Velvet Underground - Squeeze

In 2001, Velvet Underground guitarist Doug Yule offered this explanation for the unthinkable decision to carry on the band’s moniker without Lou Reed: “Bands were- and occasionally are today-one of the few truly democratic institutions. You can’t fire someone from a band…In a band, everyone’s equal. If they’re not, it’s not a band. When band’s need to change, to lose one or two people, they break apart and reform. The majority keep the name.”

This explanation may have held some weight with the Velvet’s immediately after Reed departed; Yule and Mo Tucker continued to perform as the band (augmented with two other players) and they were arguably entitled to do so.

But after a few gigs and the glaring reality that nobody gave a shit about the Velvet Underground without Reed at the helm, the point should have been very clear to Yule that it was time to leave the convenience of his quasi-notorious moniker and seek out creative fulfillment on his own.

Squeeze is a Doug Yule solo album, plain and simple. And the argument of whether the blame of allowing the Velvet Underground name grace the cover rests on him or manager Steve Sesnick is irrelevant.

Both should have known better.

It’s painfully obvious with the cover art-which is hugely indebted to the look of Loaded-that both were intending to draw some kind of consistency with the last proper Velvets release.

Unfortunately, within moments of Squeeze’s first track, “Little Jack,” you notice that this has nothing in common with its predecessor. Spend a little more time with it and you almost get the sense that Squeeze is the only dud in the Velvet’s otherwise perfect catalog and could have caused even more damage to their legacy if it wasn’t for the fact that it never received a proper release in the band’s native country.

It’s lighthearted, breezy and completely lacking in the Velvet’s reality-caked character studies. While Reed’s subject matters often represent the wrong side of the tracks, “Little Jack” attempts to do the same by lamenting how “mother dear” left him alone to let the streets raise him. Yule even admits that Jack’s “life was lily white,” which further illustrates the divide between him and Reed’s songwriting prowess.

Musically, everything on Squeeze is incredibly pedestrian. Yule is a decent enough guitarist, but there’s barely a hint of character in his playing, and he appears to be doing double duty on bass throughout the record.

The female vocalists who pop up now and then are uncredited and the drummer is none other than Deep Purple’s Ian Paice. Paice is a remarkable drummer, but if there was ever an example of how Maureen Tucker’s primitive abilities trump his technical prowess, it is glaringly obvious on this set. His rapid-fire fills and quick precision stick out like a sore thumb, further adding to the glaringly obvious notion that Squeeze is a Velvet Underground album in name alone, and not even a worthy springboard to Doug Yule’s post-Velvet career.

Surprisingly, its quick departure from the musical landscape (after being out of print for almost 40 years, you can now get Squeeze on an unauthorized compact disc-mastered directly from vinyl-if you've got some pressing need to be ridiculed) made sure that it didn’t drag the Velvet’s name down with it. 

Meanwhile, the poor performance of Squeeze’s overall execution also ensured that Yule himself was quickly downgraded to an afterthought, never once again being offered an opportunity to relish in the critical glow that the Velvet’s originally afforded him.

Twenty Five Years After The Death Of Andy Warhol

Twenty-five years ago today Andy Warhol died.

It came as a bit of a shock. Andy always seemed more like a caricature than someone real. The stories just seemed amazing, and he always could be found in those black and white photos about town in the village voice. I’d read them in the lobby of the public radio station I worked at-they had a subscription for some reason-and then I’d check the apartment prices in the classified.

“What if?” I wondered.

But I’m too much of a chickenshit to leave Iowa and move to New York.

That, and I’ve met enough people, thank you very much.

It fascinated me that people from across the country traveled to New York City and, at any given moment could have walked right into Warhol’s factory and made their introductions.

Sounded like a good time, until that bitch Valerie Solanas messed it all up.

I liked his work.

Several years ago, I got a chance to take my son down to our city’s Czech Museum where they had a bunch of prints of Warhol’s work. I didn’t have a bunch of time to absorb all of it properly; the little shit kept running around.

Years ago, a girlfriend got me The Andy Warhol Diaries. His obsessive behavior was amazing and his notes really demonstrated a human side to him.

But by that point he had gone, so I was never really able to completely separate him from the more powerful caricature.

So for today, I’m content with those stories of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Screen Tests and the song that put it all in perspective.

Mo Tucker: Tea Party Member

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me, but in a way it does.

There is video footage of Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker at a Tea Party protest in George from last spring, providing support for the political movement.

She even provides a quote for the local news team covering the event, which sounds like the kind of quote you'd expect from a Tea Party supporter.

I also wonder if Mo hasn't lost some teeth-it looks kind of barren in there, but it is not very conclusive from the video.

What irks me-and the think that's disheartening-is how there was much to be said about Mo's financial situation among V.U. fans prior to the reunion in the 90's. For those of you who don't remember or don't care, there was plenty of discussion that Mo worked at the local Wal-Mart and how the low-paying gig did not leave her with much more than enough to pay the bills.

It was the burden of working for this infamously shrew employer that supposedly sparked the anger that is very evident on her awesome solo album I Spent A Week There The Other Night.

All of this seems slightly out of wack now that Mo has alligned herself with a group that wants the government out of our lives even after big money businesses have used D.C. Laissez-faire attitude to bring about the greatest economic collapse of our country since the Great Depression.

And Mo, remember how hard it was to get good insurance from that big box distribution center? Maybe that explains the troubling dental work.

Because of the lack of geeky indie rock nerds in the Albany, Georgia area, and because Mo now looks like a non-descript Tea Party member, bloggers like myself are just now getting hip to the fact that at least one member of America's most subversive rock and roll bands didn't buy all of the pretentious N.Y.C. liberal bullshit after the band imploded.

She probably also understands that comments like this are needed, particularly in view of the Jewish dominance of our liberal media.



Of course, none of this is more shocking than Lou Reed's love of Tai Chi and Iphone apps.

John Cale - Guts

It went like this: Lou Reed into Velvet Underground and then into John Cale. And the first John Cale album I was exposed to came from a dubbed copy of Guts that I nabbed from the former Assistant Manager at Disc Jockey Records who learned how to play the acoustic part of “Wish You Were Here” in his basement.
Not that this has anything to do with John Cale, but…you know, K-Town was kind of a fucked up place growing up and the musical tastes of others kind of reflected this fact.
I knew that Cale was in V.U. and I knew he played the unrocking instrument called a viola, so I wanted to try before I buy’d.
He may have had other Cale selections, I cannot remember, but I remember being intrigued with Guts because the cover featured him in a hockey mask, just like Jason Vorhees, playing a Flying V guitar. It was badassed and, unlike a cover of John Cale playing a viola, it looked totally rocking.
It was totally rocking: the very first line on that album, the title track “Guts,” was “The bugger in the short sleeves fucked my wife/Did it quick and split.” Cale then weaves a tale at how he blew him away “like parrot shit” before encouraging us to “kill all you want/But make sure to do it right.” Terrifying stuff, and I began to think that perhaps everyone associated with the Velvet Underground was somehow mentally deranged.
From start to finish, even with covers of “Pablo Picasso” and “Heartbreak Hotel,” Guts is impeccable. So imagine my surprise that when I eventually got around to buying a real copy for me that 1.) the fucking thing was out of print and 2.) the fucking thing was a compilation album.
Apparently, Island records let their John Cale catalog fall out of print almost immediately after the initial pressings ran out. Then, Cale got a little bit of notoriety for donning a goalie mask and killing a chicken on stage, which caused Island to think “That kind of press is sure to sell records!”
Hence the release of Guts.
So I have tried to locate Guts and, because it was a chicken-killing marketing compilation, I’m having trouble finding it. And since John Cale hasn’t killed any poultry for nearly thirty years, it’s no longer in print. The other reason I’m having trouble finding it is because the rise of cds brought the retarded idea that you had to fill every nook and cranny with shit. So that means the 40 minute long Guts has been replaced with the 140-minute long compilation called The Island Years which has itself probably been replaced with John Cale’s Greatest Hits and Now That’s What I Call John Cale’s Music.
Actually, 140 minutes worth of John Cale probably isn’t the worst thing in the world, but my point is: Why fuck with a good thing, particularly when Guts is a great thing. Start to finish, it wonderfully captures Cale’s productive mid-70’s period where he was consistently delivering better albums than his more notable V.U. nemesis.
Part of the reason is because Cale seemed to embrace the harder elements of the young punks, using their amplified power to cut through all the melodramatic bullshit of art rock. For the record, I like Cale’s melodramatic art rock stuff too, but I also like it when he just straight-out rocks like a nutter, advising us that we can “feel safe like Sharon Tate” (“Leaving It Up To You”). Guts is a near-perfect collection of his heavier moments that all subsequent Cale compilations have a tough time matching in terms of power, consistency, and overall enjoyment.