First Listen - "Run Run Run" by The Velvet Underground (Hip Hop Fan Reacts)
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- Опубліковано 26 тра 2023
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The Velvet Underground barely made a blip on the charts back then. All these years later, they are considered to be one of the greatest bands of all time. "Run Run Run" reminds me a lot of the characters Bob Dylan came up with in his mid-sixties albums.
Their live stuff is unbelievable
Not being well, getting sick, and needing a fix are all signs of withdrawal.
As for the sound, I think it was done to create the effect of the painful "noise" one who was either going through withdrawal or dying from overdoses would experience. Lou Reed used uncomfortably high gain (treble) and volume, coupled with extremely sharp, quickly picked string attacks, to replicate the initial heroin rush, as you'll see when you get to the song "Heroin" later in this album.
Her-oo-iiiin...will get the best of me 🎶
The circular bass motif at the end of "White Light/White Heat" was meant to evoke the feeling of an amphetamine rush.
"When she turned blue, all the angels screamed" is referring to an overdose. Try checking out Husker Du's "Pink Turns to Blue" also about an OD
Yeah, Seasick Sarah didn't make it.
Or the intro to Iggy Pop's "Tonight":
"I saw my baby
She was turning blue
I knew that soon
Her young life was through
And so I got down on my knees
Down by her bed
And these are the words
To her I said...."
These characters who appear are people or composites of people they knew in their everyday unusual lives. It’s amazing they lived as long as they did, and in fact John Cale and Maureen Tucker are still alive and Cale is touring.
Underground, garage band, Dylanesc, bluesey. 60s experimental blues/rock. Ala Canned Heat, and Country Joe. Little production and very raw. This song takes me back to a very specific time.
Dylan-esque* ❤
The Velvwts are one of the most influential and important bands in the history of rock music.
Andy Warhol's Factory (the one where he met the VU) was at 231 E 47th Street.
This album was co-produced by Tom Wilson who produced Dylan’s early albums up to Highway 61 Revisited (I think only Like a Rolling Stone on that album) as well as Simon and Garfunkel’s first album.
He got them signed. Unsung hero.
The mix sounds fine to me. Great music makes its own world with its own rules.
Gypsy death means overdose in that time's slang I believe.
Nobody listened to music with headphones in the 1960's; either a mono record player or a transistor radio (maybe w a wired earphone for one ear). If you had a stereo, the separation wouldn't be that wide, so the two channels would run together in the open room anyway. Also, a lot of rock recordings were purposefully distorted to create an illusion of loudness.
Lou Reed's lyrics are very much in the tradition of American Confessional poetry (Delmore Schwartz, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton), hardboiled and underground fiction (Raymond Chandler, Nelson Algren, John Rechy, Hubert Selby, Jr.), and the Beats (Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs). He writes about taboo subjects in a style that is terse, stark, matter-of-fact, and yet intensely personal and idiosyncratic.
The majority of Lou Reed's early drug songs -- such as "I'm Waiting for the Man", "Heroin", and "White Light/White Heat" -- are written in the first-person voice of a user describing his experience. In contrast, "Run Run Run" is written in the disinterested third-person voice of a jaded back-alley raconteur -- possibly a drug dealer -- which adds a curious layer of ambiguous, alienated irony to its overall narrative framing. The song's four verses are structured as self-contained vignettes or anecdotes that describe various oddballs and misfits run-run-running downtown to chase the ultimate drug-induced high which will always end in a fatal overdose. Like "Heroin", "Run Run Run" juxtaposes lurid descriptions of drug use with impassioned and somewhat disturbing religious imagery ("I sold my soul, must be saved" and "When she turned blue, all the angels screamed"). The discordant improvised guitar solos that follow each verse (and repetition of the chorus) evoke the ecstatic rush and spiritual epiphany experienced by the addict before he or she finally succumbs to oblivion.
With its relentless, rattling-around-in-a-metal-garbage-can Bo Diddley-goes-Motorik beat overlaid with oddly tuned twangy guitar lines that keep veering off into chaos -- skittering and screeching like so many derailed trains before finally resolving themselves in the same insistent one-chord blues riff -- the sparse, dissonant music conjures the bleak, miserable experience of junkies riding the New York City subway with raw nerves all in a jumble as they hunger for their next fix as if it were their divine deliverance.
Love when Lou gets nuts on the guitar, there's more rhythm there than you can hear if you listen to it again and again. I never understood the choice of vocal on the hook but otherwise I love the song. Great analysis and reaction 👍.
The distortion and the feedback are intentional, the dissonance is the point. There’s a profound sense of unease and alienation that permeated the culture and bled into a subculture of the era. There’s an ennui, a boredom and tremendous despair. It’s so obvious today but back then it was so ahead of it’s time
And the later Factory was on Union Square.
I used to walk through there on my way to work when I first moved to NYC in the early 80s and I would occasionally catch a glimpse of Warhol on the street. He was my good luck charm. On the days that I saw him, I would have a good day at cold calling offices from phonebooks from all around the country to sell typewriter ribbons. We used to fake that we were from IBM. God, am I old! ☠️😂
Can’t wait for the rest of the album love your reaction’s ✌🏻❤️
Marguerita Passion was in the clutch of heroin withdrawals---that's why she was getting sick. Needed her heroin fix before it got horrific.
Came here to say this.
John Cale's badass bassline!
Most bluesy, and also most clearly Bob Dylan influenced - especially in the lyrics. The Velvets took there influences from everywhere, even if they sneered at a lot of the era's pop.
As others have commented, "sick" is withdrawal, and I thing "Gypsy death" is a reference to the junkie's sad end rather than an actual person maybe? Good song from a groundbreaking band and great analysis!
"Beardless Harry" sounds like a kid, come downtown because he couldn't get supplied in his "small town." Adding a hayseed to the cast, as it were. I will second Mark Hodge in recommending Country Joe and the Fish; their satirical, outrageous "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" was the most _de rigueur_ of all 1960s Vietnam protest songs.
I remember going to buy the Woodstock album with my mother, and the clerk made her listen to the "Fish Cheer" on headphones before he would sell me the record. Too many appalled parents had been coming in demanding refunds! Luckily my mother was a tolerant sort...I got the album.
Excellent insight. Beardless Harry was the one I couldn't quite figure out, but I think you nailed it.
I’ve always been a VU and a Lou Reed fan. Check out Blue Mask from Lou. I think you’d dig it. Very underrated album.
This one turns on Moe Tucker’s great duh-DAH-dah drumming, IMO
Wonder what he's going to think about Heroin, and don't even bring up White Light White Heat. All Punk should bow to Cale and Reed.
I'm waiting for that reaction too!
The VU were a bit before my time and don't know much of their catalogue but it's interesting to pick out things they influenced. The guitar solo sounds like it influenced "Pablo Picasso" by the Modern Lovers, which isn't at all surprising. But that "chugga chugga" bluesy rhythm line struck me as similar to what ELP used in their Fanfare for the Common Man, which is very surprising.
Velvet's album Loaded is right up there in my favorite albums, check out Who Loves The Sun, so different to all other Velvet's stuff. When you say the mix on Run Run Run is not good I totally disagree, it's perfect for the song. Something to remember that Velvet Underground member John Cale is a legendary music producer with credits including Stooges, Patti Smith, Modern Lovers, Squeeze and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Sounds like Highway 61 Revisited
"If you're into the Dandy Warholes you might like this, I don't listen to them anymore." my boss said as he handed over The Velvet Underground's entire discography on CDs. I didn't listen to much else for the next 4 years, then had to force myself off them as it had become almost unhealthy. I then took up the mission to start listening to what I imagined would've been their musical influences from the time, and that became it's own rabbit hole. Only began to come back to contemporary music a few years ago.
This was 1967, & Lou Reeds’ view of the Summer of Love. Love his live Rock and Roll Animal LP. Great versions of Sweet Jane & Rock & Roll & many others. ✌️❤️🎶
the album is almost like a descent into hell...waking up on Sunday Morning with beauty and hope before running to the dope dealer, meeting the girl who might have gotten you into it, finding a way for pain then story after story of women and men being dope sick or stuck in an endless cycle of addiction pain or abuse before the endless chaos of European Son which is insanely chaotic and feels like the the destruction of the/one's world at the end...devastating and brilliant simultaneously
You could try Lou Reed on his own - Dirty Boulevard paints a picture of New York/ America
That's a great one. Walk on the Wild Side is another.
With European Son and to a lesser extent Black Angel Death Song, this is one of my 3 least favourite tracks on the album. I just don't feel like listening to them much. There's nothing wrong with them really but the rest of the album is so captivating and brilliant. This album was released 10 weeks before Sgt Pepper! I find - and have always found - The VU & Nico by far the more compelling record.
👍🏼
This album is a descent into Hell...so avant garde...not pretty but brilliant....not what you really want to inspire but a brilliant portrait of what is and was there...not sounding great adds to the chaos...there was not a ton of money being poured into something like this. the best production is on European Son which is total chaos
Souns a lot like Dylan's Highway 61.
This album was produced by Andy Warhol> I think the overall sound is due to Warhol not knowing the first thing about recording music. For some reason the poor production suits the songs perfectly. Once they dropped Warhol their records sounded cleaner with less distortion and more depth of sound
From a musical point of view, Warhol had nothing to do with the production. Crediting Warhol as producer on TVU&N gave the band artistic freedom, regarding the streetwise and provocative lyrics as also their sinister and menacing sounds. Tom Wilson was the actual producer, he had also produced Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention, Eric Burdon & The Animals (some quite sinister 60's psychedelia!) and plenty more.
O love this album but pls could you react to George Harrison - Art of Dying
I've noticed you haven't done anymore Beatles reaction for the past 2 weeks. I'm hoping nothing copyright wise has stopped you from doing them?
If so, we will follow you elsewhere to hear them. Just let us know where. And if you're just taking a break from The Beatles that's cool too.
It takes a month for the videos to be released.
they are on their way trust me
@@SyedRewinds Awesome. Since it takes a month I'll put this recommendation in now, then. Especially from Sgt. Peppers on I'd really strongly recommend not missing a single song. What really makes The Beatles so special is just how consistent they are from song to song, and how different they all are from each other.
There's tons of bands I love, but no others that released 12+ albums of which I enjoy listening to every single song and skip none of them. Usually there's certain periods of bands I love, and then other lessen albums that I don't listen to on the regular. For The Beatles I listen to it all.
Oh, also something really important to point out. Despite Let It Be being released a year after Abbey Road, Abbey Road was their last album recorded. It 100% should be listened to last, as it's really the close out album of their career as a band and they knew it would be their last album when writing and recording it. This is something basically every Beatles fan knows but someone looking at their discography would naturally do in the wrong order.
Hey Syed. Love (mostly) early Lou and VU but PROMISE me you will never, ever listen (endure) Lou's Metal Machine Music. It's his eff off album and is hideous beyond human endurance. IMHO. 😅
I think he's "chasing the dragon".
Never chase the dragon. It doesn't end well. I met the dragon once.
Kurt Cobain's chord progressions were smart, inventive, surprising yet they'd amaze you that nobody'd quite come up with them before. Making it look and sound easy is part of the craft, so don't be so quickly dismissive.
A teenage Mary is a teenage gay boy.
Messed up people, getting messed up and playing messed up songs on messed up recordings.
Or in other words, art.
@@marialupinacci5283 Yep, great art.
@@BlueSky... absolutely.
Say, Do me a favor and notice the extremely long time periods before you will hit a female artist. How about Carly Simon's That's The Way I've Always Heard it Should Be. Or Eurythmics: Would I Lie To You
John Cale's badass bassline!