I loved everything about this band they were cool and sounded so different from anything else. The edginess of Waiting For My Man to the nearly toothache sweetness of Sunday Morning to the strange cold out of tune vocals of Nico on All Tomorrow’s Parties (“like an IBM computer with a German accent” is how Andy Warhol described it), which I realised I knew from Japan’s cover, instantly won me over. I could not believe that this album was from the same period as Forever Changes, Are You Experienced and other records the hippy types had introduced me to. I eventually sourced a copy of the first album from a pal, Gregor’s older brother who was friends with a guy who was friends with a Soup Dragon and a sometime member of the BMX Bandits and who would give me my first taste of garage/psych in the form of a C90 a little later. I had of course heard Walk on the Wild Side and Transformer but not The Velvet Underground and Nico or to my knowledge anything else by the band.
Up until I heard Upside Down I was a rather confused hippy/punk who also had a thing for the girl groups of the 1960s which I kept to myself, the pelters for wearing a Italian Army Field Jacket with the Steppenwolf wolf’s head painted on the back of it, Ozzy Osborne fringes sewn on the sleeves and Crass & Clash badges on the breast pockets and shod in moccasins was enough ammunition for the “cool crowd” without also divulging a love for Be My Baby.Īnyway it all changed late 1984 early 1985 with the Reid Brothers I was intrigued by the Velvet Underground. My love of the Velvet Underground stems back to 1985 when I sought them out after the comparisons made with my then favourite new band The Jesus and Mary Chain in all the articles that I devoured regarding the misfits from EK. “Modern music begins with the Velvets, and the implications and influence of what they did seem to go on forever” – Lester Bangs
A GUEST POSTING FROM DREW (ACROSS THE KITCHEN TABLE)
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