Possibly My Favourite Cover Ever

One of my favourite songs covered by one of my favourite voices. A match made in heaven.

Lone Justice - Sweet Jane

Record Store Day pt2

Well, that was quite an enjoyable morning.

Max was none to pleased when I got him up at the back of seven this morning for our trip into Glasgow but once he was up he was his usual self, a sullen teenager six years too early, on the way in I had to promise that if there was anything by AC/DC I would have to buy him it.

We got to Glasgow and parked in the Kings Street car park across from MONO at 08:15 and could see that quite an orderly queue had already formed and there were about thirty people in front of us when we joined. Then the mental calculations started if there were 500 copies of such and such and there were 150 stores taking part then how many copies of the Cults single did MONO get and how many of the people in front of me look like they are here to buy that single? I have to admit that Max did his best to distract me from such thoughts by asking "how long now?" every couple of minutes and to inform me that "Gran (my mother) thinks that you need to grow up and stop going to all these concerts and buying records" I would like to say that on hearing this I was shocked but on the contrary as he said it I could hear my mother saying it.

At 9:00 am on the dot the doors opened and the agonising ten minutes of watching people coming out smiling and trying to peer through their bags and find out what they had bought, before it was my turn at the counter,  began. My wants list was actually quite restrained this year with only two must gets on my list the afore mentioned Cults single and the ARP Pastoral Symphony remix 12".  That was until I saw the list on the wall in Monorail, there near the end was a single that caught my eye, The Velvet Underground Foggy Notion/I Can't Stand It, where did this come from? It was not on any of the lists I had seen. In the second or two that it took me to absorb this information my priorities had changed and this was the essential purchase of the day as these are two of my favourite VU tracks and last night I had included I Can't Stand It on my compilation cd.

After what seemed an eternity but in fact would have been less than ten minutes from the doors opening I got to the counter.

In as nonchalant a voice as I could muster I said " Have you got any copies of the Velvet Underground single left?"

" Yes" was the reply.

I nearly screamed like I would have if Andy Smith had scored the winning goal in the 1995 Scottish Cup Final but instead retorted "I'll have that then and also the Cults seven inch?"

I then went on to get a few other things, The Warpaint and Red Crayola sevens, The Hangover Lounge 10" which was a rash heat of the moment tihng which I am regretting now as it is a bit, well twee for me, the ARP 12" and of course Shoot To Thrill by AC/DC because as Max rightly pointed out " a deal's a deal, dad".

I have to say that I think that some of the stuff was a bit over priced,  eighteen quid for a 10" of The Queen Is Dead, the same for The Vaccines bootleg but maybe that's just me.

So then it was over the road to RubaDub to purchase a new stylus and the buy of the day as it turned out,  not a Record Store Day exclusive but the latest installment of Jeff Mills Something In The Sky series, pt 7 an absolute belter of a record.

All in all not a bad day out but I am well and truly skint now.

The Velvet Underground - I Can't Stand It 

Lisa Says

Here is probably my favourite Velvet Underground track. I'm not sure why, I love the lazy almost plodding tempo of the track it sort of gets under my skin. Lou Reed later re-recorded the track along with a few other Velvets songs for his first solo album but that version loses all the subtlety and  is vastly inferior to this one.

I have a feeling that Michael and  Margo Timmings had listened to this track a few times before they covered Sweet Jane on The Trinity Sessions.

The Velvet Underground - Lisa Says

Without Whom

Here are a couple of tunes from the band without whom, my record collection would be a rather sorry state of affairs. As if they had not existed then at least 80% of my favorite bands would never have been formed either.

I have often wondered how my music tastes would have evolved if I hadn't sought out the Velvet Underground. Would I now be listening to a lot more chart friendly music or god forbid ended up not that interested at all?

As I've mentioned before, when I first heard The Jesus and Mary Chain I was hooked, so much so that I eagerly sought every article I could find on the band. The group that seemed to be referenced in every piece of writing about JAMC was The Velvet Underground whether it was in relation to the music or the look, the black clothing and Ray-Bans. At this point I didn't know much about the Velvet Underground apart from Lou Reed had been in the band and also vaguely, the Andy Warhol connection.

In those pre-internet days and also before everybody's back catalogue was available on cd it was quite difficult and costly to get your hands on records by "cult" bands. I was lucky enough to have a mate who had an older brother who was into The Velvets due to being a huge Orange Juice /Postcard fan. He taped The Velvet Underground And Nico and White Light White Heat for me. I was instantly won over from the opening music box like notes of Sunday Morning to the final thrashes of Sister Ray. From then it was my mission to get all 4 studio albums on vinyl. Since then I have bought all the Velvets stuff I've come across from the necessary Live 1969 double album to the purely exploitative Live at Max's Kansas City.

Screeds have been written about the Velvet Underground over the years and I don't have anything insightful to contribute to what has already been said. The only thing that I can say is that a lot of the music that I have grown to love over the years wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the influence of Cale, Reed, Morrison and Tucker.

Both of the tunes posted here are from the 1985 released VU album which was a collection of tracks recorded between Feb 1968 and September 1969 which had apparently been lost and the tapes of which were discovered when the record label were preparing to re-release the first 3 albums.

The Velvet Underground - I Can't Stand It

The Velvet Underground - Foggy Notion