For Me to Miss One Would Seem to Be Groundless

by Will Rigby

I started getting serious about listening to music (i.e., reading about it and listening to more than just what was on AM radio) around the age of 14, in 1970. One of the earliest copies of Rolling Stone I bought had the review (by Lenny Kaye) of Loaded, the fourth and final studio album (at least while Lou Reed was a member) by the Velvet Underground. I had probably seen the band's name before, but had never heard the music and knew nothing about them. I didn't hear this record right away, and the next thing we heard was that Lou Reed had quit. But with the invaluable guidance of Bob Northcott (fellow enthusiast and first bandmate), within a year I understood what was great about them and knew the words to "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll"; before much longer I'd acquired the first two albums and was well on my way to musical degeneracy and apostasy, in the best way.

In the present age—with instant access to millions of books, almost any song that has ever been recorded, any TV show or movie or work of visual art ever made—it may be hard to appreciate how difficult it could be in 1972 to find/hear an out-of-print record. The search for The Velvet Underground became something of a holy quest for Bob and me. It felt like an eternity but probably took less than a year and a half to get our hands on it, which was done by sending away for lists of cut-out (discontinued and discounted), rare, and bootleg records advertised in little classified ads in the back pages of mags like Creem and Circus. We eventually located two copies of the US LP and two of the UK LP at the same time via mail order, one of each for both of us.

In 2013 Bob remembers, but I don't, that the two records sounded different. My UK copy is long gone in one of several rent-party record sales, but I still have that US record and it is this version that I literally grew up listening to. Its very obscurity endeared it to me in a way that only collector types can understand. Thankfully, by the twenty-first century the third VU album had assumed its rightful place of esteem and importance with its brethren. I need not add more to the many who recognize the importance of these four albums, and the fact—astonishing to this day—that none of them is remotely similar to the others.

I can't claim anything but obliviousness that I was unaware of the two versions of the album. The mixes are noticeably different on several of the songs (vocal levels, amount of reverb, etc.); the fact is discussed in the book accompanying the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See; and the Wikipedia page for the album mentions the different versions of "Some Kinda Love." And I had both forty years ago! What I think of as the "original" version is considered the "alternate" version. Sterling Morrison dubbed the mixes on the US LP the "closet mix," a sobriquet he did not mean as a compliment. The single-CD release features (and has since at least the '90s) what are considered the "correct" mixes, known as the (recording engineer) Val Valentin mixes. However, Peel Slowly and See has the "closet mix" of the entire album, the one I'm used to.

But when, a few months ago, I noticed that there was a second version of "Some Kinda Love" it was revelatory to me, regardless of the fact that it took me so long. The "closet" version has what I consider one of Lou Reed's two or three best vocal performances ever; by contrast, on the Val Valentin mix/take Lou sounds congested, perhaps even with a cold. The fact that both his book of lyrics and an early Lou Reed box set are titled Between Thought and Expression, a line from this song, suggest that Lou agrees with me that this is one of his most poetic lyrics ever. On the "closet" version, Lou's up-close, almost whispered vocal exudes confidence, conviction, imagination, wit, and sounds like someone who knows he's at the top of his game. The mmmms and oooohs and "la tee ta ta ta"s and the falsetto "lie down upon the carpet" display a brilliant vocalist (as differentiated from great singer in the technical/traditional sense) at work. If this is a "closet," more people should record in one.

The Val Valentin version is good, too—any studio recording by the VU is important, there's at least one lyric variation ("combines the absurd with the vulgar"), it's always good to hear more Sterling Morrison licks, and Lou mumbles a couple of spontaneous things at the end that I can't make out—but the other version is so much better that it boggles my mind that anyone would've chosen to release it instead of a vastly superior, remarkable performance. However, I'm truly thrilled to "discover" another version of one of my favorite VU songs (and likewise boggled how long it took me to notice). There are at least four released live versions of the song as well, but for vocal performance the "closet" version stands head and shoulders above all.
























Download:

"Some Kinda Love" (Closet Mix) mp3
by The Velvet Underground, 1969.
available on Peel Slowly & See

"Some Kinda Love" (Val Valentin mix) mp3
by The Velvet Underground, 1969.
available on The Velvet Underground

My 45's

by Will Rigby

My vinyl-to-digital conversion arrangement never worked very well and is at the moment completely nonexistent. However, back in the good old days of 2005 I transferred a handful of 45s to digital.



"Are You Glad To Be In America?" mp3
James Blood Ulmer
Rough Trade (1980)

This is one of the most ferocious and wonderful pieces of music ever committed to tape/vinyl, and is very hard/expensive to find. It pulls off the feat of being joyous, melancholy, avant garde, and danceable all at the same time. I have been unable to find an mp3 of it elsewhere, so this post is a public service. A must-hear for everyone. Amazing singing, guitar, two drummers, arrangement.

*****************



"Talkin' 'bout My Friends" mp3
A. C. Reed (1966)
Nike Records

Reed was a sax player with artists like Earl Hooker and Albert Collins. He appears as a member of Buddy Guy's band in the film Festival Express. I don't know much about him, but this record (that I don't even remember buying) is one of my favorites. Some of the most down-home singing I've ever heard.

*****************



"Tandoori Chicken" mp3
Ronnie Spector
Apple (1971)

Produced by Phil Spector, written by George Harrison and Phil Spector (a chore that couldn't have taken more than a few minutes), and an illustrious member of Phil's tradition of non-LP B-sides (of "Try Some Buy Some"). Sounds like it didn't take very long to record.

*****************



"Uptown Top Ranking" (mono)
Althia and Donna
Sire (1978)

This was a #1 UK hit by a teenage duo from Jamaica. There are other versions of this, one with other instruments added to this version, and a completely different (apparently re-)recording that sounds more 80s. This is the original, mono single version.

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"The Mumbler Strikes Again" mp3
Clark Terry
Mainstream (1966)

Legendary jazz trumpeter Terry made a few of these mumbling tracks, but this is the only one I've heard. Very scratchy—the full 45 experience.

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Set Me Free (manually)

by Will Rigby

Count me among those who consider John Cale's post–Velvet Underground work superior overall to that of Lou Reed. Not to belittle "Dirty Boulevard" or "Waves of Fear" or "Kicks" or all the other LR songs I love (and I can't say I've gone ga-ga over a JC album in years), but Cale's albums from the '70s find their way onto my speakers more often. There is an unhinged side to him that screams a lot, and another that composes formal music; those are not the ones we're featuring today. He can write (or in some of the instances here, sing) very beautiful songs/melodies.

A little-known track stands out, if that can be said of something that is purposefully obscured. On Hobo Sapiens, his 2003 album that was his first since 1996, the song "Set Me Free" is a hidden track that is before track 1. To hear it you have to hold down the rewind button until it reaches the beginning of the song. John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants explained to me (in 1995) the possibility of a CD having a track in this location because of the way they are formatted, and that playback machines are unable to read them for no special reason other than simplicity. [For a more technical explanation you'll have to look elsewhere.] I suspect that TMBG used this trick too, but I don't know their albums.

The song is accessible musically, however, in a way that most of the album it's technically inaccessible on is not. His current music is a bit angular and machine-driven for my taste (although I must confess that I haven't heard his latest studio recording Black Acetate or his recent live album Circus Live), but he still has some pop sensibility left. Or perhaps it's an old song he's only gotten around to recording.

"Set Me Free" mp3
by John Cale, 2003.
available on Hobo Sapiens

"Empty Bottles" mp3
by John Cale, 1972.
available on Le Bataclan '72

"Set Me Free" compares well to "Empty Bottles," a song he wrote in the early '70s but perversely never recorded; instead, he gave it to Jennifer Warnes (who then went by just her first name) and produced her single of it, which to date I have been unable to find or hear. The only known version of John Cale performing "Empty Bottles" is on the album Le Bataclan '72 (2004), a nonprofessional recording of a spur-of-the-moment reunion of Cale, Reed, and Nico at a 1972 art gallery opening in France. What a shame he didn't record the song properly at the time. [I heartily recommend the fansite Fear Is a Man's Best Friend for more information on John Cale.]

"Sylvia Said" was a non-LP B-side to a 45 of "The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy" from Fear that finally appeared on album on The Island Years in 1996, another beautiful song not generally available before the age of ubiquitous CD rereleases/bonus tracks/anthologies (a description that also applies to "Burned Out Affair," an outtake from Paris 1919 that wasn't released for 33 years!). "Bamboo Floor" is an outtake from Slow Dazzle.

"Sylvia Said" mp3
by John Cale, 1974.
available on The Island Years

"Bamboo Floor" mp3
by John Cale, 1975.
available on The Island Years

"Burned Out Affair" mp3
by John Cale, 1973.
available on Paris 1919

Lou Reed and John Cale in the holiday spirit, 1976.
detail of photo by Kate Simon from the Gillian McCain/Jim Marshall collection.


"Frozen Warnings" is a performance of a Nico song from The Marble Index (which Cale produced and improvised most of the musical accompaniment on) that appears at the end of the documentary Nico/Icon, a humble documentary that is worth watching just to see Nico's grandmother humming along with the first VU album.

"Frozen Warnings" mp3
by John Cale, 1995.
from Nico Icon DVD




Cale has recorded "Hallelujah," Leonard Cohen's most well-known/recorded song, more than once. His studio recording originally appeared on the Cohen tribute album I'm Your Fan, and has also been featured on the soundtrack of several movies. This version appears over a wordless scene in Shrek but not on the soundtrack album. There is also a solo piano version on his fine live album Fragments of a Rainy Season. "You Know More Than I Know" is an outtake from Fragments that appeared on a bonus EP and a label compilation.




"Hallelujah" mp3
by John Cale, 1991.
available on I'm Your Fan

"You Know More Than I Know" mp3
by John Cale, 1992.
available on Medium Rare

Fun bonus: In 1963 JC appeared on the TV show I've Got a Secret, in which a panel tried to guess what the guest's secret was. In Cale's case the secret was that he had participated in a marathon performance of Erik Satie's Vexations, in which a series of pianists play a minute-or-so piece 840 times in succession. In the age of YouTube this has become available to us to watch, tittering audience and all.



"Vexations" (Satie) mp3
by John Cale, 1963.
from I've Got A Secret TV Show

Paper Hat

by Will Rigby


I am repeatedly intrigued by the short time frame within which things happened that seem so legendary and epic and life-changing. Like how quickly the Beatles went from yeah yeah yeah to "Revolution," Or how all of the following reminiscences happened in 1978.

[In order to keep this to anything approaching a concise length I have to presume some knowledge on the reader's part about the music and people (myself included) involved.]

The 45 shown here may well have been the first Big Star record in all of North Carolina. A bunch of us in Winston-Salem were into Big Star when it actually existed—I paid list price for #1 Record in 1972, which puts me in a select group of people. I had to go to Raleigh to find it, which sounds so romantic from this age of downloading. Our high school band Little Diesel played "In the Street" and "September Gurls" in 1973-74. The former became the theme of That 70's Show in the late 1990s; the latter was recorded by the Bangles in the mid-1980s.

The first record I ever played on was an eponymous 1976 six-song EP by Sneakers. I feel confident in asserting it was the first record ever to have reviews cite Big Star as an influence.

In the spring of 1978, inspired more by Big Star's records than by those of Elvis or Otis or Al, I took a trip to Memphis with two singer-songwriter-guitarists, Peter Holsapple and Mitch Easter. They had just been in a band (without me) named the H-Bombs in Chapel Hill, and had recently done some recording that Alex Chilton was desultorily involved in. We were thinking of starting a new band and relocating. This was almost certainly the first of many musicians' pilgrimages in search of the Big Star essence.

The first thing we did was look up Alex. He was then living at his parents' house and recording what became Like Flies on Sherbert. He graciously let us hang out with him quite a bit—I remember spending one afternoon listening to records at Tommy Hoehn's house. He also took us to a bar where Keith Sykes was playing, and with whom Alex got up and sang a twisted version of "Money."

Alex told us where we could find Chris Bell: managing a Danver's Restaurant in the suburbs. My understanding at the time was that Danver's is/was a local chain of fast-food restaurants owned by Chris's family, but I'm not sure about that. When we arrived there weren't many customers, and we walked up to the counter and asked for him. He came out in the typical paper hat and short-sleeve shirt and tie. He seemed nonplussed that some fans had gone to the trouble to find him, but agreed to meet us after he got off work (he couldn't talk then).

We met at a fern bar for drinks. He didn't know what to say to our probably ridiculous questions along the lines of "where's it really at in Memphis, man?" He asked if we wanted to go to the Horslips show (no!), and his reply to our query of what he was listening to was "Fleetwood Mac". The one quote I recall best: "I dunno, rock 'n' roll just kinda went dead for me." He seemed sad and frustrated.

We all knew that Alex was in the studio (Sam Phillips) that night, and we kept badgering him to take us there, despite his in-retrospect-obvious reluctance. He finally relented. It wasn't until much later that I realized how uncomfortable he must have been, and that the fact of our arriving with Chris Bell made us suspect in the eyes of Jim Dickinson and Richard Rosebrough (producer and engineer, respectively) and whoever else was there. Alex was gracious, showed us around the building (a fifties classic), and just kinda nodded at Chris. Chris sat silent and sullen for a while, and I think we had to leave with him cuz we were sharing a car. Alex played us "Girl After Girl", "I've Had It", and a few more songs, which had not been mixed (and if you're familiar with that album, you know that the performances were very chaotic by design, which was pretty out there for the time). The album didn't come out for another two years. This was the extent of my encounter with Chris Bell (or Jim Dickinson, for that matter).

Alex spent another afternoon with Mitch and me (Peter had to leave early) driving down into Mississippi and onto a levee and being effusive about the Delta blues, with some barbecue in there somewhere. He took us to 706 Union Avenue, what had been Sun Studio but at the time was an unoccupied storefront. He found a way in through a broken back door. It had most recently been an auto repair shop; in what had been the recording room was the abandoned shell of a car—no wheels, no windows, no doors, no engine. There wasn't anything left of what had been a fulcrum of musical change EXCEPT, as Alex pointed out, the acoustical tiles still on the ceiling. He climbed up on the car and liberated one for himself and one for Mitch. To my eternal regret, I declined. (A few years later the site was renovated and now is a tourist-magnet re-creation of the original studio, but I knew it when.)

On a little portable cassette machine Alex played us "I Am the Cosmos" for the first time. And told us some things about Chris Bell, Big Star, Ardent, and the whole scene that we probably didn't need to know: that John Fry, the owner of the studio and label, was gay, and so was Chris, and that Chris got jealous that John got interested in Alex (and that this was the reason that Chris erased the master tapes of #1 Record); or that Alex was better at tennis than Chris, who could never beat him no matter how hard he tried. I know Alex to be an enthusiastic embellisher of the truth, but when "You Can't Have Me" appeared on the belated release of the third Big Star album later that year I recognized what/who it must be about, and I still can't hear it without thinking about all this.

It seems quaint now to have gone 600 miles in search of the secret of a band that had barely existed, got almost no radio play, and had no impact on the marketplace. We didn't want to go to Graceland, or Al Green's church, or the Stax studio; we did try to re-create the photo on the back of Radio City, at its original location, TGI Friday's (I don't know whether that photo still exists, and of course it didn't come out as anything more than a dumb snapshot). There was no essence to be found.

I moved to New York City a couple of months later. Peter did move to Memphis for a few months; he made some late-night recordings with Alex (also at Sam Phillips), some of which have appeared on bootlegs. He survived the summer of '78, when the Memphis police and firefighters struck simultaneously and the National Guard was called in to keep order, and in the fall moved up to New York City to join Chris Stamey and myself in The dB's. Mitch Easter also briefly lived in NYC before beginning his career in recording studios (and Let's Active) in North Carolina.

Chris Bell died in a car crash late that year, a few months after "I Am the Cosmos" came out on 45.

In 1995 I wrote a song about Chris Bell and these memories. Your host Ted Barron figured out who it was about, somehow (we lived in the same building at the time). I've never told anyone (except my ex-wife Amy Rigby, who appears on the recording) before now. It appeared only on a very obscure release.

Download:























"Paper Hat" mp3
by Will Rigby, 1995.
from Hello Recording Club #4
out of print























"I Am The Cosmos" mp3
by Chris Bell, 1978.
avilable on I Am the Cosmos

"You And You Sister" mp3
by Chris Bell, 1978.
available on I Am the Cosmos

"You Can't Have Me" mp3
by Big Star, 1975.
available on Third/Sister Lovers

"Kissy Boys" mp3
by Little Diesel, 1974.
available on No Lie

"In The Street" (single version) mp3
by Big Star, 1972.
available on Beale Street Green
bootleg

"My Rival" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1978.
available on Like Flies on Sherbert

"Tennis Bum" mp3
by Alex Chilton (with Peter Holsapple) 1978.
available on Beale Street Green
bootleg

"Martial Law" mp3
by Alex Chilton, (with Peter Holsapple) 1978.
available on Beale Street Green
bootleg

visit:

the dB's online HERE Mitch Easter HERE Little Diesel HERE