272. The Velvet Underground, "White Light/White Heat"

 


This noise bomb was dropped on an unsuspecting world in January 1968, and that world universally said "what the fuck" and ignored it.  Now, of course, it is rightly regarded as a seminal, wildly influential record.  I'm not going to repeat the famous trope about people buying Velvet Underground records and starting bands, but everyone from the Buzzcocks to the Strokes started here.

For all its reputation as an avant-garde art-rock Factory production, it's sort of surprising how conventional a lot of the songs are, at least in conception and structure.  Take the title track, the first song on the album, which, while it's about shooting speed, clearly has roots in 50's rock like Chuck Berry.  The Velvets, of course, were no Chuck Berry, and they take that rock 'n roll template and add fuzz and dirt and a weirdo extended bass solo at the end.  "I Heard Her Call My Name" has these nice harmony backing vocals but the rest of the song is noise and wail shoved into a blender and then laid over a driving beat.  Even "Sister Ray," a 17-minute extended jam about oral sex, shooting up, and god knows what else, is built on what's almost a blues base.

Some of this shit is super dark, but who knows if that was real or just trying to shock the squares.  "The Gift" is just a long jam in the background while John Cale reads a short story Lou Reed wrote in college about a lovelorn kid who mails himself to his lover who, in an attempt to open the box, stabs him through the head.  (At Frank Zappa's suggestion, it includes the Foley effect of a knife stabbing a cantaloupe.)  "Lady Godiva's Operation" is an incredibly disturbing song about a sweet, sexually promiscuous character being subjected to a nightmarish surgical procedure.  Reed's interjected deadpan vocals heighten the discomfort.

Let's get back to "Sister Ray" for a second, though, because it's the album closer and the wildest song on the album.  Now, you know how I feel about lengthy jams, but this is one I'll gladly listen to and I'm not even sure why.  The jam just feels like it's just as important to the song as any other part, I guess.  The whole album feels like an extended slow-motion freakout and I guess it feels of a piece with that.

This album was recorded in two days in New York City on God knows what combination of substances.  It's a mindfuck and will not change anyone's opinion that VU was one of the greatest bands in the history of rock.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Oh fuck of course.

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