Thursday, September 15, 2011

Do the Ostrich: The Strange World of Pre-Velvet Underground Lou Reed



Yes, I’ve done the whole theme lately of sixties and seventies rock and roll oddities( “Once You Understand” by Think, “Moulty” by The Barbarians, and “Mr. Turnkey” by Zager and Evans) and also for a long time I’ve been anticipating the release of this album with Lou Reed and Metallica. This material is sort of an oddity, although not nearly the sick joke that the other oldies oddities mentioned above are. This is Lou Reed in 1964 before the Velvet Underground recording under the name The Primitives. That and many other curiosities of pre-Velvet Underground Lou Reed have resurfaced on YouTube. He worked for a small record company called Pickwick Records as a songwriter and session guitarist.



Lou Reed made fairly atonal electric guitar music as far back as the early 60’s. Phil Spector was a very strange guy at that point, his music wasn’t that odd though. The only music that I’ve heard that is quite this ahead of this time from the era is the soundtrack that a teenage Frank Zappa did for a very hard to find film called The World’s Greatest Sinner. I actually reviewed the World’s Greatest Sinner back when I used to write for Polly Staffle back in 2010. The World’s Greatest Sinner soundtrack is truthfully similar. This is very dissonant, hard music that re-calls late 70’s and early 80’s punk and goth type bands but existed in the early 60’s. The distinctive harsh Velvet Underground guitar sound was already developed on these tracks.

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