Epic Soundtracks- Good Things (2005) MP3 & FLAC

DBK ~ 2005

Tracklist/Info

Good Things  in FLAC:  Grab, Try, Then Buy!

MP3 (320kbps)

Tim Buckley Series, #11: Tim Buckley- Live at The Troubadour 1969 (1994) MP3 & FLAC

"I've been driftin' like a dream out on the sea; I've been driftin' in between what used to be."

1969 was a pivotal year for Tim Buckley. While up to this point his studio albums had, for the most part, stayed within the Folk genre (although Happy Sad  had incorporated a much more Jazz-informed approach), nothing could have prepared his listeners for the radical transformation that was to unfold on Lorca  and Starsailor, recorded within a few weeks of each other, along with the more recognizable Blue Afternoon, in mid-1969. Nevertheless, Buckley had been exploring a more improvisational live approach since the previous year, as he desired to transcend the limited musical possibilities associated with the Folk and Folk-Rock genres, as well as to escape the label of "folksinger" he had been pigeon-holed with by both his record company and the fans of his recordings. Doing so would lead him out on a creative limb that, while almost completely alienating his fan-base and destroying his commercial viability as a recording artist, would produce some of the most innovative music of the late sixties, some of which belongs in the select company of improvisational albums such as Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.

Tim Buckley

Lee Underwood: "Although Tim was not well educated (a high school graduate), he was a very bright guy. He had a marvelous feel for language, for words and ways to use them, not as an acrobatic academician might, but as extensions of intimate, heartfelt emotion. The more he moved in the direction of free-form instrumental improvisation, the more he explored vocal and verbal improvisations too, spontaneously creating verses and sometimes whole songs on the spot, especially during the Lorca  and Starsailor  period." Live at the Troubadour 1969 catches Buckley at the height of this improvisational period, and with the exception of Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, stands as the best live Buckley recording sonically as well as musically. An obvious highlight is "I Had a Talk with My Woman," which manages to trump the beautiful studio version on Lorca, again proving that Buckley was at his best in a live setting. Wringing emotion out of every note while gliding along to Lee Underwood's jazzy guitar ruminations, Buckley pushes his multi-octave voice to its limits throughout the set, particularly on the epic "Nobody Walkin'," which is extended to sixteen minutes of improvisatory brilliance. Live at the Troubadour 1969 is essential because it captures Buckley in fine form during his most fertile and innovative period, favoring languidly impressionistic explorations over pop-song predictability.

Velvet Underground Series, #5: Lou Reed & John Cale- Songs for Drella (1990) / Songs for Drella: Live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, 1989 (1990) / Songs for Drella: A Work in Progress, St. Ann's Church, NYC, Jan. 7-8, 1989 (Bootleg) MP3 & FLAC

"My skin's as pale as an outdoors moon, my hair's silver like a Tiffany watch. I like lots of people around me, but don't kiss hello and please don't touch."

Throughout the four and a half decades that Lou Reed and John Cale have known each other, their relationship has had few constants other than its consistently tempestuous nature, something that was evident from the very beginning. When they were initially introduced in 1964, Reed was working as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records (a job he has since likened to being "a poor man's Carole King"), writing commercially-oriented pop songs by day while exploring more experimental forms of songcraft (such as an early version of "Heroin") by night. The classically-trained Cale had recently arrived from London armed with a sponsorship from Aaron Copeland and plans to further his music education with American uber-elite avant-garde composers such as John Cage and La mont Young, and almost immediately, Cale was invited to play viola in Young and Tony Conrad's drone-oriented ensemble Theater of Eternal Music aka the Dream Syndicate. While Cale was none too impressed with Reed's lack of polish as a musician, he both admired and related to Reed's experimentalist tendencies, which took the form of alternate guitar tunings, droning effects, and lyrics that were both graphic and literary. They also discovered a mutual disdain for conventional artistic expression. John Cale on his first impressions of Lou Reed: "He seemed extremely vulnerable and with a very visceral sense of claiming his identity, in that it seemed like his identity was really clear when attacking things. And not that there was an ingrained hostility to everything on Earth, but I guess that's a common trait in many people that they think the best way to define themselves is to really attack, and this unnerving and psychologically disturbing persona was struggling to have an artistic expression, that was being stifled by this confusion between his surroundings and himself. This description could very well apply to myself as well [...] trying to find a role in classical music that really had anything to do with the outside world was certainly not clear in my mind."

John Cale

After recruiting Sterling Morrison, a former college roommate of Reed's, and Angus MacLise (later be replaced by Moe Tucker), an avant-garde percussionist whom Cale had met while playing in Theater of Eternal Music, Reed and Cale briefly formed a band called The Primitives; however, when Tony Conrad turned the band on to a book about the sexual subculture of the early sixties called The Velvet Underground, the band instantly adopted the name, recognizing a thematic continuity with the increasingly dark subject matter of Reed's lyrics (he had just written "Venus in Furs") and feeling that it was also evocative of underground cinema. While Reed and Cale were more than happy to accept the patronage of Andy Warhol after being "discovered" while playing a tourist trap called Cafe Bizarre, their time under Warhol's tutelage saw them become increasingly antagonistic over the direction of the band. Reed, being The Velvet Underground's primary songwriter, kept the band, whether intentionally or not, somewhat grounded in recognizable pop song structures even if they did have a strict "no blues" policy. Cale, as the band's other creative force who, musically, was far more experimental and technically proficient, functioned like a foil to Reed's singer-songwriter approach. This set up a tense intra-band dynamic that was responsible for both their unparalleled sound on the first two albums and, at least to some degree, Cale's exit from The Velvet Underground in fall 1968.

Lou Reed in the Mid-Seventies

Cale's dismissal from The Velvet Underground has been cloaked in mystery for decades, as all parties concerned have steadfastly refused to reveal any particulars about what actually took place; however, a close friend of Robert Quine, Reed's guitarist during much of the eighties, has offered some insight: "Lou told Quine that the reason why he had to get rid of Cale in the band was that Cale's ideas were just too out there [....] Cale had some wacky ideas. He wanted to record the next album with the amplifiers underwater, and [Lou] just couldn't have it. He was trying to make the band more accessible." One of the unfortunate effects of Reed's decision was that for nearly two decades, he and Cale had very little contact, with the 1972 Bataclan concert with Nico as the only notable exception. It wasn't until the untimely deaths of both Warhol and Nico in the late eighties that Reed and Cale renewed their working relationship. It was the artist Julian Schnabel who first suggested that Cale should do some kind of requiem for his former mentor Warhol. In fact, Cale was hard at work on an all-instrumental composition dedicated to Warhol when he and Reed crossed paths again in 1988 and decided to set about working on a Warhol-related project called Songs for Drella, "Drella" (a contraction of Dracula and Cinderella) being a nickname given to Warhol in the mid-sixties by Factory regular Ondine (actor Robert Olivo).

Warhol and his band of Velvets

John Cale in 1989: "When we started playing together last May, it began as just the two of us having fun throwing ideas around [....] Gradually it turned into songwriting. It was a great opportunity to pick up the threads of The Velvet Underground and draw our original ideas about arrangements and subject matter to a conclusion. Obviously we're bringing a lot of baggage to the project, but we are doing it with a lot of love. Andy was an incredibly generous spirit." Lou Reed: "We tape everything we do [...] Musically, we begin with simple chord progressions to which John adds his Welsh riffs. The lyrics are a reflection of everything we talk about. Each of us has a notebook filled with ideas. I'm the official typist." What resulted from this collaboration was a multi-perspective song-cycle exploring many of the events and inter-personal relationships that defined Warhol's life. After playing several unadorned live shows under the title, Songs for Drella: A Work in Progress, the pair entered the studio to record the album, a process that by all accounts revived old animosities and creative tensions, leading Cale to vow that he would never work with Reed again (although he would soon renege on this claim when the original version of The Velvets would briefly reform in 1993).

Upon its release, Songs for Drella was met with a series of tepid critical reviews, most expressing disappointment that the album didn't sound more like The Velvet Underground, but such expectations were missing the point: on Songs for Drella, the narrative takes center stage, while the spartan arrangements, comprised of guitar, piano, keyboards, viola, & vox, though largely modest and unobtrusive, add greatly to the considerable emotional power of the songs, which is one of the reasons that, in the twenty years since its release, the album has come to be considered one the best post-Velvet Underground recordings by either Reed or Cale. One reason for this is that there is an intensely personal feel to many of the songs, something that helps the album, even though it is subtitled A Fiction, avoid any trace of romanticization or idealization in reference to Warhol despite the, at times, theatrical approach, a prime example of which is the opening song, "Smalltown," an ironically bouncy stage number that touches on the origins of Warhol's prodigious sense of ambition. Lou Reed: "'Small Town,' the first number, seemed the way to ease into the show, because we thought, 'people are bringing a lot of notions to this show before we ever play a note. How can we get their toes in the water without smacking them over the head, and before we let the electric instruments go as far as they're going to go?' It seemed like that little cabaret number was the thing that answered that. I think it disarms you a bit; it's not what anyone expected." One of the most beautiful and affecting moments in the song-cycle is "Open House," which features Reed describing, from Warhol's perspective, the bitter loneliness of the artist's early days in NYC before he had made his indelible mark on the New York art scene, a narrative for which Reed's wryly vulnerable, understated vocals are perfectly suited. On Cale's songs, his stately vocal-style tends to portray Warhol, whether by design or accident, in a slightly more glamorous light; thus, when it came to one of the centerpieces of the album, "A Dream," a long spoken-word narrative based on Warhol's diaries, Reed and Cale fought bitterly over which narrative voice to use, Reed favoring the "warts and all" approach. Songs for Drella concludes with one of Reed's finest moments on tape, "Hello It's Me," a painfully honest confession of guilt, anger, and loss that not only reveals his deep admiration and complicated love for Warhol, but also reveals something about what has made Reed so special in his own right: "I really miss you, I really miss your mind. I haven't heard ideas like that in such a long, long time. I loved to watch you draw and watch you paint, but when I saw you last I turned away." Goodnight Andy.

Lou Reed & John Cale- "Slip Away (A Warning)" (1990) From Songs for Drella

Intensely beautiful tribute to Warhol that was more or less my introduction to Drella, who turned out to be a lifelong interest of mine. This was Reed and Cale's first reunion since Bataclan '72.

Tim Buckley Series, #10: Tim Buckley- Blue Afternoon (1970) MP3 & FLAC

"There ain't no wealth that can buy my pride. There ain't no pain that can cleanse my soul."

Following the release of what many believe to be Tim Buckley's most enduring album, Happy Sad, on which Buckley had introduced a new palette of Jazz-inflected textures to his Folk-based aesthetic, he decided the time was right to make some radical changes in both sound and approach. To begin with, during the months he spent touring in support of Happy Sad, Buckley had grown increasingly disenchanted with playing to the expectations of both the music press and his fan-base, both of which, it seemed, were steadfastly invested in seeing him embrace the role of torchbearer for a folk music scene, that, by the late sixties, was quickly losing steam in the U.S. As the tour progressed, Buckley began introducing new material that was based on a highly improvisational minimalist Jazz approach; he simultaneously began exploring new minimalist-informed arrangements of his older material as well. And, inspired by avant-garde vocalists such as Cathy Berberian, Buckley soon began to push his multi-octave voice to new, decidedly un-Folk-like, extremes. He was also at a crossroads in terms record labels: Elektra, whom he owed one more record, was about to be sold by Jac Holzman; his old manager and close friend Herb Cohen was starting a new label, Straight Records, with Frank Zappa; and, as part of a distribution deal, he owed an album to Warner Bros. As a result, in mid 1969, Buckley recorded three albums in one month, two of which he produced himself.

Two of these albums constituted a significant and startling sonic departure for Buckley, as on Lorca and Starsailor, he explored his burgeoning interest in minimalist Jazz using a largely free-form compositional approach. However, Blue Afternoon, recorded immediately after the extremely unconventional Lorca, in many ways reaches back to the sound and approach of Happy Sad. Lee Underwood: "By the time Tim had evolved into the beginnings of his avante-garde phase with Lorca, it was conceptually regressive to go back to Happy Sad's aesthetic perspective for Blue Afternoon." Nevertheless, "[s]ome of Tim's all-time great songs are on that album [....] True, Blue Afternoon was a collection of old songs, but it was not a collection of unreleased out-takes from previous recording sessions. We recorded them new and fresh specifically for that album [....] Tim knew Lorca was unlikely to be a big hit in the marketplace. He loved Blue Afternoon's old tunes, which had found no home elsewhere. He was shifting labels, moving from Elekra to Herb's new label, Straight, and he wanted to help give that label a commercial launch. For all those reasons, Tim and the rest of us worked as hard as we could on Blue Afternoon, even though it was a conceptual step backwards [....] it was also an effort Tim wanted and needed to make."

Underwood might have characterized Blue Afternoon as a case of conceptual regression, but it would be hard to argue that it is anything other than an artistic triumph. While it was critically reviled upon its release, the album has grown in stature to a significant degree in the decades since its release despite being out of print for much of that time, and though it is usually characterized as little more than an extension of the Happy Sad sound, careful listeners will detect subtle signs of Buckley's more avante-garde inclinations occasionally shining through. The Blue Afternoon sessions were recorded in New York City using the same musicians who had worked on Happy Sad with the addition of drummer Jimmy Madison, while many of the songs themselves were compositions that had failed, for one reason or another, to find a place on Buckley's earlier albums but were deemed too good to remain orphans. While the earlier versions of these songs, which can be found on Works in Progress, are beautiful and revelatory in their own right, Blue Afternoon stands as perhaps Buckley's purest distillation of the Folk-Jazz hybrid that he, along with Fred Neil, either invented or entirely transformed. One of the album's gems is "I Must Have Been Blind," which is easily the equal of anything on Happy Sad, and while on one level it is a fine piece of modern Folk, the unconventional choice of instrumentation, especially the prominence given to David Friedman's vibes, lends the song a strange ethereal feel that compliments one of Buckley's more retrained vocal performances. And then there's "Blue Melody," one of Buckley's best compositions and jaw-droppingly beautiful in this languidly jazzed-up version. What makes Blue Afternoon such a timeless album is its emphasis on dynamics, as the loose interplay between vibes, percussion and Buckley's haunting vocals results in a fluid form of musical expression that differentiates this album from virtually anything else falling under the broad categorical term "Folk." Tim Buckley: "Music. It's the total communication between people in a room. You can take me to a political rally and the relationship between the politics and the people is pretty far removed, so that room doesn't cook. I see music and religion- like the gospel thing- and that cooks. But I see the music as separate from God. The people may do it out of praise for God, but what happens in that situation happens because the people are singing their souls out."

Tim Buckley- "Blue Melody" (1970) Live on Boboquivari, KCET

Buckley & Lee Underwood playing live- this exemplifies the word "sublime"...

Velvet Underground Series, #4: Nico- Chelsea Girl (1967) / The Classic Years (1998) MP3 & FLAC

"Excrement filters through the brain, hatred bends the spine, filth covers the body pores,
to be cleansed by dying time."

Nico's fateful first meeting with Andy Warhol in early 1966 was orchestrated by Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, who had been instrumental in helping Nico jump-start her music career by putting her in touch with Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham, resulting in the Jimmy Page-produced "I'm Not Sayin' / Last Mile" single. Warhol and his Factory entourage (including Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick) had been in Paris in May 1965 for Warhol's exhibition of flower paintings, during which Malanga, at the behest of Jones, met with Nico and was impressed enough to give her the Factory's phone number. When Nico arrived in New York City at the beginning of 1966 to sign a modeling contract with the Ford Modeling Agency, she wasted little time in calling the number. Andy Warhol: "She called us from a Mexican restaurant and we went right over to meet her. She was sitting at a table with a pitcher in front of her, dipping her long beautiful fingers into the sangria, lifting out slices of wine-soaked oranges. When she saw us, she tilted her head to the side and brushed her hair back with her other hand and said very slowly, 'I only like the fooood that flooooats in the wiine.' [....] The minute we left the restaurant Paul [Morrissey] said that we should use Nico in the movies and find a rock group to play for her. He was raving that she was 'the most beautiful creature that ever lived.'"

Born Christa Päffgen in Cologne, Germany on the precipice of World War II, her father, a German soldier, died in a Nazi concentration camp during the war as a result of medical experiments that were performed on him in order to study the severe brain damage he had suffered on the battlefield. After the war, Päffgen worked as a seamstress and soon began landing modeling jobs in Berlin. It was a photographer on one of these jobs who gave her the now-iconic sobriquet, "Nico," which quickly became her preferred identity. After working in Paris modeling for Vogue, Tempo, Elle, and other top fashion magazines, Nico temporarily moved to New York City to study acting at Lee Strasberg's Method School; it was around this time that she was "discovered" by Fellini during the filming of La Dolce Vita, which led to her famous cameo in the film.

When she returned to New York City at the beginning of 1966 to ostensibly resume her modeling career, Nico was more intent on pursuing film-work and music; this is what led her into Warhol's considerably influential orbit. Nico: "I only wanted to be with the underground people. I wasn't interested in fashion anymore, and I had also studied acting with Lee Strasberg, which helped me a lot to sort of discover myself like all young people always have to discover themselves." As it turned out, it was not only Paul Morrissey who was captivated by Nico at her first meeting with Warhol; the artist himself was also quite smitten and immediately began casting her in his experimental films such as Chelsea Girls and Imitation of Christ. It was during this same period that Warhol took on the role of patron of a struggling young rock band with a seamy reputation: The Velvet Underground. While it may be the case that the idea from the start was for the Velvets to serve as Nico's backing band, it's hard to deny the key role Warhol's patronage played in the band's development. Nico: "He [Warhol] was the one who had the guts to save The Velvet Underground from poverty and misery because they had been thrown out of a place in the village on 3rd Street, Cafe Bizarre, because people couldn't dance to their music. So they had no job so that's when Andy came and saved the situation, and that's when I joined them." 

Paul Morrissey: "The singing was done by Lou Reed and he just seemed, um, not a very good singer and not a good personality- uh, something too seedy about him, and he was not a natural performer; he was sort of a shy type on stage." Nico's official role in the band was "chanteuse," but a more accurate term, especially at the beginning, was "pariah," as she was not deemed by the Velvets as a good fit for their sound. After much cajoling from Warhol, Reed finally agreed to write some songs for her, though the situation was far from stable, as, according to Sterling Morrison, Nico sought sexual alliances in the band (namely Reed and then John Cale) in order gain a stronger foothold in the group. Ultimately, she was never considered as anything more than an interloper, and on the tellingly-titled The Velvet Underground & Nico, Nico's only album as a "member" of the band, she was only given three songs as lead vocalist. Toward the end of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable tour, Nico began to separate from the Velvets, doing solo shows at various coffee houses as well as the Dom Bar. During these shows, she was accompanied on acoustic guitar by among others, Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley, Leonard Cohen, Tim Hardin, and several of her soon-to-be ex-band mates, many of whom would contribute songs to her debut album, Chelsea Girl, recorded in late spring 1967.

Produced by Tom Wilson, who had worked on the Velvets' debut album, Chelsea Girl, at first blush, sounds like an apt example of the kind of overly fussed-over baroque chamber-folk that was so prevalent during the mid-to-late sixties; however, what sets it apart and makes it approach timelessness is Nico herself. More than once, Nico has been described as proto-Goth, and the sound of her unmistakeable baritone with its ability to convey an icy sense of achingly dark world-weariness was undoubtedly a huge influence on the post-punks more than a decade later. Simply put, Nico's artistic approach and mercurial personality were completely at odds with the pop-temptress stereotype that most female artists were saddled with during the late sixties. Paul Morrissey: "She started at some point, um, having a real resentment over her good looks. She hated the fact that people thought she was beautiful. She thought that this was some sort of disgrace to be beautiful. But in those days modeling was not artistic, you know, artistic was to be like Janis Joplin screaming your lungs out before you die of drug addiction. She was so happy to be called ugly."

Chelsea Girl is easily Nico's most eclectic solo album, something which is largely due to it being comprised of "donated" songs from the various singer-songwriters Nico had spent time with during her fledgling music career. However, there are two prevailing directions on the album that stand in stark contrast with each other. A then-unknown Jackson Browne (Nico's lover at the time) provides three songs, the best of which, "These Days," finds Nico in top form. Backed by Browne's lovely guitar playing, Nico dresses his reflective lyrics in somber tones that manage to capture the dark, introspective nature of the song in ways another singer wouldn't have. In contrast to Browne's contributions, which verge on wistfulness on occasion, there are five significantly darker songs penned by various members of her former band, The Velvet Underground. Chief among these is the title track written by Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison, a hypnotically depressed epic that recalls "Femme Fatale" from the Velvets debut album. Perhaps the true gem on Chelsea Girls is its darkest moment: Lou Reed's "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams," a song he had written previous to forming the Velvets. In a way, it provides an emotional counterpoint to "These Days" and points the way toward Nico's more unconventional solo works such as The Marble Index. Despite her debut album's obvious strengths, Nico was notoriously dismissive of the finished product, claiming (quite accurately) that some of the production decisions blunted the power of the music. Nico: "I still cannot listen to it, because everything I wanted for that record, they took it away. I asked for drums, they said no. And I asked for simplicity and they covered it in flutes [...] They added strings and- I didn't like them, but I could live with them. But the flute! The first time I heard the album, I cried and it was all because of the flute."

Nico- "Chelsea Girls" (1967) 16mm Film by Andy Warhol

Here's some exquisite Warhol film footage of Nico with her peerless rendition of "Chelsea Girls" (written by Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison) as a soundtrack. To all you Nico haters out there: how can you resist that voice?

Tim Buckley Series, #9: Tim Buckley- Works in Progress (1999) / The Dream Belongs to Me: Rarities & Unreleased 1968-1973 (2001) MP3 & FLAC

"How can my giving find the rhythm and time of you, unless you sing your song to me? "

Lee Underwood: "Right from the beginning, Tim moved me deeply with his music, his attitude, his intelligence and sense of humour. I played guitar with a number of people back then, but he was different. He was not afraid of change. He kept me and the other musicians on our toes. When he moved into this avant-garde or modern classical dimension, I felt both challenged and thrilled. It was one of the most exciting times of my life." Tim Buckley's creative restlessness can best be gauged through the meteoric arc of his work over the course of his first three albums. From the tentative beauty of his overly mannered debut to the stunningly gorgeous Folk songs of Goodbye and Hello to the Jazz inflected explorations of Happy Sad, Buckley's approach in the studio bore the mark of his iconoclastic tendencies and mirrored the increasingly improvisational nature of his live performances. Once, when asked to what extent his music had changed, Buckley responded, "It's not for me to judge. I'm living too close to it. It's a transition. I have to be ruthless and say what is happening. I'm not sentimental over old songs. I'm constantly writing. The main thing is the music." Buckley's "ruthless" need to push boundaries first came to the surface in an explicit way midway through the 1968 recording sessions that would eventually yield Happy Sad. Early on, Buckley and his band recorded a number of the songs that ended up on the final album, but they did so utilizing traditional Folk-oriented arrangements, nearly all of which were quickly abandoned as the sessions took a very different turn. Most of this material was thought lost, but it was eventually rediscovered in the early nineties, a selection of which materialized in the form of Works in Progress at the end of the decade. While Works in Progress is, for the most part, an album of outtakes, it is nearly as essential as Buckley's studio albums, for, not only does it offer a rare glimpse into his creative process in the studio, but, more importantly, it is comprised of a gorgeous set of songs such as "Danang" and "Ashbury Park," which ended up on the final album as parts of a longer composition, "Love from Room 109 at the Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway)." Both sound as though they would have been revelatory stand alone tracks. And then there's the amazing rendition of "Song to a Siren," one of Buckley's best songs, which would end up appearing on Starsailor in a vastly different, less straightforward, arrangement. This is the song Buckley played during his now-iconic appearance on The Monkees after having been invited by his old friend Mike Nesmith: "They asked me to sing on the show. I went along and there was Mike in his mohair suit, and I turned up in working shirt and trousers. Mike said, 'Hey, you're still wearing the same old clothes.' I replied, 'Yes, and I'm still singing my own songs.'"

Velvet Underground Series, #1: Dean & Britta- 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests (2010) MP3 & FLAC

"Hey, I'm not a young man anymore. I've got five nickels in my pocket, gonna get me some more."

Previous to coming under the aegis of pop art icon Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground, then comprised of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison & Maureen Tucker, had only been together for a short time, but it was clear from the beginning that they were a different breed altogether. As their first manager, Al Aronowitz once recalled, "They were just junkies, crooks, hustlers. Most of the musicians at that time came with all these high-minded ideals, but the Velvets were all full of shit. They were just hustlers." Warhol associate Paul Morrissey happened to catch one of the first gigs Aronowitz had secured for his presumptive band of hustlers at Cafe Bizarre in Greenwich Village and knew right away that Warhol and The Velvets would be a good fit. Classically trained, John Cale had played in minimalist composer La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, an experimental collective, also known as Dream Syndicate, that focused on drone music. Lou Reed, after graduating from Syracuse University, had worked as a tin-pan alley song-writer at Pickwick International, but his tastes ran toward far less mainstream musical pursuits. Initially, these musical polar opposites were resistant to working with each other, but a shared fascination with the use of a drone effect in music composition brought them together, along with Reed's Syracuse classmate Sterling Morrison, in a short-lived band called The Primitives, which quickly metamorphosed into The Velvet Underground. When Morrissey returned to Cafe Bizarre a few nights later with Warhol in tow, the latter was treated to a surreal scene comprised of The Velvets, now with Maureen Tucker on drums, playing their tales of S&M and heroin highs to a crowd made up of tourists sipping exotic drinks. Warhol was won over immediately and invited the band to join his Factory. Lou Reed: "To my mind, nobody in music was doing anything that even approximated the real thing, with the exception of us. We were doing a specific thing that was very, very real. It wasn't slick or a lie in any conceivable way, which was the only way we could work with him. Because the very first thing I liked about Andy was that he was very real." While The Velvets benefited immediately from Warhol's patronage, the relationship was soon strained by Morrissey's insistence that the band needed a figurehead that was more visually appealing than the often recalcitrant Lou Reed. German model Nico, who had visted Warhol's Factory the week before, was Warhol and Morrissey's choice. Cale & Reed hated the idea, but given the significant career perks of being aligned with a figure like Warhol, they eventually acceded, and Reed was even persuaded by his benefactor to write songs specifically for Nico, several of which would appear on The Velvets' debut album, funded and ostensibly produced by Warhol himself (more on this story later). During their stay at the Factory, The Velvets were used in a number of ways by Warhol, including providing largely improvisational soundtracks for some of his films and multi-media presentations, the most famous of which was the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, featuring the band accompanying a silent film directed by Warhol titled The Velvet Underground and Nico: A Symphony of Sound, along with dancers, strobe-lights, slide projections, etc.

Dean & Britta- "I Found It Not So (Sonic Boom Remix)" / Screen test #7- Mary Woronov

Another of Warhol's mid-sixties projects was the filming of hundreds of screen tests of various visitors to the Factory (including Nico and Reed) with a stationary 16mm camera using silent, black & white 100 ft. rolls of film at 24 frames per second as well as a strong key light to set the subject in stark relief; these were later arranged into compilations and screened in slow motion at 16 frames per second. Warhol's screen tests were not limited to celebrities, however, as anyone who came into the orbit of the Factory, no matter how briefly, was a possible subject. As he stated in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, "I've never met a person I couldn't call a beauty [...] I always hear myself saying, She's a beauty! or He's a beauty! or what a beauty! But [...] if everybody's not a beauty, then nobody is." In 2008, The Andy Warhol Museum commissioned Dean Wareham of Galaxie 500 and Luna fame and Wareham's Luna band-mate Britta Phillips to compose music for 13 of the screen tests. In addition to original compositions by Dean & Britta, 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests features a cover of Bob Dylan's "I'll Keep It with Mine" and an amazingly effective re-working of an obscure Velvet Underground song, "Not a Young Man Anymore." While Wareham's earlier work with Galaxie 500 suggests a strong affinity for the V.U. aesthetic, which shows throughout the project, his true inspiration here is Warhol himself. Wareham: "You could make a case that he [Warhol] was one of the first punks in two ways. 1) He suggested that anyone could be an artist, and that an artist could try his hand at anything. 2) Punk rock celebrates the commonplace and the ugly, and elevates it, and I think Warhol did the same."

Dean & Britta- "Knives from Bavaria (Spoonful of Fun)" / Screen Test #13- Jane Holzer

Dean & Britta- "Not a Young Man Anymore" (2010) From 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests

Here's an ode to one cool mother-fucker

Dean & Britta- "I'll Keep It with Mine (Scott Hardkiss Remix) (2010) From 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests

I'm going to start this series a little unconventionally, but don't worry, we'll cover everything you're expecting and a whole lot more. Enjoy your Nico!

Tim Buckley Series, #8: Tim Buckley- Happy Sad (1969) Japanese Remastered Edition (SHM-CD) MP3 & FLAC

"Oh, when I get to thinkin' 'bout the old days when love was here to stay, I wonder if we ever tried. Oh, what I'd give to hold him."

In an early 1969 New York Times interview, Tim Buckley discussed the impending release of the first of his experimental, Jazz influenced albums, Happy Sad: "You know, people don't hear anything. That's why rock 'n' roll was invented, to pound it in. My new songs aren't dazzling; it's not two minutes and 50 seconds of rock 'em sock 'em, say lots of words, get lots of images. I guess it's pretty demanding." If Buckley's previous album, Goodbye and Hello, had been as close as he was willing to come to playing the traditional role of the socially-conscious folk-singer, then Happy Sad was Buckley leaving behind the expectations of both his fans and his handlers at Elektra, in order to chase a sound that simultaneously tapped into the foundational influences of pop music and progressed beyond the melodic and structural limitations of that music. While clearly bearing the influence of Jazz artists such as Miles Davis and Bill Evans (particularly the modal Jazz of Kind of Blue), Happy Sad also features a noticeable transformation in Buckley's approach to integrating his vocals into the arrangements. On songs such as the gorgeous "Dream Letter," Buckley's voice functions more like a lead instrument taking the basic melody and drawing it out through improvised variations, thus guiding the song (often quite subtly) in unexpected/unfamiliar directions, an approach that became the hallmark of his live performances of the time. Happy Sad also marked the end of Buckley's partnership with lyricist and longtime friend Larry Beckett, who had written many of the lyrics for Buckley's first two studio albums. Gone are the overt political references and literary flourishes, replaced by Buckley's more introspective and impressionistic approach, which is, in turn, given a secondary role in support of the music itself. As Beckett recalls, "He was moving toward a jazz sound, so to have wild poetry all over the map, you'd miss the jazz." The jazz sound Beckett speaks of is evident from the very first track, "Strange Feelin'," which, on one level, is clearly paraphrasing Miles Davis' "All Blues," but the song is also replete with textures quite foreign to straightforward jazz, such as Buckley's 12-string acoustic guitar, a sound that allows the music to retain elements of its folk origins. Lee Underwood's bluesy guitar work is also a distinguishing element that, in tandem with Buckley's other-worldly vocals, lends Happy Sad a unique mix of aching beauty and fearless experimentation. These traits are pushed to extremes on the album's centerpiece, the epic and free-styling "Gypsy Woman," which features Buckley completely set free of the structures and conventions governing Western music. This twelve minute song establishes a floating rhythmic sense borrowed from Indian classical music that allows Buckley to take his vocals into uncharted waters. While Happy Sad was only Buckley's first step toward making music that is, as he said, "pretty demanding," it is arguably the high point of, what was to ultimately become, a four album journey into something quite unprecedented (though it should be mentioned that Fred Neil was a major inspiration). Later albums in this vein, such as Blue Afternoon & Starsailor  are certainly classics in their own right, but on Happy Sad, there is a palpable sense of newness, a freedom recently fought for and won, and the beckoning (if only for a brief time) of infinite possibility. Of course, all such things eventually come with a price. Buckley: "My old lady was telling me what she was studying in school- Plato, Sophocles, Socrates and all those people. And the cat, Socrates, starts spewing truth like anybody would, because you gotta be honest. And the people kill him. Ha, I don't know if I'm being pretentious but I can see what happens. It happened to Dylan...I don't know what to do about that."

Tim Buckley Series, #7: Tim Buckley- The Copenhagen Tapes (2000) MP3 & FLAC

"Just like a buzzin' fly, I come into your life. Now I float away like honey in the sun."

Recorded during the same tour that produced the sublime Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, Tim Buckley was in fine vocal form for this October 1968 concert in Copenhagen, Denmark. As was the case throughout his fall 1968 European tour, Buckley was operating with only part of his formidable backing band: percussionist Carter C.C. Collins and stand-up bass player John Miller could not make the trip overseas due to the tour's financial constraints. As a result, and thoroughly in keeping with the improvisatory Jazz-influenced approach of Buckley's music at this point, "local" players stepped in to fill these spots at each stop on the tour. Whereas the show documented on Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 saw The Pentangle's Danny Thompson take over stand-up bass duties to great effect, the concert documented on The Copenhagen Tapes features no less than European Jazz legend Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, who, as a teenager, was so esteemed in Jazz circles that he was extended an invitation to join the Count Basie Orchestra of all things, which, amazingly, he refused. Also present for the Copenhagen concert was Buckley's inimitable sideman Lee Underwood, whose beautiful electric guitar-work, though completely improvised, always functioned as something of a harmonic anchor to Buckley's fearless vocal peregrinations. Buckley's approach to live performances at this point in his career was profoundly influenced by experimental Jazz; as Underwood explains, "For better or worse, Tim gave me and all his other musicians complete freedom. That is, he did not hire us as sidemen to simply play memorized parts. He hired us for our unique approaches to his music. We didn't have any input into the composing part, but the playing was ours alone, nearly all of it improvised." The Copenhagen Tapes is comprised of four lengthy tracks, the first of which, the 21 minute "I Don't Need It to Rain," supposedly intended as a vocal warm-up for Buckley, is nothing less than a tour-de-force. A bluesy slow-burner that finds Buckley frequently exploring the upper range of his seemingly elastic voice, the song also features some great ensemble work from vibe master David Friedman and Underwood. However, it is on the band's gorgeous rendition of "Buzzin' Fly" from Happy/Sad that Underwood's masterful contributions really step forward. Simultaneously carrying the melody and pushing the song beyond its Folk-Rock origins, Underwood's Telecaster weaves a fuzzy web of chiming notes for Buckley's soaring vocals to momentarily embrace and then transcend. In terms of fidelity, The Copenhagen Tapes is not the best-sounding Buckley live recording available; however, it captures him at the height of his improvisational powers, stretching his songs to their compositional limits and beyond, and for this, it is qualifies as essential Tim.

Robyn Hitchcock- "Devil's Radio" (2001) from Storefront Hitchcock

Here's a warm-up for some Soft Boys just around the corner:

Tim Buckley Series, #6: Tim Buckley- Goodbye and Hello (1967) MP3 & FLAC

"Though you have forgotten all of our rubbish dreams, I find myself searching through the ashes of our ruins."

If Tim Buckley's eponymous debut album  bore, too distinctly, the imprint of Elektra's desire to frame him as a baroque folk-singer with commercial aspirations (though ironically the album was all but ignored upon its release), then Buckley's second LP, Goodbye and Hello, offers a first glimmer of clarity into the restless, complicated, and singular artistic vision he was quickly developing. Buckley was all of twenty when he recorded this album, less than two years removed from playing with some high-school buddies in a band called The Bohemians. As was often the case from album to album during Buckley's career, the artistic leap between his debut and Goodbye and Hello was significant. This was due, in part, to Elektra's generous decision (given the commercial failure of the first album) to give Buckley and his "Recording Supervisor," Jerry Yester, who had previously manned the production booth for The Association, full artistic freedom in the studio. However, just as important to the success of the album was Buckley's personal growth both as a singer (he had developed an amazing vocal range, including a beautiful falsetto) and as a songwriter (he had already begun to abandon the conventions of the Folk-Rock genre he was identified with). Thematically, Goodbye and Hello traverses much darker territory than its precursor by offering a mix of political songs such as "No Man Can Find the War," a lovely pysche-folk Vietnam War protest song that begins ominously with a bomb blast effect and features a beautifully understated vocal performance by Buckley, and soul-baring introspective songs such as the album's indisputable masterpiece, "Phantasmagoria in Two," an infinitely haunting song with the feel of an Elizabethan ballad that explores the kind of fear and distrust that often kills love in its infancy. Although the live version of this song on Dream Letter: Live in London 1968  is arguably more powerful, the studio version has a languid, almost eerie feel that renders it just as essential. Another highlight is "I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain," which manages to capture the frenetic energy of Buckley's live work while subtly pointing the way to his more mature compositions. The song features some dynamic guitar playing from Buckley as he passionately sings to his ex-wife and child (yes, I mean Jeff), trying to explain, or better yet defend, his absence in their lives. Elektra saw big things for Buckley, so much so that the label's owner, Jac Holzman, rented a billboard on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood to promote the album. While Goodbye and Hello enjoyed only moderate commercial success, it raised the ante on the expectations put on Buckley by his record company and by his fans. As Holzman put it: "[T]he combined effect of his words, his music, his passion, his persona struck a particular resonance [....] He could express anguish that wasn't negative." The result of this was the emergence of Buckley's iconoclastic side that fueled his overt rejection of his status as a folk-singer/hippie-generation spokesman. Nowhere is this more clear than in his discussion of Goodbye and Hello's epic title track: "I just hate the motherfucker. It's like, 'OK motherfuckers, you want a protest song, here it is.' They were bugging the hell out of me so I figured, just this once, and then I wouldn't have to do it again."

T. Rex- S/T (1970) MP3 & FLAC

"A shape that was golden and crimson extended a claw to my frame. I sunk in the sand like an infant. I screamed but my tongue was lame."

Marc Bolan's decision to pick up the electric guitar may not have been as momentous as Bob Dylan's similar decision five years earlier, but in its own way, it created a ripple effect that was felt well into the seventies and beyond. More specifically, Bolan's re-invention of his sound, from the baroque freak-folk of Tyrannosaurus Rex to the harder, sex-drenched re-interpretation of early rock conventions that characterized T. Rex, is often credited as the true progenitor of the British Glam movement, which makes sense given that Glam is firmly grounded in the psychedelic and Art-Rock trends of the late sixties while also representing an overt rejection of the utopian tendencies of the era's counter-culture. Bolan is also credited with lending Glam its taste for musical theatrics, its androgynous sexuality, and its penchant for satin and glitter, all of which coalesced in T. Rex's legendary performance of the single "Hot Love" on Top of the Pops in 1971:

The seeds of Bolan's transformation can be traced back to a disastrous U.S. tour to promote Tyrannosaurus Rex's third album, Unicorn, during which his relationship with the other member of the duo, percussionist Steve Peregrine Took, suffered irreparably. The story goes that Took's replacement on the next album, Mickey Finn, lacked Took's backing-vocal abilities, which forced Bolan to double-track his own vocals, and in doing so, he stumbled on another element of the band's new sound. T. Rex, like its predecessor, Beard of Stars, is a transitional album through and through; however, unlike its predecessor, T. Rex bears some unmistakable signs pointing to the artistic heights Bolan would hit on the next three T. Rex albums. "Jewel" is a perfect example of this. At first glance, it sounds very much in the vein of the early Tyrannosaurus Rex albums with Bolan inhabiting his "bopping elf" persona and Finn providing some minimalist bongo accompaniment; however, just beneath the surface, the song burns along as an intense, bluesy rocker until the midway point, when Bolan offers a glimpse of the sound that would soon make him an icon. On "Diamond Meadows," the band utilizes what sounds like a string quartet to amp up the drama and beauty of the song, and while it does echo Bolan's earlier work to some degree, it sounds bigger and more fully formed in terms of melody and impact. One of the lesser-known gems found on T. Rex is "Seagull Woman," which has the distinction of being the first time Bolan worked with ex-Turtles Flo & Eddie, whose back-up vocals would play a major role in the success of Electric Warrior a year later. The song features one of Bolan's most beautifully understated vocals and a striking melody. Some characterize this album as little more than an an inferior warm-up for the classic albums that followed it, but T. Rex, in its own subtly prescient ways, is a worthy precursor to those albums.

Tim Buckley Series, #5: Tim Buckley- Honeyman: Recorded Live 1973 (1995) MP3 & FLAC

"And when the bee's inside the hive, you gonna holler in the thick of love. I'll buy you all the jag I can. This honey man's gonna sting you again."

Following the commercial and critical failure of Tim Buckley's now-legendary experimental Jazz-Folk albums, Blue Afternoon and Starsailor, he, to a great extent, withdrew from the music industry in order to deal with severe artistic and financial crises. His eventual return, though initially heralded by another great album, Greetings from L.A., marked the beginning of a slow descent into heroin addiction and a mostly unsuccessful attempt to adopt a more commercially viable sound that would have his career in shambles by the time of his tragic death (from an accidental heroin overdose) in 1975. The unconvincing results of Buckley's awkward embrace of Funk, particularly on his final studio albums, Sefronia  and the utterly forgettable Look at the Fool, were largely attributable to a lack of urgency and of quality on the part of Buckley's songwriting, poor production choices, and uninspired session players. Given such a context, it might seem that a live recording of Buckley from this period would have nothing revelatory to offer, but Honeyman: Live 1973 suggests otherwise. While this recording isn't of the same luminous quality as Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, it does represent a dramatic re-contextualization of Buckley's later work due to arrangements that are far superior to what is found on Sefronia and Buckley's breathtaking vocal performance. The transformation is evident from the first notes of "Dolphins," which was done in by some horribly cheesy backing vocals on the studio version, but here, it is just Buckley strumming an electric 12-string guitar, minimal but effective backing from his band, and a world-weary cadence in his voice that sounds authentically heartbreaking. Even the funkier material benefits from the live setting; for example, "Get on Top," stripped of all the studio-schmaltz, turns out to be a fine vehicle for some of Buckley's trademark soaring vocals. After listening to Honeyman: Live 1973, it seems clear that much of awkwardness of Buckley's late-career studio albums was likely the result of record company pressure to push his music in a more commercial direction. However, Buckley's restless and fiercely original  muse was never a good fit for such an approach, which explains why out on the road, just playing his music, Buckley sounds as masterful and uncontainable as ever.

Epic Soundtracks- Change My Life (1996) MP3 & FLAC

"Right on time the words that rhyme came crashing through the door."

The story of Epic Soundtracks is one of those bizarre, twisted tales you can only find in the annals of rock music. He and brother Nikki Sudden had grown up idolizing Can and T-Rex and eventually found their own musical ambitions realized in the form of the short-lived but legendary Post-Punk band Swell Maps. Soundtracks had adopted his ironic stage name well-before his success in this band but for some reason went to the trouble of establishing a copyright on it. As a result, he was (quite hilariously) able to force Epic Records to rename its soundtrack division by threat of a lawsuit. Post-Swell Maps, Soundtracks issued a few singles before taking over the drumming duties in Nikki Sudden's brilliant band of Jangle-Pop wastrels, the Jacobites and later played drums in Rowland S. Howard's Crime and the City Solution and These Immortal Souls. While this is certainly an interesting bio by any standards, he saved the strangest chapter for last: the 1990s resurrection of his fledgling solo career, this time as a piano-based pop balladeer (well, sort of). Epic Soundtracks released three solo-albums before his untimely death in November of 1997, the last of which was Change My Life on which he had started to vary some of the song arrangements by branching out into Jangle-Pop, Motown, and Big Star-inspired Power-Pop. For example, "Steal Away" has a decidedly Specter-era Motown feel, and features one of Soundtrack's trademark sweet and shaggy vocal turns that really shouldn't work, but it does. Another standout is "Wishing Well," which sounds like a ragged John Lennon piano ballad and offers a beautiful example of Epic Soundtracks' gift for pure pop convention. As with his brother, many critics tend to focus on Soundtrack's limited vocal abilities, but also like his brother, his voice carries a raw, immediate expressiveness that more than makes up for what it lacks in range and polish.

Tim Buckley Series, #4: Tim Buckley- Sefronia (1973) MP3 & FLAC

"This old world will never change the way it's been."

The purest distillation of Tim Buckley's creative muse is encapsulated in the trilogy of Jazz-inflected experimental albums he released in 1969-1970: Lorca, Blue Afternoon, and Starsailor. These were intensely personal and uncompromising documents of Buckley's unique musical vision, but all three met with a lack of comprehension from critics and a lack of interest from the record-buying public. This period was an extremely tough time for Buckley both personally and financially, as he was crushed by the cold reception to his most ground-breaking works and consequently suffered so much financially that he had to occasionally work as a chauffeur and cab driver to makes ends meet. When Buckley returned to the studio in the early seventies, he had largely left behind the highly improvised Jazz-Folk hybrid he had been exploring since the late-sixties and instead pursued, with decidedly mixed results, his own idiosyncratic version of Funk-inspired Soul. Sefronia  was Buckley's second album in this vein and while the first, Greetings from L.A., still retained, to some degree, his improvisational approach to vocals, its follow-up comes off as a badly (mis)calculated attempt at chasing mainstream success. To begin with, Soul isn't the best vehicle for Buckley's voice, and to make matters worse, he is backed by L.A. session musicians ill-equipped to do justice to the music itself. Nevertheless, we're talking about Tim Buckley here, and that means his voice alone offers some moments of redemption for the album. For example, on the cover of Fred Neil's "Dolphins," a far superior live version of which can be found on Dream Letter: Live in London 1968, Buckley offers an understated performance (by his standards) that, coupled with Lee Underwood's always lovely guitar work, makes for a promising, if not inauspicious beginning to the album; however, towards the end of the song, back-up singers (in the worst sense of the term) leap into the mix and overwhelm the song's fragile emotional content with the kind of cheesiness that is far beneath an artist like Buckley. Things get even worse on "Peanut Man," an awkward attempt at white-boy Funk that will leave permanent cringe-lines on your face. Despite moments like this, Sefronia also contains the two-part title suite, which echos Buckley's experimental work three years earlier. While not of the same caliber as the earlier work, these songs are free of the arrangement-related missteps that sink much of the album, and feature Buckley's multi-octave voice set free from the prison of bad Funk. While nowhere near as accomplished as his earlier work, Sefronia stands as a last glimpse of Buckley's prodigious talents.