Tag: The Velvet Underground

HIGH NOTES: 7 Songs About Heroin, Because It’s Not So Passe

Heroin is not a drug you fuck around with. It is not a drug you joke about. But it is a drug you can sing about — and one that many people have sung about, in fact. From 50 Cent to the Rolling Stones, here are some songs shedding light on all the different dimensions of one of the world’s most addictive and life-consuming drugs.

“Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth” by the Dandy Warhols

This fun track is actually very morbid, leaving no doubt as to what it’s about with the opening line, “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passe.” Apparently, it’s not, because the song topped charts when it came out in 1997. In case the lyrics aren’t macabre enough, the video features dancing needles and gravestones — an odd juxtaposition with the colorful scenery and exuberant dancing.

“Needle in the Hay” by Elliott Smith

This gorgeously haunting song seems to tell the story of Smith’s own heroin addiction, with the “needle in the hay” representing the needle he’d shoot up with. “The White Lady Loves You More,” off the same self-titled album, is also debatably about heroin and/or cocaine.

“Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis has said that this song was about a low point in his heroin addiction, when he shot up under a bridge in LA, and his desire to never be in that place again. The last verse gives away the meaning: “Under the bridge downtown / Is were I drew some blood / Under the bridge downtown / I could not get enough / Under the bridge downtown / Forgot about my love / Under the bridge downtown / I gave my life away.”

“Pool Shark” by Sublime

In this incredibly depressing song, Sublime’s frontman Bradley Nowell sings, “Now I’ve got the needle / And I can’t bleed, but I can’t breathe / Take it away and I want more and more.” The last line — “one day I’m gonna lose the war” — eerily foreshadows Nowell’s 1996 death from a heroin overdose.

“A Baltimore Love Thing” by 50 Cent

50 Cent sings about struggling to detox from heroin here, personifying the drug as if it were an on-and-off lover. “Let’s make a date, promise you’ll come to see me / Even if it means you have to sell ya mama’s TV,” he raps. Formerly a drug dealer, 50 Cent has said that he has managed to become drug-free.

“Heroin Girl” by Everclear

“I can hear them talking in the real world / But they don’t understand that I’m losing myself / In a white-trash hell / Lost inside a heroin girl,” declares Everclear’s lead singer Art Alexakis. Like most songs on this list, this one ends morbidly: “They found her out in the fields / About a mile from home / Her face was warm from the sun / But her body was cold / I heard a policeman say / Just another overdose.”

“I’m Waiting For The Man” by The Velvet Underground

“The man” in this song is ostensibly a heroin dealer, who’s “got the works, gives you sweet taste / Ah then you gotta split because you got no time to waste.” Lou Reed later told Rolling Stone that “everything about that song holds true, except the price” — $26, in case you’re wondering.

ONLY NOISE: “Pale Blue Eyes” Reminds Me of a Friend I Had But Couldn’t Keep

ONLY NOISE explores music fandom with poignant personal essays that examine the ways we’re shaped by our chosen soundtrack. This week, Taylor Ysteboe tries to reconcile platonic versus romantic love through Lou Reed, whose lyrics spoke to her when her own words failed.

Her name was Alexandra, and I thought she was the weirdest person I had ever met. She changed her hair color as often as the seasons changed. She made mix CDs out of discs that looked like miniature 45s. She was obsessed with The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Although we first met in fourth grade, we didn’t really get to know each other until our junior year of high school. She became my best friend, and we were inseparable. We shared everything with each other: our interests, our dreams, our secrets. With Alexandra, I no longer felt different. I felt whole, wanted. Other friends didn’t quite understand me – I didn’t fit into their mold that had been shaped by our conservative and religious town. But Alexandra always understood.

A few months after our friendship was rekindled, I sent her “Pale Blue Eyes” by the Velvet Underground, telling her it was the perfect song – a label I don’t apply lightly. I told her it was the type of song I could imagine myself dancing to with a tall, handsome man, perhaps as it rained outside. (Later on, it was her who I imagined dancing with.) And she just got it. She heard the yearning, the love in Lou Reed’s voice, and she felt it, too. Through that song, we were connected by an infinite, invisible string.

If I could make the world as pure
And strange as what I see
I’d put you in a mirror
I put in front of me

The song itself is about Reed’s first love, the one who got away, and he wrote “Pale Blue Eyes” in response. You can hear the hurt in his voice and in his guitar at the foreground as a faithful tambourine keeps time. But there’s content resignation, too. He accepts that she’ll never love him like he wants her to love him, but he’d rather live with this feeling than live without her.

And I fell in love, too. I didn’t mean to, not really. I didn’t even know that’s what it was at first. I loved her heart. Her hair crinkled by bleach. Her bright laugh that reminded me of sunlight. I loved her with every part of me. How Reed sang about his lost love is how I felt about Alexandra. I couldn’t risk our friendship, though, so I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want her to cut that string that held us together.

Looking back now, there’s something truly special about your relationships in high school. It’s often the first time you fall in love. Sometimes it’s the romantic kind of love. Other times it’s the platonic kind. Both are pure, exhilarating. I’d never experienced anything like that, and I was scared shitless I’d never experience it again. I wanted to hold on to Alexandra, just in case that was true.

Alexandra moved midway through junior year. We tried to keep in touch, but that invisible string grew more and more taut. It worked for awhile, until it didn’t. By the time we both entered college, we were strangers. The string broke.

Thought of you as my mountaintop
Thought of you as my peak
Thought of you as everything
I had but couldn’t keep

I miss sitting with her in the cafeteria before the morning bell rang, watching her carefully and tenderly sketch in art class, getting milkshakes on a Friday night, lying down on the soda-stained carpet of the movie theater after a late showing. I miss it all.

Even now, a few years later, I miss it all. I miss her. We’ve both graduated college and are going down our own paths, but I still think about her and what we had. Some days I think that our friendship was beautiful and could have grown into something more. Other days I think that our friendship was beautiful and just that. I couldn’t keep her. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to. When I think of her, I think of “Pale Blue Eyes” as our song. Lou Reed’s words linger on, but she is just an echo.

NEWS ROUNDUP: NYC’s Music Industry “Thriving,” SXSW Updates & More

  • Shea Stadium Closes Again

    The venue cited “increasing pressure from the local authorities” and the fines that come along with getting permits to keep the beloved DIY venue open as the reason for closing again. The Facebook post that broke the news stated the team behind Shea Stadium hoped to reopen as soon as possible. The venue’s troubles started in January, when a show was raided by police and the venue closed for a short period of time. Unfortunately, this bit of news segues right into our next item…

  • NYC Mayor Investigation Finds Small Venues Threatened

    Meanwhile, a study conducted by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed the thriving economic presence of the music industry in The Big Apple, one that generated $21 billion in 2015 and employs over 30,000 of its denizens, particularly through digital music services and start-ups. This was enough for the some to declare NYC the music capital of the world. But that same study warns that the city’s smaller venues, DIY spaces and artists who frequent them instead of major, corporate venues remain vulnerable, while conveniently forgetting to omit that their permit procedures and strict enforcement of policies are directly responsible for the threat. Read the full report here.

  • SXSW Removes Immigration Language From Contract

    Last week, the music industry was in an uproar over a deportation clause in South By Southwest’s performers contract that threatened international artists with being turned over to the immigration authorities and getting their passports revoked for as little as playing an unofficial SXSW show. A petition was quickly started by Told Slant (who first tweeted about the language in the contract), Priests, Downtown Boys, and many other musicians voicing protest over the policy. After skirting the issue with poor excuses, SXSW apologized and promised to remove the deportation clause. From the writers of the petition: “We applaud SXSW’s decision to stand with immigrants and against ICE, and are thrilled that collective action from musicians has worked to push a massive institution into taking a principled stand on an issue with ramifications far beyond next week’s festival in Austin.” The musical portion of the festival starts next week.

  • Other Highlights

    Listen to Kim Gordon & Mikal Cronin’s anti-Trump song, Chance The Rapper donated a ton of money to Chicago schools, Happy 50th Birthday to The Velvet Underground & Nico, a tech company has an interesting way to influence your fetus’s musical tastes, and there’s a rare, $400,000 guitar burning holes in bidders’ pockets on Ebay.


FLASHBACK FRIDAY: “The Murder Mystery”

The_Velvet_Underground_by_gfoyleWhen I sat down to write my first entry for Audiofemme, I knew that I wanted to write about Lou Reed. While there are undoubtedly swarms of articles surfacing in memory of the late Lou Reed, I found that journalists mostly took one of two routes; some discussed Reed’s life and his social impact in popular culture, while others discussed his influence on punk, rock and alternative music. Being a lifelong Velvet Underground and Lou Reed fan, I believe that Reed’s actual musical contributions are what should be commemorated in the wake of his recent passing. I will highlight here one of the Velvet Underground’s more underrated songs, “The Murder Mystery”, off of their 1969 self-titled album.

If you have never heard “The Murder Mystery” before, listen to it immediately. It’s one of the Velvet’s quintessential songs, incorporating rhythmic and melodic dissonance, sound feedback and unconventional composition. “The Murder Mystery” consists of four different songs that have been forced together to create one song . Each member of the group sings/recites their own narrative. These narratives are constantly clashing. All four band members (Reed, Maureen Tucker, Sterling Morrison and Doug Yule) speak over each other, either by overlapping the other’s narrative, reciting lines at half the speed of the other, or by completely clashing.

The song is just shy of  nine minutes long, and is divided into two parts, with a brief transitional section.  The first five minutes follow the same format, consisting of verses with two narratives directly clashing while Tucker and Yule sing a brief chorus of overlapping melodies. At around six minutes into the song the music starts to climax and the rhythms develop dissonance as the music becomes increasingly discordant. This is elevated when the track is suddenly filled with feedback and Yule haphazardly slams on the keys of a organ.

The final section is the most interesting. Amongst all this disorder, a poppy, upbeat chord pattern is introduced on the organ. The discordance fades as the organ increases and the last verse of the previous section is cut short mid-word. This new section is accompanied by new vocal patterns, where two different narratives are recited in unison.  The organ accelerates and the lyrics of the song become increasingly macabre.

“…contempt, contempt, and contempt for the seething for writhing and reeling and two-bit

reportage, for sick with the body and sinister holy, the drown burst blue babies now dead

on the seashore, the valorous horseman, who hang from the ceiling, the pig on the

carpet, the dusty pale jissom…”

The music accelerates as clashing chords and notes appear amongst the original pattern. Someone smashes on the organ once again, as a mountain of noise builds briefly only to fade out. The dichotomy between the cheerful melody and the morose lyrics creates a sinister atmosphere that adds to the unsettling feeling that “The Murder Mystery” leaves you with.

The lyrics of the whole song are extremely esoteric and hard to interpret. Most of the song feels like a flow of consciousness, making it impossible to follow. At times it seems like they are ranting about the superficiality of the popular music scene:

 “ …with cheap simian melodies, hillbilly outgush, for illiterate ramblings for cheap

understanding the simple the inverse, the compost, the reverse, the obtuse and stupid,

and business, and business, and cheap, stupid lyrics, and simple mass reverse while

the real thing is dying…”

At other times it just seems like the lyrics are so meaningless that they are mocking the listeners:  “No nose is good news” . Sometimes they are self-referential, making subtle nods to “Sister Ray” and “Black Angel’s Death Song.”

To say that I completely understand this track would be a lie. It is, however, one of the Velvet’s most innovative and unconventional songs.  The Velvet Underground made a creative shift on this album, most likely as a result of John Cale’s departure from the group. Other members of the group began to feature more prominently, and Reed moved away from his power rock guitar chords to a more lo-fi folk sound. Listen to the “The Murder Mystery” first all together, and then listen to it again with only one ear to your headphones, to decipher each narrative.

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