THE BOSTON SOUND

Wayne McGuire

Crawdaddy, #17

ONE MUST MARVEL AT THE PRESUMPTION OF THE DOORS: BREAK ON Through to the Other Side? Hardly, they are firmly ensconced over here. For to break on through to the other side is a difficult thing to be sure. Probably the only rock group to ever make it through is the Velvet Underground, sons of metallic Burroughs and leather Genet, on “Sister Ray” from White Light/White Heat (Verve V6-5046). For to break on through to the other side one must squeeze through that tiny pin hole which connects this dimension of human energies with the jet stream of superhuman energies. Of course, a few American musicians have broken through to that ionosphere, most notably John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders on Meditations. But whereas Coltrane and his disciples are the culmination of New Black Music, the Velvet Underground are prophets of a new age, of breakthrough on an electronic intermedia: total scale. But enough of this pseudo-review style for:

NOW IS THE TIME FOR DISTORTIONS TO BURN. I have, with a heavy heart, silently watched while spiritual dwarves mutilated all that was sacred. But now my resignation has ended and with flaming sword in hand I will clear away those ugly growths which parade as insightful musical criticism.

Probably the most blatant injustice perpetrated by the media on the contemporary music scene has been the virtual black-out on coverage of the Velvet Underground. There have been a few timid stabs at descriptive praise in Crawdaddy, Vibrations and Jazz & Pop, but on the whole reviewers, when confronted with a phenomenon which doesn’t conform to any easy slot of reference, choose to turn out reams of material on synthetic groups which have gained mass acceptance. So the Velvet Underground, which is musically and mentally at least two years ahead of its time, goes unrecognized while the Doors, a group which artificially pretends to the chaotic nonentity of which the Velvet Underground are masters, receive torrents of publicity. But eventually, as always, the truth must out and in time the artificial husk will disintegrate and drop away revealing the Velvet Underground firmly at center where they’ve been all along.

This is a review of the Velvet Underground, this is a review of the end of the world, this is a review of the Antichrist and Christ, this is a review of Life and Death, this is a review of tomorrow and of ever and ever. But first you must come up/down/into here where the airs so heavy/thin but oh so intoxicating. Or as C. S. Lewis once described an important facet of Burroughsian feedback in That Hideous Strength:

Suddenly, like a thing that leaped to him across infinite distances with the speed of light, desire (salt, black, ravenous, unanswerable desire) took him by the throat. The merest hint will convey to those who have felt it the quality of the emotion which now shook him, like a dog shaking a rat; for others, no description will perhaps avail. Many writers speak of it in terms of lust: a description admirably illuminating from within, totally misleading from without. It has nothing to do with the body. But it is in two respects like lust as lust shows itself to be in the deepest and darkest vault of its labyrinthine house. For like lust, it disenchants the whole universe. Everything else that Mark had ever felt—love, hunger, ambition, lust itself—appeared to have been mere milk and water, toys for children, not worth one throb of the nerves. The infinite attraction of this dark thing sucked all other passions into itself: the rest of the world appeared blenched, etiolated, insipid, a world of white marriages and white masses. . . . These creatures of which Frost had spoken—and he did not doubt that they were locally present with him in the cell—breathed death on the human race and on all joy. Not despite this but because of this, the terrible gravitation sucked and tugged and fascinated him towards them. Never before had he known the fruitful strength of the movement opposite to Nature which now had him in its grip; the impulse to reverse all reluctances and to draw every circle anti-clockwise. The meaning of certain pictures, of Frost’s talk about “objectivity,” of the things done by witches in old times, became clear to him. The image of Wither’s face rose to his memory: and this time he did not merely loathe it. He noted, with shuddering satisfaction, the signs it bore of a shared experience between them. Wither also knew. Wither understood.

Warhol also knew. Warhol understood. . . . Yet surely this must be an oversimplification, no? After all, C. S. Lewis was merely an apologist for a dying Christianity, no?

But why was Bob Zimmerman scared shitless of Warhol? Why did Zimmerman fear that Warhol wanted to destroy him? It wasn’t merely a case of country boy meets the big city. ’Cause something’s happening, Bob, and . . . ? But enough of this petty sneering criticism. It would be better to ask why has Bob Zimmerman turned moralist, perhaps even Christian fundamentalist, on John Wesley Harding? Do you remember before the accident when his lyrics were becoming increasingly schizophrenic, when he cried out in horror that he thought he might be becoming “evil”? And the accident itself must have presented an exceedingly intense vision of non-being. So then came Christian conversion? I doubt it. For in case you haven’t heard there is a fantastic war now being waged and our greatest human spirits are either standing or falling in battle. Most of you out there are still engaged in your petty pursuits unaware that the roof is about to cave in but wait, I hear a message from the battlefield: “BULLETIN . . . BULLETIN . . . BULLETIN . . . I—uh—would like to—uh—report a case of circuit overload and—um—many cases—uh—of creeping mindless idiotism . . . signed A. Warhol.”

Yes, so Bob Zimmerman decided to withdraw from the heat of battle for awhile (too much of nothing), it was getting pretty nightmarish there, and when a Life reviewer asserts that Dylan has pulled the plug out on modern music one must reply wha? For Dylan is no longer at the vital core and has abdicated his right to significant action or dialogue. He has come full swing from humanism (the protest songs) to “nihilism” (the schizophrenic surrealistic songs) back to humanism (the songs with a moral), a more sophisticated humanism than before, but humanism none-the-less. In the arts today, Tolkien alone has the Christian perspective honestly, lucidly and poetically wrapped up.

I have before me the February Crawdaddy with a pretentious review by Paul Williams on the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and the Jefferson Airplane. The review is a bubble which begs to be pricked, but why bother. I remember you guys from high school, remember? I tried to play Coltrane’s “Impressions” for you, a heavy piece of music engaged in significant dialogue created by a noble spirit who was risking all on the battlefield but you were too busy listening to the Beatles and the Stones and into adolescent masturbation (I can’t get no satisfaction; you call this slop a rebellion?), and now you’ve learned some musical terms and have taken some speed for insight and are busy fueling the Beatles-Airplane-Doors syndrome or are into ever-so-tired black blues riffs via Cream, Butterfield, Bloomfield, Canned Heat or Traffic. Christ, don’t you realize that you are engaged in creating and perpetuating New American Muzak? For instance, Charles Lloyd is New American Muzak (may God grant Frank Kofsky patience who has seen Pharoah Sanders verge on transformation into pure spiritual energy). But the time is coming when you’ll be forced to discard your illusions for as the Buddha once moaned in the throes of a Dionysian ecstasy: “Intermedia will be the spiritual microcosm of the world, the tool of a spiritual and political revolution in the West, a manifestation of man’s next evolutionary leap in consciousness.” Which in translation means: “Ah, to be a media freak plugged into the collective unconscious of the country and ride the electric tidal wave of human history.” Which further translated simply means: “Intermedia will be the collective consciousness of the Aquarian Age.”

But I digress. Put quite simply, the Velvet Underground is the most vital and significant group in the world today. They are at the fiery center of the twentieth century dilemma, as was Nietzsche. For Nietzsche foresaw that moment in the future when the spiritual citadels of the Judaeo-Christian West would crumble silently to dust. And at that moment our poor human souls will be rent with a pain greater than the heat of a hundred hydrogen bombs. Of course some have anticipated this pain. (For instance, Johnny Jones described to me this dream: It is 1982. John Lennon, master of the Western world, is sitting in the control booth while the yellow barbarians attack the walled western citadel. Lennon, seemingly in control of the situation because of his dynamism and mastery of technology, pokes at some of the myriad of buttons which face him on the control panel causing powerful psychedelic tranquilizers to be shot at the enemy. But still the barbarians charge. Beads of sweat break out on Lennon’s brow. He pushes more buttons sending superpowered thought control image barrages at the enemy. But still the barbarians charge and with an inhuman intensity smash through the tired walls. A horrendous shriek pierces the deaf skies as Western Man has his eyeballs gashed out and his body cut up in a slow tortuous death. But goodness, I wouldn’t want to invoke the yellow peril threat!) Nietzsche himself fell in battle without compromise as did Van Gogh, Rimbaud, Artaud and maybe Joyce and Beckett. (In our own time those two oracles, Burroughs and Warhol, are still standing. And, of course, Mel.) Many turn to the East but those with integrity know the dilemma facing them to be dimensionally greater than that solution (it being no accident that Hesse wrote Steppenwolf after Siddhartha). Others explore their Western roots for surcease and again the passionately honest know the roots to be severed and the apparent solution irrelevant to the dilemma (since the Renaissance and Enlightenment were a cashing-in of the assets of our Medieval legacy and now there’s nothing left, we’re bankrupt). Put in a nutshell, the real question is: how can we control and humanize an increasingly uncontrollable and proliferating technology, an over-poweringly dehumanizing technology, when the value foundation for that attempted humanization is rapidly disintegrating and when the attempt by humans to control such power (who would be the master programmer?) would most certainly be corrupting in the extreme? And if you don’t have a solid answer to that question you might as well shut up. Of course, if you’re a child of the post-nihilistic era, a part of the emerging crystalline-like growth of humanity, in short, a Crystal Person, faceless and rootless, the question will not have presented itself to your mind, it will appear meaningless. But your ionic solution is now being prepared and when the master seed is dropped you will become the first unwitting victims. Planet Earth, which quakes and trembles, is bathed in a strange light, a demon light electric. All creation groans and strains towards its next evolutionary growth. Or as Confucius recently muttered: “Within the next ten years will be sought and found within Intermedia the Cosmic Haiku, the Apocalyptic Orgasm, which will reverberate throughout planet earth and trigger group mental telepathy.” And all this time you probably thought the Velvet Underground was talking about drugs, homosexuality and sadomasochism. Look a bit closer.

But you are probably too occupied delving into the subtleties of Sgt. Pepper due to an astigmatism of the mind, a lack of perspective. It is true that the Beatles feel vibrations from the fiery center, but they are weak vibrations manifested in an elegant cynicism seeking escape in a watered down Eastern mysticism. Musically, this piddling spiritual odyssey has resulted in a bag of pretty musical tricks produced primarily by George Martin drawing on superficial characteristics of electronic and Indian music. Jonas Mekas’ criticism of USCO, the New York–based mixed media cooperative, is quite applicable to the Beatles:

The USCO show . . . is a search for religious, mystical experience. Whereas in the case of the Plastic Inevitables (the Velvet Underground) the desire for the mystical experience is unconscious, the USCO is going after it in a more conscious way. They have arrived somewhere, and gained a certain peace, certain insights, and now they are beginning to meditate. Nevertheless, often I get the impression that the mystical meditative mood of many of my friends that I meet in psychedelic circles is really not the beginning of the new age or cosmic consciousness, but the sunset peace of the Age of the Fish, of the Christian era—the sunset meditation. At the Plastic Inevitables, however, the dance floor and the stage are charged with the electricity of a dramatic break just before the dawn. If at USCO’s show I feel surrounded by the tradition, by the past, by the remnants of the oriental religions—at the Plastic Inevitables it is all Here and Now and the Future.

Spiritually the Velvet Underground’s only equivalent is Mel Lyman. It is interesting to note the similar reactions both forces produce in people: uncomprehending indifference, vaguely comprehending hostility and comprehending submission. The first group doesn’t have the barest inkling of what’s happening since they’re dead to the world; the second group feel their small ego base threatened (like the character after the last V.U. performance who, his face distraught and angry, spit out: “They stink!” in much the same way Mel receives letters from pipsqueaks telling him how he’s screwed up); the third group understand that the V.U. and Mel are merely vessels through which greater forces are working and they listen attentively.

But what I really want to talk about is the Velvet Underground’s music. Essential to that music is drone. Not the pencil-thick drone of Indian music which emanates from spirits and nervous systems which think they’ve found it and probably have within their limited structure of things, but a drone which is as broad as a house, a drone which is produced by New World Citizen nervous systems plunging into the Cosmic Whirl. The drone has two levels, high-pitched and low-pitched (corresponding to the drones of the central nervous and the circulatory systems), which are produced by two very heavy nervous systems belonging to Lou Reed and John Cale respectively. The drone is not always heard but rather felt as pure essence and perpetual presence.

The constant feedback is produced by those nervous systems and projected through the amps which have been made perfect human extensions; it is organic and comes from the inner recesses of their souls; and their souls are connected to mother earth, their energy is generated from the core of planet earth up through their feet to their heads through their hands and amps to create a wall of sound which is a beautifully intricate and richly textured abstract-expressionist motion picture. The feedback at peak moments is a suspended mystical ecstasy in which spirit is transformed into a negative mirror of itself, in which streams of energy travel into and out of spirit simultaneously at the speed of light. The only other musician to approach such a profound conception of feedback was Jimi Hendrix on Are You Experienced? But, as can be heard on Axis: Bold as Love, he didn’t have enough energy to maintain that powerful conception; and by concentration on such superficial musical aspects as melody and harmonic progression has degenerated to the level of a second-rate jazz musician a la Roland Kirk or Yusef Lateef.

And in case you haven’t heard, the new music isn’t about notes and pretty structures. It’s about spirit, energy, presence and nervous systems. Why is John Cale the heaviest bass player in the country today? Because his nervous system is an aristocrat among nervous systems, because of the deep dark electricity he is able to convey through his bass and viola. And why is Maureen Tucker the perfect drummer for the V.U.? Because of her spirituality and nervous system. No other drummer in the world could play the archetypal 1234 with such perfection, with a weight that verges on religious ritual (not necessarily a Black Mass). And it is that ritualistic quality which is a mainstay of the Underground’s powerful stylistic unity, a stylistic element which is immediately recognizable from the initial bar as the driving pulse of a machine-like organism (just listen to one bar of “The Gift”). In essence, she’s playing Elvin Jones to Lou Reed’s Coltrane or Sonny Murray to Reed’s Albert Ayler.

It is no accident that the Velvet Underground was an organic element in Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable. The now defunct Inevitable remains as the strongest and most developed example of intermedia art. Although productions such as Al Rubin’s Third World Raspberry have since achieved greater technical dexterity on a visual plane, no one has yet managed to communicate a guiding spirit through the complex form as well as Warhol and the Underground. Again Mekas: “The Inevitable remains the most dramatic expression of the contemporary generation—the place where its needs and desperations are most dramatically split open.”

That the Velvet Underground is now the only true intermedia group in the country has been brought out clearly by their appearances at the Boston Tea Party. While all other groups (i.e. Country Joe and the Fish at the Tea Party, the Doors at the Crosstown Bus, the Grateful Dead at the Psychedelic Supermarket, etc.) do their music thing while the “light show” (what an inane phrase) does its thing and never the twain shall meet, the V.U. brings about an organic fusion of image, light and sound. They bring about this fusion by (1) their high energy level, (2) their intense conscious awareness of image and light: “I’ve got my eyes wide open” attempts to gobble up the light/image flow organism through peripheral vision, (3) their sophisticated use of film projections (for instance, one night while playing “Venus in Furs,” Lou Reed focused his vision on a film of his face rhythmically zooming in and out, thus establishing a spiraling feedback connection through himself, the music and light/image flow).

In the beginning I said in so many words that “Sister Ray” made a breakthrough in the gray room. The piece stands as the supreme accomplishment of the rock revolution and a reproach to the musically inorganic patchworks of Sgt. Pepper (an underlying motif does not make an album musically organic), Their Satanic Majesties Request and even the Mothers’ (bless their hearts) We’re Only in It for the Money. I know of only five recorded tracks of contemporary American music to match it: “India” and “Impressions” from Impressions by John Coltrane, “Bells” from Bells by Albert Ayler, “D Trad, That’s What” from Live at the Cafe Montmartre by Cecil Taylor, and “The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost” from Meditations by Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders (along with hundreds of aborted attempts, Love’s “Revelation” being one gross miscarriage among many). “Sister Ray” is much like “Impressions” in that it is a sustained exercise in emotional stamina and modal in the deepest sense: mode as spiritual motif, mode as infinite musical universe. As for organic unity—although the piece shifts gears at least 12 times during the 17 minutes, you will be hard pressed to find any clearly demarcated transition points, each section flows and blends so beautifully into the next.

Devote special attention to Lou Reed’s verbal techniques on this track. He molds and bends and stretches and diffracts words and phrases to create effectively complex rhythmic cross-currents in a manner unprecedented in rock. Also notice how Sterling Morrison perfectly performs his usual function by filling in the middle ground between Lou and John Cale.

“Sister Ray” surpasses “Impressions” in its profound textural structure, which is provided by the organ work of John Cale. Cale’s architectural conception is remarkably subtle and broad—it is reminiscent of Cecil Taylor’s orchestral approach on piano but more effective because of its electronic austerity (fusion and transcendence of Taylor and Stockhausen). Cale is in fact building an awesome granite castle of tonal clusters around Lou, Sterling and Maureen—such an amazing place to live in. And the tidal wave organ drones which inundate the last sections of the piece beginning with the air raid drum explosion— this is the jet stream of superhuman energies, this is the discovered dimension after breakthrough. And remember, “Sister Ray” is not about shooting meth, fellatio or murder. Rather, it is describing the greatest cosmic upheaval in the history of man and you are living in the midst of it. (And I’m not referring to those minor disturbances, the Vietnam War and the racial crisis, inconsequential in the Aquarian Age which will witness the quiet disappearance of all political systems, including communism and capitalist democracy, and its replacement by a universal electronic theocracy.)

“I Heard Her Call My Name” is also a remarkable track simply because it contains the most advanced lead guitar work I think you’re going to be able to hear for at least a year or two. I’m talking about Lou Reed’s excitingly unpredictable but precisely deliberate phrasing and the tense taut line he walks breathtakingly verging on diffraction of tonality. Compare it to the relative blandness of Hendrix’s or Clapton’s lines and I think you’ll see what I mean. This track also contains one of the most pregnant and highly charged moments I’ve ever heard in music: a split-second pause of silence after the second “my mind’s split open” foreshadowing the following feedback explosion.

The track “White Light/White Heat” best illustrates my earlier contention that John Cale is the heaviest bass player in the country today. While listening to the track on a portable stereo phonograph with the speakers held to each side of the head, notice how profoundly deep and resonant each bass note feels. Most bass players play two-dimensional notes, but John plays three-dimensional granite slabs (it’s a question of intonation and density, not volume; it’s like the difference between Rauschenberg’s two-dimensional Coke bottles and Warhol’s three-dimensional Campbell soup cans) which reveal an absolute mastery of his instruments and a penetrating awareness of the most minute details of his music. His body and mind are in perfect tune to the bass range which accounts for his ability to project a bass drone even when playing a simple bass line (a sensibility which was perhaps developed during his stay with LaMonte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music). I pointed out this particular quality to LeRoi Jones and he remarked: “So deep, so satisfying. Especially the way it goes thud thud.”

Under closer scrutiny, the apparent simplicity of the bass line takes on subtle dimensions. For instance, notice during sections of “White Light/White Heat” how John just barely holds back the beat, subtly altering the rhythmic infrastructure to create a weird tension. This same razor-sharp sensibility was also apparent in the opening of “European Son” on the first album. Notice there how Lou, when entering after John’s solo bass opening, slightly but so meaningfully tightens the rhythmic infrastructure.

As for the rest of the album, I’ll let you get into it yourself. Forget about hearing it on the radio because even most underground jocks have their heads up their asses. So buy a copy. In a few years it will be recognized as a landmark in the growth of the universal music which is now emerging. But more importantly, hear the V.U. in person. It is absolutely necessary, if you are going to get their complete message, to feel the full visceral impact. And you don’t have to worry about getting a watered-down version from the album because the V.U. finds it unnecessary to rely on studio gimmickry.

As I read back I realize now that I’ve told you only 50% of the story. For the Velvet Underground possesses more than electronic mastery of that hideous strength and “Sister Ray” (which has been described as “Cakewalk for Frankensteinian Metal Monster”) reveals only a part of their nature. They are also creators of a folk music in the deepest sense. Particularly in his latest pieces which are as yet unrecorded (“I’m Waiting for the Man” and “Heroin” have already achieved a certain status as folk classics), Lou Reed is fast becoming an incisive lyricist, creating a folk mythology of New York City and our generation which rings deep and true through the pap of fumbling unfocused artificial surrealistic imagery and facile pseudomystical-morality lessons produced by most new groups. They are lyrics which breathe of real life, not empty conjecture, and reveal a very human and loving side, an almost Wagnerian sentimentality (in spite of the crude remark made by one wiseacre regarding John Cale’s beautifully mournful viola work on “The Story of My Life”: “Even the unjustly persecuted and seemingly insensitive mighty Hulk has feelings, can shed an occasional tear”). The V.U. may well inherit the throne vacated by Dylan as the primary myth-makers of our generation. But that is a subject for a book which no doubt someone will write this summer.

There has been much nonsense spoken and written recently about the existence or nonexistence and nature of a Boston Sound. It should be quite clear by now that the Boston Sound is the Velvet Underground and Mel Lyman. It is irrelevant that the Velvet Underground first received significant exposure in their home city New York with Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable. It was in Boston, through record sales and Boston Tea Party performances, that they began to find some acceptance and meaningful response (like getting their equipment stolen). It is irrelevant that Mel Lyman’s present instrument is Avatar and film, not music. What is relevant is that these two voices best express the character and spirit of the forces at work in Boston, home of the first American Revolution. It is a character and spirit which in the near future will make Boston the center of the second American Revolution, a revolution of the spirit. It is a spirit which reveals its sturdy health and moral purity by rejecting, in the name of truth, false resolutions: the Christian cop-out, the Eastern cop-out, the African cop-out and the Humanist cop-out. The powerful energies which first emerged on the West Coast are finding their focus and direction here. Like Mel Lyman, the Velvet Underground have made their “Declaration of Creation” and translated it into sound:

I am going to burn down the world
I am going to tear down everything that cannot stand alone
I am going to turn ideals to shit
I am going to shove hope up your ass
I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble
and then I am going to burn the rubble
and then I am going to scatter the ashes
and then maybe SOMEONE will be able to see
SOMETHING as it really is
WATCH OUT