Crawdaddy, #16
SINCE ANDY WARHOL HAS NOT BEEN ENTIRELY UNRELATED TO THE LIFE AND times of the Velvet Underground (Didn’t they play as the “house” band for both the fabulous “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” and “his” discotheque the Gymnasium? Wasn’t he said to have produced their first “Banana” album? And didn’t he do the cover on that Banana album as well as the cover concept on their new one, White Light/White Heat Verve V/V6-5046?), isn’t it very nice that his reflection on the efficacy of the plethora principle, “When you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really have any effect,” should go so far toward explaining the albeit-not-hilarious but certainly authentic humor of the newest album from the Velvets?
First of all, this humor is related to the scary. From start to finish there is generated this fantastic specter of doom which consistently and absolutely taints all things. (Traditionally speaking, colleges could certainly treat the Velvet Underground as Black Humorists, couldn’t they?) (This could be Lou Reed’s big move to recapture the leather championship from Morrison and return it to New York.) For example, side one has: “White Light/White Heat,” a doper song rendered nontraditional by these facts: (a) It’s about speed! (b) It features the first subordination of the fabulous c/w riff within a dope context. “The Gift,” an 8:14 (spoken) short story about unrequited love as it leads to unintentional murder (manslaughter). “Lady Godiva’s Operation” sports a truly self-explanatory title. And, “There She Comes Now,” a beautiful little love ballad (I mean it. I mean it.) which all those who saw Nico and Jackson Browne at the Dom some 1.3 years ago will doubtless find familiar. As for the flip, it features “Sister Ray,” which lasts 17:00 with this line “I’m searching for my mainline” repeated often enough to become indelible. (The Velvet Underground is published by “Three Prong Music.”) In mood this LP’s most reminiscent of that last (“shoot ’em up”) section of Naked Lunch wherein Bill Burroughs actually portrays himself (the arch-doper) shooting some narco cop. That’s how pretentiously humorous it is. Now this pretentious scene makes its appearance beyond such more-or-less conventional ploys as “The Gift,” wherein John Cale’s queasy-cultured voice (efficiently dripping the most unimaginable kinds of oil) matter-of-factly divulges its gruesome tale in a way which really taints such details as, “Sheila Klein, her very, very best friend,” “Oh, God, it’s absolutely maudlin outside,” “A bottle of pink and blue vitamins,” “The Clarence Darrow Post Office,” “That schmuck, said Sheila,” and among the best, “She would date occasionally. But merely as amusement.” (Such details are presented against a constant background of modernized Bo Diddley–style repetition.) (Counterpoint.) Beyond even the implicitly derisive Wart-Hoglike background grunts that the Velvets make on both “The Gift” and “Lady Godiva’s Operation.” That is, they move in such a really complex universe of pretension as to go beyond even those who give away “their pretensions through minor-but-telling lapses in detail” (see for example, Morrison’s quizzical second of three “now”s on “When the Music’s Over”), because the Velvet’s big giveaway, the funny part, comes through their seeming absolute dedication. An unrelieved preoccupation with doom makes for an overexposure blatant enough to render doom its very own negation, harkening us right back to Warhol’s remarks on the plethora principle and implicating such self-consciousness on their part that we gotta assume they’re absolutely distant from what they perform with such dedication: I mean we can question their sincerity. And this question is always there. Always nagging at everything they do. Their cynicism’s really so efficient, ’cause all they have to do to be funny is be serious. And with humorous techniques themselves always suffering from overexposure maybe that’s the only way. Much of this album’s just as funny as Love’s “Revelation.” And that’s a classic.
As for some questions, it’s perhaps best to open noting the rumor that Maureen, the Velvet’s drummer, used to practice listening to Bo Diddley records when she arrived home from work. And on this record she certainly does groove. Right up there with such strong two-fisters as Buddy Miles (Electric Flag), Tim (Steve Miller) and David Getz (Big Brother). Think of Bo Diddley’s “Mona” (done by both the Nashville Teens and the Stones). And you’ll realize how far she’s into repetition. And so’s the whole band. Each of the six songs on the album is generated out of its own virtually immutable bass/drum pattern. Repeated over and over. Not even cycled. All sounding mechanistic enough to be mistaken for electronics. “White Light/White Heat” especially. It fails to be boring ’cause it’s got that fascination potential inherent in all mechanically perfect execution (hypnosis). It’s a very technological sound. Laden with some more-or-less up-to-date technological blues readymades. The whole album is reminiscent of the Cream/Yardbirds art-rock riff. (And “Sister Ray” is particularly reminiscent of the taut-string readymade offa the Yardbirds’ “I’m a Man.”) One of the big moves the Velvets make here is to demonstrate that their repetition scene might be the only choice spot for such as the Cream’s fuzz-modules. Which the Cream, misguided, used in a variation scene (Disraeli Gears). Also, the Velvet’s repetition scene makes it hard to tell whether they’re playing badly or not (hypnosis plus practice makes perfect), which was an always pressing problem for the Banana album.