#0091: The Velvet Underground & Nico []

Nico?  This Nico?  Why do I get the feeling this is gonna be a looooong 40 odd minutes?

It begins with a hangover.  Okay, Sunday Morning's lyrics don't explicitly cite nausea, headache and suicidal thoughts but it's Sunday morning, for the sake of a fuck.  The twinkly keyboard works better for me if I'm thinking about doing the walk of shame on deserted streets under a cloud of bewilderment.  

I'm Waiting For The Man is possibly the most famous Velvet Underground song.  Whether that's cuz it's their best or cuz it's about waiting for a drug dealer, I couldn't possibly say, but here it is and it's good to be reminded.  Vanessa Paradis covered this in the 90s and her version was the first I'd ever heard.  The original is dirtier, more like a scummy crackhead, tense and itchy, twitching on a street corner.  But I do prefer Paradis's.

Conversely, the original version of Femme Fatale is the one I favour over the Duran Duran cover.  What's more notable is that Nico does the vocal.  But her listless, slightly flat singing, achieved thru apathy rather than failure, is perfect for this material.  It's a crazy, mixed up world, alright.

Three tracks in and I'm feeling hopeful this could be a keeper.  But these hopes are immediately dashed by the constipated straining of Venus In Furs.  This is followed by an attempt at roadhouse blues called Run Run Run that fails on the first change.  Seeing the chance to form a trilogy of horror, Nico then dives in on vocal with All Tomorrow's Parties; a song whose travesty of an arrangement is outshone only by the breeze-block-down-a-lift-shaft vocal.

If that's not enough, I'm then treated to a 7 minute pedicure with a rusty pliers called Heroin.  Never did it myself.  Had a cup of opium tea once, tho.  It was mellow but I didn't like it.  I was bored and there was nothing I could do about that even if I wanted to.  Yet Reed extols its virtues with evangelistic nihilism.

     "'Cause when the smack begins to flow 

     And I really don't care anymore

     Ah, when that heroin is n my blood

     And that blood is in my head

     Then thank God that I'm as good as dead

     And thank your God that I'm not aware

     And thank God that I just don't care

     And I guess I just don't know

     Oh, and I guess I just don't know"

All this you'd think would go against a dull, samey acoustic strumming pattern that's not too taxing for your average smackhead.  Instead it's all clanging and shrieking violins.  Kids, beware.  Don't take drugs cuz it only leads to shitty music.

There She Goes Again is a fucking awful tune but after Heroin, it's a refreshing lift.  Nico returns on I'll Be Your Mirror and for the most part, it's pleasant but as soon as she hits a note longer than half a second[1] it just spasms out of tune like a moment of eye contact that goes on too long and gets weird.

The Black Angel's Death Song is Dylanesque with its atonal, conversational vocal but that's not being completely fair to Dylan.  His accompaniments are half decent.  The violin on this sounds like somebody has its family hostage and is playing under duress.  

The finale, European Son is almost 8 minutes of the most godawful racket.  I think the engineer must've either gone for a shit or just killed himself, leaving these completely cunted reprobates to their own devices with the tape running.  It's a fucking outrage that anyone should be allowed to make a noise like this at all, let alone have it recorded and then mass produced.  Was this track part of the Cold War?  Did the communists think they could infiltrate the West by concealing messages in this?  

Shit.  There's still a minute and a half of it left and I just want to die.  This is absolutely unbearable.  Fuck.  Ing.  HELL!  Who _are_ these _cunts_?  I would rather have the hairs individually tweezed from the between the cheeks of my arse than hear this.  I was gonna give it two stars for the good tracks but I don't wanna run the risk of someone else hearing the rest.  No, giving this a rating would be like leaving broken glass on the playground floor.

[1] - you can't use technical terms like quaver or crotchet to describe actual duration, obviously.