My Amazon Reviews: The Velvet Underground and Nico "The Velvet Underground and Nico"

Life on the underside
5 Out Of 5 Stars

By taking all the romantic aspects out from the musical visions others may have had concerning New York City, the Velvet Underground upended the NY Art scene by recording an album about kinky sex, mad drug use, pimps and dealers and femme fatales. Andy Warhol attached himself to the band's skewed vision and began to shepherd them, bringing singer/model Nico along. In 1967, The Velvet Underground and Nico was released, and during the Summer Of Love, nobody really got it. But as the famous quote (accredited to Brian Eno) goes, the Velvet Underground may not have sold many albums, but everyone who bought a copy formed a band.

Nowadays, the album is heralded as a seminal piece of the rock and roll puzzle, and listening to it years later will surprise you as to just how well the album has held up. The center of attentions were singer/songwriter Lou Reed and multi-instrumentalist and art-music fan John Cale. They teased and tormented conventional pop structures while still delivering hooky songs (like "Sunday Morning" or the haunting "All Tomorrow's Parties") before Cale would whip out a viola and draw his bow across some squealing noise ("Black Angel's Death Song"). There's even the fact that Nico's voice had just a mysterious quality to it that added to her allure. When she emotes on "Femme Fatale" that you're just a clown, it drawls out as "clowan."

But what attracted the bulk of the attention (and still does to this day) was the way the band cavalierly treated the dark underbelly of sex and drugs. Reed's "Venus In Furs" explicitly describes the trappings of an SM ritual with a mistress who wants you to "kiss the boots of shiny leather." The fixation of drugs in "Waiting For My Man" and the actual rush of using in "Heroin." There is the push-pull of addiction in an unromantic light that is positively brutal in its almost journalistic qualities. The Beatles were singing about a day in the life, Reed was saying "heroin be the death of me."

It's that kind of non-romantic bluntness that makes the best material on "The Velvet Underground and Nico" so compelling. While the group (it should be added that Maurene Tucker was the first great female rock drummer) rode the pulse of primitive and proto-punk music, they'd lose Nico by the next album and find their way to even more abrasive topics on "White Light White Heat." All the VU albums that featured the line up of Cale, Reed, Tucker and bassist Doug Yule are essential listening, this is the first step off a very steep cliff. Even today, it can be a difficult listen, but it is one of those kind of albums that bent the musical direction of bands to follow.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Vince Neil "Tattoos & Tequila"

Platinum Roots
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Motley Crue started life as glam-metal before morphing into hard rocking, and "Tattoos and Tequila" is front-man Vince Neil's tribute to the bands and songs that helped formulate his contributions to the band, While it's not terribly inspiring or all that original, it is in good fun and Neil acquits himself just fine. It's also a pretty interesting look into the guy's pysche; just what was he listening to while he was dreaming little rock star dreams?

Some of the choices are obvious. I'd easily guessed Scorpions and Aerosmith, and perhaps Elton John's "The B---- is Back" given Elton's omnipresence on seventies radio. A bit more interesting are Sweet ("Ac/Dc") and a selection from the first Cheap Trick album, "He's a Whore." Then you get the oddballs. I wouldn't have pegged Vince for a fan of Elvis or Creedence Clearwater Revival, but they both turn up with "Viva Las Vegas" and "Who'll Stop The Rain," respectively. And how about them Sex Pistols?

As to the performances, they are spotty. He's got a basic three piece combo backing him for the bulk of the disc, and they bludgeon their way through just about everything here. Drums are pumped to arena boom levels and the drenching of reverb over everything (especially Vince's vocals) doesn't allow the songs much room to breathe. The couple moments of subtlety ("Who'll Stop The Rain" and new song - one of two fresh cuts - "Another Bad Day") unmask the fact that Vince isn't much of a singer these days, which is why he blasts his way through most of the CD. Frankly, the CCR track is painful to listen to.

But this is Vince Neil we're dealing with here. If you were expecting "Sgt Pepper," you were gonna get snookered anyway. "Tattoos and Tequila" is Neil have a good laugh with a night of oldies at the local pub. It's also tied into a book and Vince's own brand of Tequila, so it's just one prong in a three point marketing strategy. He's not taking it all that seriously (I have a hard time listening to him trying to snarl like Johnny Rotten on "No Feelings" without imagining him cracking up), so take "Tattoos and Tequila" for what it is; a bit of a lark and a savvy piece of salesmanship. To assume more would be exaggerating your expectations.

     

My Amazon Reviews: John Grant "Pale Green Ghosts"

The Haunting of Pale Green Ghosts
5 Out Of 5 Stars

Blessed with a coffee-cream baritone and cursed by crashing relationships, "Pale Green Ghosts" finds John Grant striding an emotional chasm that keeps one foot on acerbic sarcasm and the other on a wit that turns both inward and outward. You're unlikely to hear any album more self confessional in this year. I've been listening for a couple of months and just can't shake the way Grant delivers a blow by blow account of both his break-up and the tiniest touch of optimism by the album's end.

And what an ending "Pale Green Ghosts" comes with. "Glaciers" comes to a conclusion that even with the slow motion pain driving through his life, in the aftermath of the agony will come "beautiful landscapes" and "precious metals." All of which follows recriminations about hypocrisy and theocracy. Or there's the wicked sense of humor of "GMF" (aka Greaest Mother Youknowwhat)

"Half of the time I think I'm in some movie.
I play the underdog of course.
I wonder who they'll get to play me.
Maybe they could dig up Richard Burton's corpse."

Add that the harmony is provided by perennial emotional depth charge Sinead O'Connor (who provides harmonies on three other songs) and it just adds to the bitter joke. There's also the deft confession of his HIV+ status on "Ernest Borgnine" where he wishes that 'Ernie' would call him up and offer him some life advice.

The album is carried by minimalist beats and synthed out production that accents Grant's whiplash lyricism, mainly directed at the ex in what must have been one of the all-time worst breakups in history. "You got a black belt in BS" he accuses over what could almost be a danceable single if it weren't so wickedly cruel and absurdly funny. "Pale Green Ghosts" may depend on its laptop underpinnings, but the man is not background music. It demands that you step into a place like "I Hate This Town" where everyone, including you, get to share his view of the world. Trust me, when the music is this good, you'll want to.