Excerpt: Jimmy Dorsey, “It's the Dreamer in Me”] The family, who were Mormon farmers, relocated several times in Young's childhood, from Idaho first to California and then to Utah, but everywhere they went La Monte seemed to find musical inspiration, whether from an uncle who had been part of the Kansas City jazz scene, a classmate who was a musical prodigy who had played with Perez Prado in his early teens, or a teacher who took the class to see a performance of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra: [Excerpt: Bartok, "Concerto for Orchestra"] After leaving high school, Young went to Los Angeles City College to study music under Leonard Stein, who had been Schoenberg's assistant when Schoenberg had taught at UCLA, and there he became part of the thriving jazz scene based around Central Avenue, studying and performing with musicians like Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Eric Dolphy -- Young once beat Dolphy in an audition for a place in the City College dance band, and the two would apparently substitute for each other on their regular gigs when one couldn't make it. During this time, Young's musical tastes became much more adventurous. He was a particular fan of the work of John Coltrane, and also got inspired by City of Glass, an album by Stan Kenton that attempted to combine jazz and modern classical music: [Excerpt: Stan Kenton's Innovations Orchestra, "City of Glass: The Structures"] His other major musical discovery in the mid-fifties was one we've talked about on several previous occasions -- the album Music of India, Morning and Evening Ragas by Ali Akhbar Khan: [Excerpt: Ali Akhbar Khan, "Rag Sindhi Bhairavi"] Young's music at this point was becoming increasingly modal, and equally influenced by the blues and Indian music. But he was also becoming interested in serialism. Serialism is an extension and generalisation of twelve-tone music, inspired by mathematical set theory. In serialism, you choose a set of musical elements -- in twelve-tone music that's the twelve notes in the twelve-tone scale, but it can also be a set of tonal relations, a chord, or any other set of elements. You then define all the possible ways you can permute those elements, a defined set of operations you can perform on them -- so you could play a scale forwards, play it backwards, play all the notes in the scale simultaneously, and so on. You then go through all the possible permutations, exactly once, and that's your piece of music. Young was particularly influenced by the works of Anton Webern, one of the earliest serialists: [Excerpt: Anton Webern, "Cantata number 1 for Soprano, Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra"] That piece we just heard, Webern's "Cantata number 1", was the subject of some of the earliest theoretical discussion of serialism, and in particular led to some discussion of the next step on from serialism. If serialism was all about going through every single permutation of a set, what if you *didn't* permute every element? There was a lot of discussion in the late fifties in music-theoretical circles about the idea of invariance. Normally in music, the interesting thing is what gets changed. To use a very simple example, you might change a melody from a major key to a minor one to make it sound sadder. What theorists at this point were starting to discuss is what happens if you leave something the same, but change the surrounding context, so the thing you *don't* vary sounds different because of the changed context. And going further, what if you don't change the context at all, and merely *imply* a changed context? These ideas were some of those which inspired Young's first major work, his Trio For Strings from 1958, a complex, palindromic, serial piece which is now credited as the first work of minimalism, because the notes in it change so infrequently: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "Trio for Strings"] Though I should point out that Young never considers his works truly finished, and constantly rewrites them, and what we just heard is an excerpt from the only recording of the trio ever officially released, which is of the 2015 version. So I can't state for certain how close what we just heard is to the piece he wrote in 1958, except that it sounds very like the written descriptions of it I've read. After writing the Trio For Strings, Young moved to Germany to study with the modernist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. While studying with Stockhausen, he became interested in the work of John Cage, and started up a correspondence with Cage. On his return to New York he studied with Cage and started writing pieces inspired by Cage, of which the most musical is probably Composition 1960 #7: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "Composition 1960 #7"] The score for that piece is a stave on which is drawn a treble clef, the notes B and F#, and the words "To be held for a long Time". Other of his compositions from 1960 -- which are among the few of his compositions which have been published -- include composition 1960 #10 ("To Bob Morris"), the score for which is just the instruction "Draw a straight line and follow it.", and Piano Piece for David  Tudor #1, the score for which reads "Bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water onto the stage for the piano to eat and drink. The performer may then feed the piano or leave it to eat by itself. If the former, the piece is over after the piano has been fed. If the latter, it is over after the piano eats or decides not to". Most of these compositions were performed as part of a loose New York art collective called Fluxus, all of whom were influenced by Cage and the Dadaists. This collective, led by George Maciunas, sometimes involved Cage himself, but also involved people like Henry Flynt, the inventor of conceptual art, who later became a campaigner against art itself, and who also much to Young's bemusement abandoned abstract music in the mid-sixties to form a garage band with Walter de Maria (who had played drums with the Druds): [Excerpt: Henry Flynt and the Insurrections, "I Don't Wanna"] Much of Young's work was performed at Fluxus concerts given in a New York loft belonging to another member of the collective, Yoko Ono, who co-curated the concerts with Young. One of Ono's mid-sixties pieces, her "Four Pieces for Orchestra" is dedicated to Young, and consists of such instructions as "Count all the stars of that night by heart. The piece ends when all the orchestra members finish counting the stars, or when it dawns. This can be done with windows instead of stars." But while these conceptual ideas remained a huge part of Young's thinking, he soon became interested in two other ideas. The first was the idea of just intonation -- tuning instruments and voices to perfect harmonics, rather than using the subtly-off tuning that is used in Western music. I'm sure I've explained that before in a previous episode, but to put it simply when you're tuning an instrument with fixed pitches like a piano, you have a choice -- you can either tune it so that the notes in one key are perfectly in tune with each other, but then when you change key things go very out of tune, or you can choose to make *everything* a tiny bit, almost unnoticeably, out of tune, but equally so. For the last several hundred years, musicians as a community have chosen the latter course, which was among other things promoted by Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, a collection of compositions which shows how the different keys work together: [Excerpt: Bach (Glenn Gould), "The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: Fugue in F-sharp minor, BWV 883"] Young, by contrast, has his own esoteric tuning system, which he uses in his own work The Well-Tuned Piano: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Well-Tuned Piano"] The other idea that Young took on was from Indian music, the idea of the drone. One of the four recordings of Young's music that is available from his Bandcamp, a 1982 recording titled The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath, consists of one hour, thirteen minutes, and fifty-eight seconds of this: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath"] Yes, I have listened to the whole piece. No, nothing else happens. The minimalist composer Terry Riley describes the recording as "a singularly rare contribution that far outshines any other attempts to capture this instrument in recorded media". In 1962, Young started writing pieces based on what he called the "dream chord", a chord consisting of a root, fourth, sharpened fourth, and fifth: [dream chord] That chord had already appeared in his Trio for Strings, but now it would become the focus of much of his work, in pieces like his 1962 piece The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, heard here in a 1982 revision: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer"] That was part of a series of works titled The Four Dreams of China, and Young began to plan an installation work titled Dream House, which would eventually be created, and which currently exists in Tribeca, New York, where it's been in continuous "performance" for thirty years -- and which consists of thirty-two different pure sine wave tones all played continuously, plus purple lighting by Young's wife Marian Zazeela. But as an initial step towards creating this, Young formed a collective called Theatre of Eternal Music, which some of the members -- though never Young himself -- always claim also went by the alternative name The Dream Syndicate. According to John Cale, a member of the group, that name came about because the group tuned their instruments to the 60hz hum of the fridge in Young's apartment, which Cale called "the key of Western civilisation". According to Cale, that meant the fundamental of the chords they played was 10hz, the frequency of alpha waves when dreaming -- hence the name. The group initially consisted of Young, Zazeela, the photographer Billy Name, and percussionist Angus MacLise, but by this recording in 1964 the lineup was Young, Zazeela, MacLise, Tony Conrad and John Cale: [Excerpt: "Cale, Conrad, Maclise, Young, Zazeela - The Dream Syndicate 2 IV 64-4"] That recording, like any others that have leaked by the 1960s version of the Theatre of Eternal Music or Dream Syndicate, is of disputed legality, because Young and Zazeela claim to this day that what the group performed were La Monte Young's compositions, while the other two surviving members, Cale and Conrad, claim that their performances were improvisational collaborations and should be equally credited to all the members, and so there have been lawsuits and countersuits any time anyone has released the recordings. John Cale, the youngest member of the group, was also the only one who wasn't American. He'd been born in Wales in 1942, and had had the kind of childhood that, in retrospect, seems guaranteed to lead to eccentricity. He was the product of a mixed-language marriage -- his father, William, was an English speaker while his mother, Margaret, spoke Welsh, but the couple had moved in on their marriage with Margaret's mother, who insisted that only Welsh could be spoken in her house. William didn't speak Welsh, and while he eventually picked up the basics from spending all his life surrounded by Welsh-speakers, he refused on principle to capitulate to his mother-in-law, and so remained silent in the house. John, meanwhile, grew up a monolingual Welsh speaker, and didn't start to learn English until he went to school when he was seven, and so couldn't speak to his father until then even though they lived together. Young John was extremely unwell for most of his childhood, both physically -- he had bronchial problems for which he had to take a cough mixture that was largely opium to help him sleep at night -- and mentally. He was hospitalised when he was sixteen with what was at first thought to be meningitis, but turned out to be a psychosomatic condition, the result of what he has described as a nervous breakdown. That breakdown is probably connected to the fact that during his teenage years he was sexually assaulted by two adults in positions of authority -- a vicar and a music teacher -- and felt unable to talk to anyone about this. He was, though, a child prodigy and was playing viola with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales from the age of thirteen, and listening to music by Schoenberg, Webern, and Stravinsky. He was so talented a multi-instrumentalist that at school he was the only person other than one of the music teachers and the headmaster who was allowed to use the piano -- which led to a prank on his very last day at school. The headmaster would, on the last day, hit a low G on the piano to cue the assembly to stand up, and Cale had placed a comb on the string, muting it and stopping the note from sounding -- in much the same way that his near-namesake John Cage was "preparing" pianos for his own compositions in the USA. Cale went on to Goldsmith's College to study music and composition, under Humphrey Searle, one of Britain's greatest proponents of serialism who had himself studied under Webern. Cale's main instrument was the viola, but he insisted on also playing pieces written for the violin, because they required more technical skill. For his final exam he chose to play Hindemith's notoriously difficult Viola Sonata: [Excerpt: Hindemith Viola Sonata] While at Goldsmith's, Cale became friendly with Cornelius Cardew, a composer and cellist who had studied with Stockhausen and at the time was a great admirer of and advocate for the works of Cage and Young (though by the mid-seventies Cardew rejected their work as counter-revolutionary bourgeois imperialism). Through Cardew, Cale started to correspond with Cage, and with George Maciunas and other members of Fluxus. In July 1963, just after he'd finished his studies at Goldsmith's, Cale presented a festival there consisting of an afternoon and an evening show. These shows included the first British performances of several works including Cardew's Autumn '60 for Orchestra -- a piece in which the musicians were given blank staves on which to write whatever part they wanted to play, but a separate set of instructions in *how* to play the parts they'd written. Another piece Cale presented in its British premiere at that show was Cage's "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra": [Excerpt: John Cage, "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra"] In the evening show, they performed Two Pieces For String Quartet by George Brecht (in which the musicians polish their instruments with dusters, making scraping sounds as they clean them),  and two new pieces by Cale, one of which involved a plant being put on the stage, and then the performer, Robin Page, screaming from the balcony at the plant that it would die, then running down, through the audience, and onto the stage, screaming abuse and threats at the plant. The final piece in the show was a performance by Cale (the first one in Britain) of La Monte Young's "X For Henry Flynt". For this piece, Cale put his hands together and then smashed both his arms onto the keyboard as hard as he could, over and over. After five minutes some of the audience stormed the stage and tried to drag the piano away from him. Cale followed the piano on his knees, continuing to bang the keys, and eventually the audience gave up in defeat and Cale the performer won. After this Cale moved to the USA, to further study composition, this time with Iannis Xenakis, the modernist composer who had also taught Mickey Baker orchestration after Baker left Mickey and Sylvia, and who composed such works as "Orient Occident": [Excerpt: Iannis Xenakis, "Orient Occident"] Cale had been recommended to Xenakis as a student by Aaron Copland, who thought the young man was probably a genius. But Cale's musical ambitions were rather too great for Tanglewood, Massachusetts -- he discovered that the institute had eighty-eight pianos, the same number as there are keys on a piano keyboard, and thought it would be great if for a piece he could take all eighty-eight pianos, put them all on different boats, sail the boats out onto a lake, and have eighty-eight different musicians each play one note on each piano, while the boats sank with the pianos on board. For some reason, Cale wasn't allowed to perform this composition, and instead had to make do with one where he pulled an axe out of a single piano and slammed it down on a table. Hardly the same, I'm sure you'll agree. From Tanglewood, Cale moved on to New York, where he soon became part of the artistic circles surrounding John Cage and La Monte Young. It was at this time that he joined Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, and also took part in a performance with Cage that would get Cale his first television exposure: [Excerpt: John Cale playing Erik Satie's "Vexations" on "I've Got a Secret"] That's Cale playing through "Vexations", a piece by Erik Satie that wasn't published until after Satie's death, and that remained in obscurity until Cage popularised -- if that's the word -- the piece. The piece, which Cage had found while studying Satie's notes, seems to be written as an exercise and has the inscription (in French) "In order to play the motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities." Cage interpreted that, possibly correctly, as an instruction that the piece should be played eight hundred and forty times straight through, and so he put together a performance of the piece, the first one ever, by a group he called the Pocket Theatre Piano Relay Team, which included Cage himself, Cale, Joshua Rifkin, and several other notable musical figures, who took it in turns playing the piece. For that performance, which ended up lasting eighteen hours, there was an entry fee of five dollars, and there was a time-clock in the lobby. Audience members punched in and punched out, and got a refund of five cents for every twenty minutes they'd spent listening to the music. Supposedly, at the end, one audience member yelled "Encore!" A week later, Cale appeared on "I've Got a Secret", a popular game-show in which celebrities tried to guess people's secrets (and which is where that performance of Cage's "Water Walk" we heard earlier comes from): [Excerpt: John Cale on I've Got a Secret] For a while, Cale lived with a friend of La Monte Young's, Terry Jennings, before moving in to a flat with Tony Conrad, one of the other members of the Theatre of Eternal Music. Angus MacLise lived in another flat in the same building. As there was not much money to be made in avant-garde music, Cale also worked in a bookshop -- a job Cage had found him -- and had a sideline in dealing drugs. But rents were so cheap at this time that Cale and Conrad only had to work part-time, and could spend much of their time working on the music they were making with Young. Both were string players -- Conrad violin, Cale viola -- and they soon modified their instruments. Conrad merely attached pickups to his so it could be amplified, but Cale went much further. He filed down the viola's bridge so he could play three strings at once, and he replaced the normal viola strings with thicker, heavier, guitar and mandolin strings. This created a sound so loud that it sounded like a distorted electric guitar -- though in late 1963 and early 1964 there were very few people who even knew what a distorted guitar sounded like. Cale and Conrad were also starting to become interested in rock and roll music, to which neither of them had previously paid much attention, because John Cage's music had taught them to listen for music in sounds they previously dismissed. In particular, Cale became fascinated with the harmonies of the Everly Brothers, hearing in them the same just intonation that Young advocated for: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "All I Have to Do is Dream"] And it was with this newfound interest in rock and roll that Cale and Conrad suddenly found themselves members of a manufactured pop band. The two men had been invited to a party on the Lower East Side, and there they'd been introduced to Terry Phillips of Pickwick Records. Phillips had seen their long hair and asked if they were musicians, so they'd answered "yes". He asked if they were in a band, and they said yes. He asked if that band had a drummer, and again they said yes. By this point they realised that he had assumed they were rock guitarists, rather than experimental avant-garde string players, but they decided to play along and see where this was going. Phillips told them that if they brought along their drummer to Pickwick's studios the next day, he had a job for them. The two of them went along with Walter de Maria, who did play the drums a little in between his conceptual art work, and there they were played a record: [Excerpt: The Primitives, "The Ostrich"] It was explained to them that Pickwick made knock-off records -- soundalikes of big hits, and their own records in the style of those hits, all played by a bunch of session musicians and put out under different band names. This one, by "the Primitives", they thought had a shot at being an actual hit, even though it was a dance-craze song about a dance where one partner lays on the floor and the other stamps on their head. But if it was going to be a hit, they needed an actual band to go out and perform it, backing the singer. How would Cale, Conrad, and de Maria like to be three quarters of the Primitives? It sounded fun, but of course they weren't actually guitarists. But as it turned out, that wasn't going to be a problem. They were told that the guitars on the track had all been tuned to one note -- not even to an open chord, like we talked about Steve Cropper doing last episode, but all the strings to one note. Cale and Conrad were astonished -- that was exactly the kind of thing they'd been doing in their drone experiments with La Monte Young. Who was this person who was independently inventing the most advanced ideas in experimental music but applying them to pop songs? And that was how they met Lou Reed: [Excerpt: The Primitives, "The Ostrich"] Where Cale and Conrad were avant-gardeists who had only just started paying attention to rock and roll music, rock and roll was in Lou Reed's blood, but there were a few striking similarities between him and Cale, even though at a glance their backgrounds could not have seemed more different. Reed had been brought up in a comfortably middle-class home in Long Island, but despised the suburban conformity that surrounded him from a very early age, and by his teens was starting to rebel against it very strongly. According to one classmate “Lou was always more advanced than the rest of us. The drinking age was eighteen back then, so we all started drinking at around sixteen. We were drinking quarts of beer, but Lou was smoking joints. He didn't do that in front of many people, but I knew he was doing it. While we were looking at girls in Playboy, Lou was reading Story of O. He was reading the Marquis de Sade, stuff that I wouldn't even have thought about or known how to find.” But one way in which Reed was a typical teenager of the period was his love for rock and roll, especially doo-wop. He'd got himself a guitar, but only had one lesson -- according to the story he would tell on numerous occasions, he turned up with a copy of "Blue Suede Shoes" and told the teacher he only wanted to know how to play the chords for that, and he'd work out the rest himself. Reed and two schoolfriends, Alan Walters and Phil Harris, put together a doo-wop trio they called The Shades, because they wore sunglasses, and a neighbour introduced them to Bob Shad, who had been an A&R man for Mercury Records and was starting his own new label. He renamed them the Jades and took them into the studio with some of the best New York session players, and at fourteen years old Lou Reed was writing songs and singing them backed by Mickey Baker and King Curtis: [Excerpt: The Jades, "Leave Her For Me"] Sadly the Jades' single was a flop -- the closest it came to success was being played on Murray the K's radio show, but on a day when Murray the K was off ill and someone else was filling in for him, much to Reed's disappointment. Phil Harris, the lead singer of the group, got to record some solo sessions after that, but the Jades split up and it would be several years before Reed made any more records. Partly this was because of Reed's mental health, and here's where things get disputed and rather messy. What we know is that in his late teens, just after he'd gone off to New

Chris Roberts's fascinating look at The Velvet Underground.⁠More than 50 years after their inception, they are still influencing bands today, but what made Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker, such influential figures? What was it about their world, an alternative to the peace-and-love sixties, influenced by literature, drugs, sex, and decadence, which led them to create some of the most influential records ever?⁠⁠In his book, Chris Roberts relates the story with humor and respect for the band that changed music forever. He talks about the individual members and Andy Warhol, who managed them at first.Book available here; https://www.amazon.co.uk/Velvet-Underground-Chris-Roberts/dp/1786751135Connect with me on Instagram; steve.blameAnd thanks to POP; The History Makers insanely wonderful talent booker: #ArchieCMichaelSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/pop-the-history-makers-with-steve-blame/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Nate Wilcox asks Victor to detail the ups and downs of the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable.Order the book and support the podcast.Download this episode.Have a question or a suggestion for a topic or person for Nate to interview? Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Twitter.Follow us on Facebook.Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts. 

Repartió su vida entre la literatura, los barcos y The Velvet Underground, la banda que ayudó a formar a fines de los sesenta. Tras ser parte de uno de los colectivos musicales más influyentes del siglo pasado, Morrison prefirió volver a la universidad y terminó a cargo de un remolcador en la ciudad de Houston.

Todd Haynes tells the story of this influential New York rock band in the cinematic style of the man who discovered them: Andy Warhol. I'm always interested when a film about a favorite rock band comes out. The Velvet Underground, a documentary about the group that enjoyed brief but unprofitable fame in the 1960s, has the added advantage of coming from a favorite director, Todd Haynes. And, I was not disappointed. The story begins with two musical artists toiling in relative obscurity. Lou Reed, a Jewish kid from Long Island who played in a doo-wop band in high school, and wrote songs while at college in Syracuse, had started taking drugs in his teens. He'd been in a psych hospital at one point, and his songs reflected dark themes of alienation, addiction, and bisexuality. Then there was John Cale, a young composer and multi-instrumentalist from Wales, who traveled to New York City to be part of the downtown music scene, and met Reed when the latter was working as a songwriter for a recording company. Cale's experimental style mixed well with Reed's dark songwriting. They added Reed's college friend Sterling Morrison on guitar, and Maureen Tucker, the sister of another Syracuse friend, on drums, and called themselves The Velvet Underground. They were playing in a bar when someone who knew Andy Warhol saw them. Warhol came himself to listen, and put some of his cultural weight in to give them more attention. Later, when a beautiful singer and model from Germany with the stage name “Nico” showed up at Warhol's art factory, he persuaded the Velvet Underground to make her a part of the group. They recorded an album on Verve Records, with Warhol's painting of a banana on the cover, and then Warhol had them tour with a light show in 1966 and '67, these shows becoming legendary as the “Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” This was the beginning. The film covers the entire eight years of their career. There are excerpts from interviews, including some from group members who are now deceased, and those accompany a lot of historical footage of the group. And all this is quite standard for a documentary, but Haynes presents the film in a style that simulates the New York avant-garde cinema of the 60s, and especially that of Andy Warhol. Haynes uses lots of split screen, sometimes with footage in one section and interview material on the other, but often with more than two sections in the split, and a constant swirling visual effect, mixing painting, sound, photographs, and talk, which strongly evokes the period of the 1960s and early ‘70s, in which the story took place. We learn a lot about Warhol's methods and the people in his orbit. We learn about Nico walking away to do other things eventually. We learn how the chemistry between Reed and Cale went badleading to Cale's exit and Reed's refashioning of the group. And all this is conveyed by Haynes' uncompromisingly flamboyant style. Any movie about the group with this material would be good, but this wild aesthetic form adds immeasurably, I think, to the film's power. At the time, the Velvet Underground only had a cult following. In the era of peace, love, hippies, and pot, their songs about the underclass and urban angst, and harder drugs like heroin, were not a best-seller. But years later, after Reed had made a successful solo career, these early albums became enormously influential in rock music, and remain so to this day. Now we have the film The Velvet Underground, and it gives us a satisfying taste of what it was really like to be there.

How many of us stop to consider how much rock music owes to literature? Many of rock or folk lyricists of the 60s and 70s (and into the later years) were very well read. Many were students of English literature.Here are a few examples.Jim Morrison was a published poet. Chris Martin of Coldplay mastered Greek and Latin, Sterling Morrison, a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature, Rivers Cuomo graduated from Harvard University in English, Jeff Schroeder, Ph.D in Comparative Literature at UCLA.A couple of honourable mentions:Brian May of Queen, Ph.D. in Astrophysics,  Art Garfunkel a master's in Math, Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine graduated from Harvard in Political Science.And then there were songs inspired by Literature:Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush based on the book by Emily Bronte. Pigs by Pink Floyd was inspired by George Orwell's 1984 as was Testify by Rage Against The Machine. White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane was a shout out, obviously, to Alice in Wonderland. Sympathy For The Devil by The Rolling Stones was inspired by Bulgakov's Master And Margarita and also by Baudelaire's World by Rosemary Lloyd. Metallica's For Whom The Bell Tolls is, of course, straight from Ernest Hemingway. And India's mega band of the 70s, The Human Bondage got its name from the title of a Somerset Maugham book.Sort of puts paid to the whole under-educated, unwashed, drug-taking bad boys of rock. (Well, at least not the under-educated part evidently.)Our guest today on The Literary City is Bruce Lee Mani. He is frontman of the famous Indian rock band, Thermal And A Quarter and he runs the reputable music school Taaqademy.We talk about how his lifelong interest in words and literature shaped his songwriting.The piece of music you hear coming into the segment is Bruce Lee Mani, singing all the vocal parts, a cappella, of his songs, Tomorrow. At the end of the episode, another treat, Bruce performing The Kindness Of Strangers in a songwriter showcase. Here's the links:Tomorrow: https://youtu.be/eWSP-6VeVyI. The Kindness of Strangers: https://youtu.be/xJ9PCmfkZ94. Galatiqua. : https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=JBzAI8Fll74&list=RDAMVMJBzAI8Fll74WHAT'S THAT WORD?! - "ROCK N ROLL".Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in the segment titled "What's That Word?", or titled in whichever way Ramjee  screws up the title, to peel back the meaning of the phrase "rock n roll", the central theme of the episode.If you have a word or phrase you would like to explore, join us live on the show. Reach us by mail: theliterarycity@explocity.com or simply, tlc@explocity.com. Or, Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bangaloreliterarysocietyOr Instagram https://www.instagram.com/explocityblr/If your word or phrase is selected, we'll call you.Join our Facebook group, Bangalore Literary Society. It does not matter if you are not in Bangalore. This group is for anyone interested in language and words.HELP EDUCATE A NEEDY CHILDThe Literary City encourages you to give to those children who struggle to get an education.  We ask you to contribute whatever you can to The Association of People with Disability. The link to donate is: https://www.apd-india.org/donations. Visit their site and take a look at the wonderful work they do and find it in your heart to, well, teach a child to fish.

We deep dive into Todd Haynes' Velvet Underground documentary (2021) on AppleTV. Haynes talks to the surviving members of the band and a lot of New York art world and the Warhol Factory scene about this legendary group that blended drone, multimedia, and doo-wop. The first-person accounts are great and you get steeped in the heady New York days of yore.Our guest is music publicist and Velvets fan Daniel Gill, who runs Force Field PR. George makes an argument for the TCCU (Tony Conrad Cinematic Universe) and Daniel plays a very thorough Cast This Doc. No Jonathan Richman impressions were maimed.Daniel Gill runs the PR and management firm Force Field out of the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Force Field is best known for launching the careers of many of your present day brunch playlist favorites, such as Sufjan Stevens, St. Vincent, Beach House, Toro Y Moi, Real Estate, Neon Indian, Tennis, Lord Huron, Panda Bear, Woods, Kevin Morby, and many more. They've also handled PR for a slew of music documentaries including Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, ZAPPA, Once Were Brothers, Crock of Gold, Danny Says, Other Music, etc. Gill is also serving as the producer on the newly launched music podcast Discograffiti.Follow Daniel on:Twitter: @forcefieldprFollow us on:Twitter: @supdocpodcastInstagram: @supdocpodcastFacebook: @supdocpodcastsign up for our mailing listAnd you can show your support to Sup Doc by donating on Patreon.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Testors with Sonny Vincent in conversation with David Eastaugh  American Rock musician. He has been active in music since the 60s and in particular the mid-1970s, when he was part of the New York City punk rock scene with his original band, Testors. Vincent is currently active in music, film, multi-media art, and writing. His pedigree includes mid-70s Testors' performances at C.B.G.B. and Max's Kansas City. Always active in his own bands, Vincent also spent time touring and recording for 9 years as Maureen "Moe" Tucker and Sterling Morrison's guitar player (both of the Velvet Underground.) Members of Vincent's bands include a vast range of players/characters, from the drummer of the Stooges, Scott Asheton, to Charles Manson's one-time guitar player, Ernie Knapp.

A conversation about how the band was experienced in its time, and how Todd Haynes's new documentary explores the world that birthed it. Guests: Jon Pareles and A.O. Scott.

Continuamos con nuestra semana dedicada a The Velvet Underground. Si estos días te hemos ofrecido en Muzikalia un especial en el que repasábamos sus mejores canciones, hoy regresamos a ellas, pero en las voces de otros artistas. Hace poco se ha editado el disco tributo I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve), nosotros viajaremos a las últimas cinco décadas para recuperar nuestras versiones favoritas. Durante la próxima hora y media os invitamos a celebrar la música del combo formado originalmente pr Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker y compañía. Dirige Manuel Pinazo

The story of The Velvet Underground continues as we pick back up with the eclectic pairing of Lou Reed & John Cale, and dive deeper into the background of the multi-instrumentalist who's avant-garde drone swells became a staple of the group's early sound. As the two find their collaborative style, the group's original line-up begins to take shape with the additions of guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummers Angus MacLise & Moe Tucker. As always, Follow Marcus on Spotify to listen to all of the songs used in this episode And taking us out this week is Nightmare Blue - Trouble For Early Access to Episodes and Exclusive Content join our Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/nodogs

For my first program for Rocktober 2021, an audio primer for the very first documentary of one of the most important bands of the latter half of the 20th century, The Velvet Underground, directed by Portlander Todd Haynes and broadcasting on October 15th on Apple TV. The Velvet Underground are a band you have heard of, if not exactly heard. When you do hear them, it is usually in passing, or one of two tracks from the catalogue that are favorites of whomever is presenting them. Often, you hear about their their story in terms that have nothing to do with the music or their greatness: Andy Warhol, The 1960's, Avant Garde, banana peel, etc. The Velvet Underground, 1969: (l-r) Doug Yule, Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison. Photographer unknown, courtesy of UMG. Originally calling themselves The Warlocks and The Falling Spikes (the latter a reference to using heroin intravenously), they adopted their now famous name after finding a book in the street by journalist Michael Leigh, which detailed the so-called deviant sexual behaviors of white suburbanites. They were a band that definitely broke the mold on many fronts, even with their line-ups: most of the members, like founder Lou Reed, were from or living in New York. Experimental musician John Cale and former model Nico were the exceptions, from Wales and Germany, respectively. Adding to this was that their "drummer" was a woman, Maureen Tucker; she played a partial kit, and did this standing up. "I wanted to write the great American novel, but I also liked Rock and Roll."Lou Reed The decade they formed in and released most of their material in, the 1960's, saw a seismic shift in demographics that would forever alter their musical style. Thanks to the growth of the suburbs and the Second Great Migration by Blacks, older eastern and Midwestern cities like Chicago and New York started to decay and fall apart, while places like California would flourish. If Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys invented the concept of California as being a magical paradise, then Lou Reed documented the fall of New York just as perfectly. John Cale, 1967, in New York City. Photographer unknown, courtesy of Getty Images. Their sometimes abrasive sound would make them truly fringe artists during their brief lifetime, which initially included just four studio albums (a fifth one called Squeeze in 1973 without Reed is discounted by all involved), and on a great many touring dates they were lucky if 20 people would show up to see them. Much of this was due to the subject matter of their songs, which, even for so-called "progressive" radio, was too much to handle: heroin, methamphetamines, drag queens, transsexuals, prostitutes, fellatio, orgies, etc. Radio refused to play them and only a handful of truly underground stations emerging on the FM dial would, and critics did not know what to make of them. Nico, 1967, in Monterrey, California. Photo by Elaine Mayes. All Music, founded in 1991 and the premier guide to all things music on the internet, ranks them at #5 among all artists in terms of influence. The joke, coined by Brian Eno, goes something like this: The Velvet Underground only sold 100 albums, but those 100 people went on to form bands of their own. These eleven songs were chosen as a representation of the sounds, subject matter and characters that made the Velvet Underground the premier 1960's New York bohemian icons they would indelibly become. First Part Rock & Roll (full-length version), 1970, Loaded ("Fully Loaded" version)Lady Godiva's Operation, 1968, White Light/White HeatI'm Waiting For The Man, 1967, The Velvet Underground and NicoStephanie Says, recorded 1968/released 1985, VUWhite Light/White Heat (live at the Matrix, San Francisco), recorded 1969/released 1974, 1969: The Velvet Underground Live Vol. 2 Second Part What Goes On, 1969, The Velvet UndergroundPale Blue Eyes, 1969, The Velvet UndergroundVenus In Furs, 1967,

I am joined this week by original Violent Femmes drummer Victor DeLorenzo to talk about the making of the bands album Why Do Birds Sing for it's 30th anniversary, acting and writing outside of drumming, writing music with his new band NINETEEN THIRTEEN, being possibly the only band to open for both the Grateful Dead and Ramones, playing drums in Moe Tuckers band and a whole lot more  FOLLOW VICTOR DELORENZO - https://victordelorenzo.weebly.comhttp://www.nineteenthirteen.comhttps://nineteenthirteen.bandcamp.comTwitter - https://twitter.com/VicDeLorenzohttps://twitter.com/1913mkeInsta -https://www.instagram.com/vjd/https://www.instagram.com/1913mke/Facebook -https://www.facebook.com/Nineteen13Check out the Power Chord Hour radio show every Friday night at 10 est on 107.9 WRFA in Jamestown, NY, stream the station online at wrfalp.com/streaming/ or listen on the WRFA mobile appemail me for FREE Power Chord Hour stickers - powerchordhour@gmail.comFacebook - www.facebook.com/powerchordhourInstagram - www.instagram.com/powerchordhour/Twitter - www.twitter.com/powerchordhour/Youtube - www.youtube.com/channel/UC6jTfzjB3-mzmWM-51c8LggSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/user/kzavhk5ghelpnthfby9o41gnr?si=4WvOdgAmSsKoswf_HTh_Mg 

Un disco in cui suonano: Jackson Browne, Lou Reed, John Cale e Sterling Morrison. No, non è il disco con la banana in copertina, ma quello fatto subito dopo con le canzoni di Nico (alla voce). Quattro fuori di testa ed un angelo tedesco che canta. Che verrà mai fuori? Canzoni melodiche, pervase da un anima di tristezza e solitudine. In questa puntata racconto come ho "visto" il mondo in cui Nico ci ha immerso. Buon ascolto e al prossimo venerdì con la penultima puntata. Credits · Disco: Chelsea Girl, Nico, 1967, Verve Records · Sigla Iniziale: Sisterhood, Langhorne Slim, 2005 Narnack Records · Sigla Finale: Lover Please, Jonathan Richman, 1979 Castle Copyrights LTD · Copertina: by Texnee

Dooner’s World – Episode 28 Guest: Scott Parker – author of 10 Frank Zappa books, Kiss Documented (1970-1977), and Woodstock Documented, Host of the official Frank Zappa Podcast, Zappacast Topics: Brass City Records Flo and Eddie – Billy the Mountain, the Woodstock 2013 show with Dweezil, and more Malcolm Tent – Trash American Style Nirvana – The Moon 9/26/1991 – Scott, Mike, and Malcolm were all there!!! 2 days after Nevermind was released!! Grateful Dead – Mike shows amazing pictures from Ralph Hulett – Rockretrospect.com Velvet Underground – Mo Tucker!! Sterling Morrison!!! John Cale!!!! Lou Reed!!! Dooner's World Episode 28 Scott Parker Guest: Scott Parker – author of 10 Frank Zappa books, Kiss Documented (1970-1977), and Woodstock Documented, Host of the official Frank Zappa Podcast, Zappacast Topics: Brass City Records Flo and Eddie – Billy the Mountain, the Woodstock 2013 show with Dweezil, and more Malcolm Tent – Trash American Style Mike shares Blood Ally - Brian Johnson, Cliff Williams, Mark Hitt, and Steve Luongo - Dancin' on the Devil's Head!!!!! Unreleased 2007 !! Nirvana – The Moon 9/26/1991 – Scott, Mike, and Malcolm were all there!!! 2 days after Nevermind was released!! Grateful Dead – Mike shows amazing pictures from Ralph Hulett – Rockretrospect.com Velvet Underground – Mo Tucker!! Sterling Morrison!!! John Cale!!!! Lou Reed!!! Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=39941006&fan_landing=true)

Siguiendo con la historia del rock, como siempre de la mano del documentado libro de Jordi Sierra i Fabra, Historia del Rock, libro que, por supuesto os recomiendo, la crisis había dejado en Inglaterra tres millones de parados, pero el problema iba más allá: las chicas y chicos en edad laboral se encontraron con el peor de los futuros. No es de extrañar, pues, que el lema punk fuese “no hay futuro”. Cientos de jóvenes se lanzaron al ruedo de la música como única oportunidad. Bastaban tres acordes de guitarra y un cantante gritón. Y por supuesto… ser provocadores. El punk fue rompedor, marcó un cambio profundo no solo en la música, sino en la moda y el comportamiento de los adolescentes de 1976 y 1977. En menos de dos años llegó al máximo y luego se devoró a sí mismo. Quedó el legado, algunos grupos supervivientes, y poco más, aunque, como en el caso de los hippies, los punkis ya no desaparecieron. Sobrevivió su esencia más allá de las modas. Escrutando la historia, se encuentran antecedentes como este “Gloria” de Them. Fue en este grupo, por cierto, donde empezó su carrera Van Morrison. Los Beatniks había sido idealistas, los hippies románticos. Los Punkies se decantaron por el lado oscuro y el feísmo. Maquillajes negros, ropas oscuras, los pelos cortados a lo loco, con muchos colorines y con una serie de “complementos” nada despreciable: imperdibles en la nariz, cadenas, candados colgando del cuello, cuchillas de afeitar y ropa rota. Cuando un joven rompía su camiseta y salía con ella a la calle, ése era su grito de rebeldía. Lo malo era que al otro día las tiendas ya vendían ropa rota, ropa punk. Esta generación, además, se atrevió a atacar a sus mayores, como a los Rolling Stones, a los que tachaban de viejos (por cierto, no se lo que les dirían hoy), o a los Who, parafraseando su lema acerca de llegar a los 30 años. Los Punkies clamaban que “Si pasas de los 25 estás acabado. Si tienes 30, muérete”. Otro precedente podemos encontrarlo en “Louie, Louie” de los Kingsmen. De todas estas bandas que podemos seleccionar como precursoras del punk, debemos destacar a The Velvet Underground. Esta banda se formó en 1964 cuando Lou Reed, que había tocado en algunas bandas de poca duración, conoció al galés John Cale, que se había mudado a los Estados Unidos para estudiar música clásica. Reed y Cale congeniaron y pensaron en fundar un nuevo grupo. Para ello buscaron a Sterling Morrison, a quien Reed había conocido en la universidad y con quien ya había tocado, y a Angus McLise, vecino de John y Lou. El nombre de la banda surgió del título de un libro sobre sadomasoquismo de Michael Leigh titulado The Velvet Underground que Jim Tucker, amigo de Reed y Morrison, encontró tirado en la calle. Andy Warhol, que los había oído tocar creyó que era una buena idea tener una banda de rock en su Factory. Tanto la música, llena de ruido y distorsiones, como las letras que trataban tópicos inusuales para la época, como el sadomasoquismo, el travestismo, o la adicción a la heroína, los distanciaban mucho de las bandas típicas de la escena estadounidense de ese momento, en la cual la psicodelia y la cultura hippie alcanzaban su momento cumbre en San Francisco. Hablar de la influencia de The Velvet Underground en el rock y en la música en general es hablar de un legado bastante amplio. La banda fue la primera en experimentar directamente con la forma y el ruido dentro de la música pop, incluyendo influencias tomadas directamente de la música clásica contemporánea. La influencia de The Velvet Underground puede ser apreciada a lo largo y ancho del mundo de la música rock. Así, son ampliamente considerados los precursores del punk, habiendo influenciado a bandas tan emblemáticas como, por ejemplo, los Sex Pistols Las letras de The Velvet Underground le valieron a la banda grandes controversias y la desconfianza de la industria discográfica. Sus canciones hablaban sobre drogas; un ejemplo «White Light/White Heat», que es la que acabamos de escuchar. Las drogas era un tema que hasta entonces había sido tabú en la música pop, y como si fuera poco no lo hacían en tono condenatorio. De hecho, Lou Reed luchó una larga batalla contra su adicción a la heroína a lo largo de toda la década del 70. Y aunque muchas de las canciones menos controvertidas de la banda están plagadas de personajes excéntricos, perdedores, travestidos, la canción que despertó más controversia fue «Venus in Furs», una canción sobre sadomasoquismo basado en el libro La venus de las pieles. Si la Velvet Underground fue el antecedente del punk, The Clash fue el grupo más importantes e icónico de la primera ola del punk originada a fines de los años 70. A diferencia de la mayoría de las bandas punk que se caracterizaban por su simplicidad musical, incorporó reggae, rock, rockabilly, ska, jazz o funk, entre otros muchos y variados estilos en su repertorio. The Clash llegó a ser una banda muy influyente en la música mundial. Además, The Clash tuvo una intencionalidad política en sus letras que con el tiempo se convertiría en su característica distintiva fundamental. El idealismo expresado en las composiciones The Clash contrastó con el nihilismo de Sex Pistols y la sencillez de Ramones, las otras bandas punteras del punk en la época, y aunque su éxito en el Reino Unido fue inmediato, la banda no se ganó al público estadounidense hasta los años 80. El 4 de julio de 1976, The Clash tocó por primera vez actuando como teloneros de los Sex Pistols en un recital en Sheffield donde la banda interpretó los temas "Janie Jones", "London's Burning" y "1977", mostrando un estilo punk puro con una diversidad musical casi nula. Luego del recital, la revista New Musical Express publicó una frase que con el tiempo se haría famosa: “The Clash es la clase de banda de garaje que debería rápidamente regresar a su garaje, preferiblemente con la puerta cerrada y el motor en marcha.” Pero bueno, ya en 1977, el grupo lanzó su primer sencillo, "White Riot", en marzo y un mes más tarde salió al mercado el primer LP homónimo, The Clash, caracterizado por una crudeza musical y letras políticas, sociales y agresivas. El álbum alcanzó un éxito considerable en el Reino Unido, pero Epic Records, la discográfica responsable de la banda en los Estados Unidos, no lo publicó en primera instancia en el mercado americano ya que lo consideraba demasiado crudo y un poquito bestia. Dos años más tarde, y después de que el disco se convirtiera en el más importado de la historia de los Estados Unidos, se editó una versión modificada del mismo para este público tan melindroso llamada The Clash US. Hay un álbum de The Clash que merece la pena citar. Hacia finales de 1980,el grupo lanzó un álbum triple al que llamaron Sandinista!, nombre utilizado para hacer referencia al Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional de Nicaragua. Los miembros insistieron en que los tres discos se vendieran al precio de uno, pagando de sus propios bolsillos la diferencia. ¡Sandinista! mostró una variedad de estilos aún más amplia y experimental que cualquier otro álbum del grupo y se encontró con reacciones diversas por parte de los críticos y los seguidores. Durante las sesiones, y aquí radica lo curioso del asunto, el grupo grabó cada idea que se les pasaba por la cabeza en cada momento, alejándose del punk y recurriendo a la experimentación con el jazz, el hip hop, la música de cámara e incluso el gospel. Al igual que su anterior material, ¡Sandinista! tuvo un gran éxito de ventas, lo cual no es común en álbumes triples. Luego del lanzamiento del disco, The Clash emprendió su primera gira mundial que incluyó shows en lugares tan alejados como el este de Asia y Australia. Durante estos años, las tensiones y los conflictos dentro de la banda comenzaron a crear rumores de separación. Las giras, la fama y la constante convivencia no daban descanso, desvelando ciertas asperezas en el seno del grupo. Sin embargo, The Clash se las arregló para seguir grabando y de esta manera editar su álbum de mayor número de ventas alrededor del mundo, Combat Rock. En dicho álbum se encontraban su éxito "Should I Stay or Should I Go", que ya hemos oído y su no menos famoso "Rock the Casbah" que escucharemos ahora. Bien, todo esto pasaba en el Reino Unido, pero en EEUU, la banda que inició el movimiento y se puso al frente del punk nacional fueron los Ramones. Esta banda se formó en Queens (Nueva York) en 1974 y se disolvió veintidós años más tarde, en 1996. Pioneros y líderes del naciente punk, cimentaron las bases de este género musical con composiciones simples, minimalistas, repetitivas y letras muy simples o incluso sin sentido, en clara oposición a la pomposidad y la fastuosidad de las bandas que triunfaban en el mercado de los años 1970, con sus largos solos de guitarra, las complejas canciones de rock progresivo y sus enigmáticas letras. Su sonido se caracteriza por ser rápido y directo, con influencias del rockabilly de los años 50, el surf rock, The Beatles, The Who, The Velvet Underground, las bandas de chicas de los años 1960 como The Shangri-Las y el garaje protopunk de MC5. Ramones lideró la primera ola del punk en Nueva York, compartiendo el escenario del mítico club CBGB con otras bandas de punk como Blondie, Patti Smith o Televisión y de new wave como Talking Heads entre otros, sirviendo de inspiración para la gran mayoría de las bandas de punk surgidas en la década de 1970 tanto de EE. UU. como en el Reino Unido. "Blitzkrieg Bop" apareció en el primer álbum de la banda, Ramones, de 1976 y fue lanzada como sencillo en noviembre de 1975 en Estados Unidos y en julio de 1976 en el Reino Unido. Este tema es considerado un hito no sólo del punk, sino también del rock and roll en general. Quién lo diría… El nombre de Ramones fue inventado por uno de sus componentes. A partir de ese momento, todos los miembros llevarían el apellido Ramone, de modo que los tres primeros miembros serían conocidos como Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Hyman), Johnny Ramone (John Cummings) y Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Colvin. Para rellenar el hueco en la batería se eligió a Thomas, el representante y amigo de los componentes, que pasó a llamarse, inevitablemente, Tommy Ramone. A lo largo de su carrera, los Ramones publicaron 14 discos de estudio y varias recopilaciones y discos en directo, haciendo un total de 21 álbumes y un total de 212 canciones. A pesar de su fama actual, el grupo solo consiguió dos discos de oro gracias al recopilatorio Ramonesmania (1988) y su álbum debut en 2014, y únicamente dos de sus álbumes consiguieron sobrepasar el top 50 en el Billboard estadounidense. Ninguno de sus sencillos consiguió repercusión comercial. La banda se disolvió en 1996. Tres de los cuatro miembros originales (Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone y Dee Dee Ramone) murieron en un intervalo de tres años desde la desaparición de la banda y el último miembro original superviviente de la banda, Tommy Ramone, falleció en la madrugada del 12 de julio de 2014, víctima de un cáncer de las vías biliares. Amén. Y no, no nos olvidamos de los más grandes: “Sex Pistols”, solo que éstos tendrán que esperar hasta la próxima semana. Así que, hasta entonces, nos despedimos prometiéndoos más música, más historias y más músicos. ¡¡¡Señoras, Señores… Buenas Vibraciones!!!

Siguiendo con la historia del rock, como siempre de la mano del documentado libro de Jordi Sierra i Fabra, Historia del Rock, libro que, por supuesto os recomiendo, la crisis había dejado en Inglaterra tres millones de parados, pero el problema iba más allá: las chicas y chicos en edad laboral se encontraron con el peor de los futuros. No es de extrañar, pues, que el lema punk fuese “no hay futuro”. Cientos de jóvenes se lanzaron al ruedo de la música como única oportunidad. Bastaban tres acordes de guitarra y un cantante gritón. Y por supuesto… ser provocadores. El punk fue rompedor, marcó un cambio profundo no solo en la música, sino en la moda y el comportamiento de los adolescentes de 1976 y 1977. En menos de dos años llegó al máximo y luego se devoró a sí mismo. Quedó el legado, algunos grupos supervivientes, y poco más, aunque, como en el caso de los hippies, los punkis ya no desaparecieron. Sobrevivió su esencia más allá de las modas. Escrutando la historia, se encuentran antecedentes como este “Gloria” de Them. Fue en este grupo, por cierto, donde empezó su carrera Van Morrison. Los Beatniks había sido idealistas, los hippies románticos. Los Punkies se decantaron por el lado oscuro y el feísmo. Maquillajes negros, ropas oscuras, los pelos cortados a lo loco, con muchos colorines y con una serie de “complementos” nada despreciable: imperdibles en la nariz, cadenas, candados colgando del cuello, cuchillas de afeitar y ropa rota. Cuando un joven rompía su camiseta y salía con ella a la calle, ése era su grito de rebeldía. Lo malo era que al otro día las tiendas ya vendían ropa rota, ropa punk. Esta generación, además, se atrevió a atacar a sus mayores, como a los Rolling Stones, a los que tachaban de viejos (por cierto, no se lo que les dirían hoy), o a los Who, parafraseando su lema acerca de llegar a los 30 años. Los Punkies clamaban que “Si pasas de los 25 estás acabado. Si tienes 30, muérete”. Otro precedente podemos encontrarlo en “Louie, Louie” de los Kingsmen. De todas estas bandas que podemos seleccionar como precursoras del punk, debemos destacar a The Velvet Underground. Esta banda se formó en 1964 cuando Lou Reed, que había tocado en algunas bandas de poca duración, conoció al galés John Cale, que se había mudado a los Estados Unidos para estudiar música clásica. Reed y Cale congeniaron y pensaron en fundar un nuevo grupo. Para ello buscaron a Sterling Morrison, a quien Reed había conocido en la universidad y con quien ya había tocado, y a Angus McLise, vecino de John y Lou. El nombre de la banda surgió del título de un libro sobre sadomasoquismo de Michael Leigh titulado The Velvet Underground que Jim Tucker, amigo de Reed y Morrison, encontró tirado en la calle. Andy Warhol, que los había oído tocar creyó que era una buena idea tener una banda de rock en su Factory. Tanto la música, llena de ruido y distorsiones, como las letras que trataban tópicos inusuales para la época, como el sadomasoquismo, el travestismo, o la adicción a la heroína, los distanciaban mucho de las bandas típicas de la escena estadounidense de ese momento, en la cual la psicodelia y la cultura hippie alcanzaban su momento cumbre en San Francisco. Hablar de la influencia de The Velvet Underground en el rock y en la música en general es hablar de un legado bastante amplio. La banda fue la primera en experimentar directamente con la forma y el ruido dentro de la música pop, incluyendo influencias tomadas directamente de la música clásica contemporánea. La influencia de The Velvet Underground puede ser apreciada a lo largo y ancho del mundo de la música rock. Así, son ampliamente considerados los precursores del punk, habiendo influenciado a bandas tan emblemáticas como, por ejemplo, los Sex Pistols Las letras de The Velvet Underground le valieron a la banda grandes controversias y la desconfianza de la industria discográfica. Sus canciones hablaban sobre drogas; un ejemplo «White Light/White Heat», que es la que acabamos de escuchar. Las drogas era un tema que hasta entonces había sido tabú en la música pop, y como si fuera poco no lo hacían en tono condenatorio. De hecho, Lou Reed luchó una larga batalla contra su adicción a la heroína a lo largo de toda la década del 70. Y aunque muchas de las canciones menos controvertidas de la banda están plagadas de personajes excéntricos, perdedores, travestidos, la canción que despertó más controversia fue «Venus in Furs», una canción sobre sadomasoquismo basado en el libro La venus de las pieles. Si la Velvet Underground fue el antecedente del punk, The Clash fue el grupo más importantes e icónico de la primera ola del punk originada a fines de los años 70. A diferencia de la mayoría de las bandas punk que se caracterizaban por su simplicidad musical, incorporó reggae, rock, rockabilly, ska, jazz o funk, entre otros muchos y variados estilos en su repertorio. The Clash llegó a ser una banda muy influyente en la música mundial. Además, The Clash tuvo una intencionalidad política en sus letras que con el tiempo se convertiría en su característica distintiva fundamental. El idealismo expresado en las composiciones The Clash contrastó con el nihilismo de Sex Pistols y la sencillez de Ramones, las otras bandas punteras del punk en la época, y aunque su éxito en el Reino Unido fue inmediato, la banda no se ganó al público estadounidense hasta los años 80. El 4 de julio de 1976, The Clash tocó por primera vez actuando como teloneros de los Sex Pistols en un recital en Sheffield donde la banda interpretó los temas "Janie Jones", "London's Burning" y "1977", mostrando un estilo punk puro con una diversidad musical casi nula. Luego del recital, la revista New Musical Express publicó una frase que con el tiempo se haría famosa: “The Clash es la clase de banda de garaje que debería rápidamente regresar a su garaje, preferiblemente con la puerta cerrada y el motor en marcha.” Pero bueno, ya en 1977, el grupo lanzó su primer sencillo, "White Riot", en marzo y un mes más tarde salió al mercado el primer LP homónimo, The Clash, caracterizado por una crudeza musical y letras políticas, sociales y agresivas. El álbum alcanzó un éxito considerable en el Reino Unido, pero Epic Records, la discográfica responsable de la banda en los Estados Unidos, no lo publicó en primera instancia en el mercado americano ya que lo consideraba demasiado crudo y un poquito bestia. Dos años más tarde, y después de que el disco se convirtiera en el más importado de la historia de los Estados Unidos, se editó una versión modificada del mismo para este público tan melindroso llamada The Clash US. Hay un álbum de The Clash que merece la pena citar. Hacia finales de 1980,el grupo lanzó un álbum triple al que llamaron Sandinista!, nombre utilizado para hacer referencia al Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional de Nicaragua. Los miembros insistieron en que los tres discos se vendieran al precio de uno, pagando de sus propios bolsillos la diferencia. ¡Sandinista! mostró una variedad de estilos aún más amplia y experimental que cualquier otro álbum del grupo y se encontró con reacciones diversas por parte de los críticos y los seguidores. Durante las sesiones, y aquí radica lo curioso del asunto, el grupo grabó cada idea que se les pasaba por la cabeza en cada momento, alejándose del punk y recurriendo a la experimentación con el jazz, el hip hop, la música de cámara e incluso el gospel. Al igual que su anterior material, ¡Sandinista! tuvo un gran éxito de ventas, lo cual no es común en álbumes triples. Luego del lanzamiento del disco, The Clash emprendió su primera gira mundial que incluyó shows en lugares tan alejados como el este de Asia y Australia. Durante estos años, las tensiones y los conflictos dentro de la banda comenzaron a crear rumores de separación. Las giras, la fama y la constante convivencia no daban descanso, desvelando ciertas asperezas en el seno del grupo. Sin embargo, The Clash se las arregló para seguir grabando y de esta manera editar su álbum de mayor número de ventas alrededor del mundo, Combat Rock. En dicho álbum se encontraban su éxito "Should I Stay or Should I Go", que ya hemos oído y su no menos famoso "Rock the Casbah" que escucharemos ahora. Bien, todo esto pasaba en el Reino Unido, pero en EEUU, la banda que inició el movimiento y se puso al frente del punk nacional fueron los Ramones. Esta banda se formó en Queens (Nueva York) en 1974 y se disolvió veintidós años más tarde, en 1996. Pioneros y líderes del naciente punk, cimentaron las bases de este género musical con composiciones simples, minimalistas, repetitivas y letras muy simples o incluso sin sentido, en clara oposición a la pomposidad y la fastuosidad de las bandas que triunfaban en el mercado de los años 1970, con sus largos solos de guitarra, las complejas canciones de rock progresivo y sus enigmáticas letras. Su sonido se caracteriza por ser rápido y directo, con influencias del rockabilly de los años 50, el surf rock, The Beatles, The Who, The Velvet Underground, las bandas de chicas de los años 1960 como The Shangri-Las y el garaje protopunk de MC5. Ramones lideró la primera ola del punk en Nueva York, compartiendo el escenario del mítico club CBGB con otras bandas de punk como Blondie, Patti Smith o Televisión y de new wave como Talking Heads entre otros, sirviendo de inspiración para la gran mayoría de las bandas de punk surgidas en la década de 1970 tanto de EE. UU. como en el Reino Unido. "Blitzkrieg Bop" apareció en el primer álbum de la banda, Ramones, de 1976 y fue lanzada como sencillo en noviembre de 1975 en Estados Unidos y en julio de 1976 en el Reino Unido. Este tema es considerado un hito no sólo del punk, sino también del rock and roll en general. Quién lo diría… El nombre de Ramones fue inventado por uno de sus componentes. A partir de ese momento, todos los miembros llevarían el apellido Ramone, de modo que los tres primeros miembros serían conocidos como Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Hyman), Johnny Ramone (John Cummings) y Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Colvin. Para rellenar el hueco en la batería se eligió a Thomas, el representante y amigo de los componentes, que pasó a llamarse, inevitablemente, Tommy Ramone. A lo largo de su carrera, los Ramones publicaron 14 discos de estudio y varias recopilaciones y discos en directo, haciendo un total de 21 álbumes y un total de 212 canciones. A pesar de su fama actual, el grupo solo consiguió dos discos de oro gracias al recopilatorio Ramonesmania (1988) y su álbum debut en 2014, y únicamente dos de sus álbumes consiguieron sobrepasar el top 50 en el Billboard estadounidense. Ninguno de sus sencillos consiguió repercusión comercial. La banda se disolvió en 1996. Tres de los cuatro miembros originales (Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone y Dee Dee Ramone) murieron en un intervalo de tres años desde la desaparición de la banda y el último miembro original superviviente de la banda, Tommy Ramone, falleció en la madrugada del 12 de julio de 2014, víctima de un cáncer de las vías biliares. Amén. Y no, no nos olvidamos de los más grandes: “Sex Pistols”, solo que éstos tendrán que esperar hasta la próxima semana. Así que, hasta entonces, nos despedimos prometiéndoos más música, más historias y más músicos. ¡¡¡Señoras, Señores… Buenas Vibraciones!!!

By 1973 very little remained of the influential proto-punk group the Velvet Underground as their final studio album saw release. Long gone were founding members Lou Reed, John Cale, and Sterling Morrison, and backing members Maureen Tucker, Willie Alexander, and Walter Powers had been dismissed by the band's manager. That left only the hapless multi-instrumentalist Doug Yule (Who was originally brought in to replace John Cale's absence) to write and record the album which would bring their contract to a close entirely on his own.Said album was titled Squeeze, which was released to little fanfare, contained no singles, and was roundly rejected both commercially and critically for sounding nothing like a Velvet Underground record. To this day Squeeze is seen as a lone blemish on the legacy of a highly innovative and risky band, and made a pariah out of Doug Yule, whose worst crime was simply wanting to continue having a career in the music industry.On this episode of Jukebox Zeroes, Lilz & Patrick team up with Boston-based sound engineer and performer Joel Simches (Butterscott / Total Mass Retain / Count Zero) to dig into Squeeze, and decide for themselves whether its foul reputation is deserved.Local Music Feature: The Coward flowers - "Scarab Seam"

Multi-instrumentalist Mike Noordzy of psychedelic afro-cuban surf jazz band El Noordzo (nachtrecords.com) joins Bill and Brian to discuss the eponymous album The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967, Verve). Mike talks about falling in love with a Velvets' best of he found at a random used record shop, before we get into talking about Nico's contributions as a vocalist, Tom Wilson punching up the sound, the effect Andy Warhol had on the band, John Cale vs. Sterling Morrison on bass, Lou Reed's version of a Manhattan Bohemian, Mo Tucker's primal rhythms, and more as we make our way through the album track by track!

LE CELEBRI RIMEMBRANZE by STILE LIBERO..Nella seconda settimana del mese di Settembre di cinquanta anni fa (nel 1967) The Velvet Underground - ovvero Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison e Maureen Tucker - registrarono le canzoni del loro secondo album, White Light/White Heat, prodotto da Tom Wilson...In occasione della sopra citata ricorrenza, questa notte andrà in onda la prima puntata di un 'rumoroso' viaggio nel tempo dedicato a "White Light/White Heat", ai Velvet Underground e a chi li ama (e sempre li amerà)...Oltre ad alcuni brani estrapolati da "White Light/White Heat" e al racconto della loro storia ci saranno pezzi di John Zorn, Anne-Mari Kivimäki ed Endless Boogie.

LE CELEBRI RIMEMBRANZE by STILE LIBERO..Nella seconda settimana del mese di Settembre di cinquanta anni fa (nel 1967) The Velvet Underground - ovvero Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison e Maureen Tucker - registrarono le canzoni del loro secondo album, White Light/White Heat, prodotto da Tom Wilson...In occasione della sopra citata ricorrenza, questa notte andrà in onda la prima puntata di un 'rumoroso' viaggio nel tempo dedicato a "White Light/White Heat", ai Velvet Underground e a chi li ama (e sempre li amerà)...Oltre ad alcuni brani estrapolati da "White Light/White Heat" e al racconto della loro storia ci saranno pezzi di John Zorn, Anne-Mari Kivimäki ed Endless Boogie.

LE CELEBRI RIMEMBRANZE by STILE LIBERO..Nella seconda settimana del mese di Settembre di cinquanta anni fa (nel 1967) The Velvet Underground - ovvero Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison e Maureen Tucker - registrarono le canzoni del loro secondo album, White Light/White Heat, prodotto da Tom Wilson...In occasione della sopra citata ricorrenza, questa notte andrà in onda la prima puntata di un 'rumoroso' viaggio nel tempo dedicato a "White Light/White Heat", ai Velvet Underground e a chi li ama (e sempre li amerà)...Oltre ad alcuni brani estrapolati da "White Light/White Heat" e al racconto della loro storia ci saranno pezzi di John Zorn, Anne-Mari Kivimäki ed Endless Boogie.

一个关于“地下丝绒”(The Velvet Undergruond)的老笑话：当年几乎没有多少人买乐队的第一张唱片，但这些买了唱片的人在后来都组建了他们自己的乐队。而真正的妙语是“每一位朋克、后朋克和先锋流行艺术家在过去的30年中都欠下了地下丝绒乐队一笔灵感的债务，哪怕只是受到了间接的影响。”在20世纪60年代末期乐队存在的日子里，他们经常被误解、经常被谩骂，但更多的是受到冷遇。不过，“地下丝绒”还是有争议地被认为是美国1965年之后最重要的摇滚乐队，它是70年代和80年代所有白人艺术噪音音乐的源泉，并且为摇滚创作中的暴戾的吉他弹奏以及带刺的现实主义的叙事歌词创作手法定下了一个普遍的标准。 你可以随意列出一大堆受其影响的著名人物的名字：David Bowie、Brian Eno、Patti Smith以及那些全部从CBGB俱乐部毕业的70年代的朋克乐手，还有The Cars、The Pretenders、Joy Division-New Order、U2、REM、Sonic Youth等等。但是“地下丝绒”传之于世的口碑不仅仅在于什么歌迷组成了什么乐队以及谁翻唱了多少的歌曲。1965年组成的“地下丝绒”正好处于“披头士热”和普遍使用迷幻剂的年代。最初的阵容是主唱兼吉他手Lou Reed(卢・里德)，贝司手、键盘手兼中提琴手John Cale(约翰・凯尔)，主音吉他手Sterling Morrison(斯特尔・莫里森)和鼓手Maureen Tucker(莫林・塔克)。他们用自己激进的原始尖叫和流行灵歌的黑色效果的混合物打开了通往摇滚乐各个发展方向的大门。在倡导探索精神的那个摇滚年代，“地下丝绒”坚持大胆、富于攻击性的极端手段，从自由爵士、经典的先锋艺术、浪漫主义的民谣以及最主要的商业R＆B之中脱离出来，找到了属于他们自身的领域。 作为乐队的创作者，Lou Reed毫无困难地使他锋芒毕露的才能在禁忌、高价的爱和城市人的心智等方面的题材上得以展现。凭着他的对摇滚歌曲的天赋以及John Cale的实验性才能，他们演绎了许多惊世骇俗的作品。

一个关于“地下丝绒”(The Velvet Undergruond)的老笑话：当年几乎没有多少人买乐队的第一张唱片，但这些买了唱片的人在后来都组建了他们自己的乐队。而真正的妙语是“每一位朋克、后朋克和先锋流行艺术家在过去的30年中都欠下了地下丝绒乐队一笔灵感的债务，哪怕只是受到了间接的影响。”在20世纪60年代末期乐队存在的日子里，他们经常被误解、经常被谩骂，但更多的是受到冷遇。不过，“地下丝绒”还是有争议地被认为是美国1965年之后最重要的摇滚乐队，它是70年代和80年代所有白人艺术噪音音乐的源泉，并且为摇滚创作中的暴戾的吉他弹奏以及带刺的现实主义的叙事歌词创作手法定下了一个普遍的标准。 你可以随意列出一大堆受其影响的著名人物的名字：David Bowie、Brian Eno、Patti Smith以及那些全部从CBGB俱乐部毕业的70年代的朋克乐手，还有The Cars、The Pretenders、Joy Division-New Order、U2、REM、Sonic Youth等等。但是“地下丝绒”传之于世的口碑不仅仅在于什么歌迷组成了什么乐队以及谁翻唱了多少的歌曲。1965年组成的“地下丝绒”正好处于“披头士热”和普遍使用迷幻剂的年代。最初的阵容是主唱兼吉他手Lou Reed(卢・里德)，贝司手、键盘手兼中提琴手John Cale(约翰・凯尔)，主音吉他手Sterling Morrison(斯特尔・莫里森)和鼓手Maureen Tucker(莫林・塔克)。他们用自己激进的原始尖叫和流行灵歌的黑色效果的混合物打开了通往摇滚乐各个发展方向的大门。在倡导探索精神的那个摇滚年代，“地下丝绒”坚持大胆、富于攻击性的极端手段，从自由爵士、经典的先锋艺术、浪漫主义的民谣以及最主要的商业R＆B之中脱离出来，找到了属于他们自身的领域。 作为乐队的创作者，Lou Reed毫无困难地使他锋芒毕露的才能在禁忌、高价的爱和城市人的心智等方面的题材上得以展现。凭着他的对摇滚歌曲的天赋以及John Cale的实验性才能，他们演绎了许多惊世骇俗的作品。

The Velvet Underground - Venus In Furs Psychedelic Sunday has been a weekly feature in my blog for just over two years, but I didn't spotlight anything from The Velvet Underground until November of 2007. What was I smokin'? Each of the eleven songs included on that album deserves a separate post! Venus In Furs is the fourth song on The Velvet Underground & Nico, a groundbreaking 1967debut album from the band. The song was written by Lou Reed with inspiration from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's book of the same name. I've never read the book, but apparently it's about kinky stuff like bondage and sadomasochism. Mistress Nat would approve. Originally recorded by band members Lou Reed, John Cale and Sterling Morrison in their NYC loft in July 1965, the song was rearranged for the album cut, and, according to rock critic David Fricke, the final version is a "stark, Olde English-style folk lament." To be sure, the tempo is rather dirge-like, and the lyrics contain masochism references (shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather; whiplash girlchild in the dark; clubs and bells, your servant, dont forsake him; strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart.) Cale's viola wails in the song and gives it that sinister flavor, and Reed plays a guitar with all of its strings tuned to the same note. There is a heartbeat-like thump of a bass drum throughout, and very simple tambourine beat keeps the pace. This is a classic "head" music for me, meant to be heard in a darkened room when I'm in just the right mood. The song remains beloved by music fans and has been covered by everyone from The Melvins to Smashing Pumpkins to Bettie Serveert. Oliver Stone used it as background music in a scene in that awful Doors movie (clip here.) Why? Well, not only 'cuz it's a cool song, but because of the Andy Warhol link. Warhol, of course, did that famous cover. As memorable and distinctive as that cover is, I still don't get the banana.