I didn’t buy any Velvet Underground records.\u00c2\u00a0 That didn’t mean I didn’t SEE any Velvet Underground records or HEAR any Velvet Underground records, just that I didn’t BUY any!\u00c2\u00a0 Who wouldn’t be fascinated by the peelable banana on the cover of the debut album?\u00c2\u00a0 And someone played me "The Gift"…I remember hearing it and wondering if this was a joke, like the Fugs’ "Boobs-a Lot", or whether I should take this production seriously…<\/p>\n
Then I bought Lou Reed’s solo debut.\u00c2\u00a0 You know how you reach a breaking point, you’re aware of an act so long that when you read a good review of their new album you rush out and buy it?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how I was with Peter Gabriel, I owned no Genesis when I bought his first solo record and I owned no Velvet Underground when I bought Lou Reed’s first album.\u00c2\u00a0 With "Ocean".<\/p>\n
That’s my favorite track on the record.\u00c2\u00a0 I liked the opener, "I Can’t Stand It", but the haunting final track was everything music should be, personal, majestic and otherworldly.<\/p>\n
I bought every album thereafter.<\/p>\n
"Transformer" was produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson, and it had the hit, but it wasn’t as great as the first record.\u00c2\u00a0 I seem to be one of the only people who liked "Berlin" upon its release.\u00c2\u00a0 Then came "Rock n Roll Animal".<\/p>\n
My favorite live album is Tesla’s "Five Man Acoustical Jam".\u00c2\u00a0 Shoot me if you disagree, you’ve got no heart, no soul!\u00c2\u00a0 This was before every act went unplugged, these hard rock favorites played acoustically take you on a journey through the desert, to your girlfriend’s house and back.\u00c2\u00a0 I think my second favorite live album is "Rock n Roll Animal".\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing could prepare you for the explosion that came out of the speakers when you dropped the needle.<\/p>\n
By this time, I knew a bit more about the Velvet Underground.\u00c2\u00a0 My buddy Andy played me the Doug Yule album "Squeeze" in his room adjacent to Middlebury College, before he took me out for a spin in his BMW 2800CS that he’d purchased from a Deerfield classmate.\u00c2\u00a0 I had no idea what a BMW was at the time, he floored it and I was scared shitless.<\/p>\n
And he also played another album through those Rectilinear speakers in his abode, he dropped the needle on "Loaded".<\/p>\n
Mott The Hoople had done a very good version of "Sweet Jane" on their breakthrough "All The Young Dudes", but it didn’t quite swing like the original, which felt like a walk through Greenwich Village in your engineer boots.\u00c2\u00a0 Could this be the same band from "White Light\/White Heat"?\u00c2\u00a0 The sound was all cleaned up!\u00c2\u00a0 But the following track was positively riveting, it was like that pedestrian striding downtown had entered a rehearsal hall, picked up his axe and immediately fell into a groove with his bandmates.\u00c2\u00a0 He was playing ROCK AND ROLL!\u00c2\u00a0 LITERALLY!<\/p>\n
But this studio rendition could not prepare one for the take on "Rock n Roll Animal".<\/p>\n
The album starts off like the Allman Brothers at Fillmore East, but the music is played not by southerners, but city-dwellers.\u00c2\u00a0 There are intertwining guitars, Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter are recreating the double helix, right there on stage!\u00c2\u00a0 And as you’re surfing the aural landscape, riding the magic carpet down twisting, turning waves, a chord is struck, the bass is emphasized, there’s a change, and then, after an electric flourish, they’re playing "Sweet Jane" with all the power the Velvet Underground heard in their heads but couldn’t get to come out of the speakers.\u00c2\u00a0 When Lou starts to sing, it’s positively TRIUMPHANT!<\/p>\n
That’s the opening track on the album.\u00c2\u00a0 And from there, there’s a segue into the definitive version of "Heroin", it’s my wife and it’s my life.<\/p>\n
But the second side ends with a blistering, screaming, adrenaline-fueled ten plus minute take on ROCK AND ROLL! Hey baby, ROCK AND ROLL!<\/p>\n It’s something that comes out of the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 In your bedroom, in your car, from open windows as you walk down the street.\u00c2\u00a0 It causes you to move, to shuffle, it brightens your whole damn day.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t worry about your parents, your love life, your bank account, when you’re tuned in you’re encapsulated in a bubble, you’re perfectly happy.<\/p>\n Like at a Phish show.<\/p>\n Yes, I downloaded the second night’s MP3s.\u00c2\u00a0 Because I saw in the track listing, could it be…ROCK AND ROLL?<\/p>\n Most certainly.<\/p>\n I don’t think Backstreet Boy fans know "Rock and Roll".\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t think Miley Cyrus covers it.\u00c2\u00a0 But if Taylor Swift heard it, she’d go racing to Joe Jonas, imploring him to give up his virginity.<\/p>\n Yup, that’s rock and roll.\u00c2\u00a0 All the promises go out the window.\u00c2\u00a0 You follow this sound, all the way to the Hampton Coliseum, in Nowheresville, Virginia.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t help but dance to that fine fine sound, YOUR LIFE IS SAVED BY ROCK AND ROLL!<\/p>\n This live take is informed by the definitive live version from "Rock n Roll Animal".\u00c2\u00a0 Even though it was played last night, mixed instantly, it’s got more vibrancy than all the pap made on machines and auto-tuned that comes out of the speakers of the radio stations people still listen to.\u00c2\u00a0 Radio is dead because the music it plays has lost its exuberance.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, they used to sell commercials, but they were incidental.\u00c2\u00a0 Radio was the Facebook of its day, the Twitter.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the tribal drum, there was a sense of immediacy.<\/p>\n Where do you go to get that hit today?<\/p>\n The show.<\/p>\n You pack up your alcohol and drugs, you lay down your fifty bucks, enter the building to join your brethren and when the sound comes out of the speakers and starts cascading over you in waves, YOUR LIFE IS SAVED BY ROCK AND ROLL!<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I didn’t buy any Velvet Underground records.\u00c2\u00a0 That didn’t mean I didn’t SEE any Velvet Underground records or HEAR any Velvet Underground records, just that I didn’t BUY any!\u00c2\u00a0 Who wouldn’t be fascinated by the peelable banana on the cover of the debut album?\u00c2\u00a0 And someone played me "The Gift"…I remember hearing it and wondering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-sn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1762,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
One fine morning she puts on a New York station<\/span>
And she couldn’t believe what she heard at all<\/span>
She started shakin’ to that fine fine fine fine\u00c2\u00a0 music<\/span>
Whew, her life was saved by rock and roll<\/span>
Hey baby, rock and roll<\/span><\/p>\n