The Velvet Forum

Musicologist discovers tape of unreleased Lou Reed music:

A dozen previously unreleased songs by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame artist Lou Reed have been discovered on one side of a cassette tape from 1975, currently stored in the archives of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. The songs are based on Warhol’s book, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again).”

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/1 ... eed-music

Sounds amazingly cool but doesn't sound like it will be available to the general public anytime soon. The article and snippets of songs can be heard here: https://jm.ucpress.edu/content/36/4/401.article-info
(I don't have a subscription to the journal but I'll see if I have access to the full article tomorrow on my work computer)

Another article https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/arts ... -tape.html

This is real exciting stuff, although the scholar's emphasis on the A-side contents, a collection of L.R. live performances which might be great but also somewhat commonplace, seems misplaced given the far greater significance of finding new and essentially unknown songs on the B-side. As if "I'll Be Your Mixtape" isn't an annoying enough title on the face of it, It's a real stretch to call the thing a mixtape. The revelation in the Times article that Lou used an Eagles tape as his "blank" is a juicy bit of added detail.

With gratitude and respect to pineappleaftermath, https://jm.ucpress.edu/content/36/4/401.figures-only goes to the page with the sound clips. The five pieces available there are:

1. "Kicks" - Perth performance
2. "Kicks" - "demo with jetphaser (excerpt)"
3. "I Wanna Be Black" - "demo with overdubs (excerpt)"
4. "Leave Me Alone" - "overdub demo (excerpt)"
5. "Philosophy Song (excerpt)"

An additional piece of B-side song can be heard in the first 0:15 of the promo video linked to in pineappleaftermath's post (with a downloadable MP3/audio-only version at https://tinyurl.com/yymctxky), before the scholar ruins the rest with her yappery.

That and clip #5 appear to be the only portions from the B-side. #5 runs 0:31, too brief to get much of a feel for the song. More excitingly for my money, there's an edit between the bulk of the clip and its last seven seconds, with the latter (and only on the L channel at that) sounding like a portion of Metal Machine Music, played in what might be its original speed, and sounding to me like chording through effects as opposed to feedback. Given the dating of 1975, what we might have here is a glimpse, brief as it is, of Metal Machine Music in development, or perhaps a "demo version"!

Great stuff! I really hope we hear more of this unreleased tape. Here's hoping it doesn't get bogged down in legal / record company / estate / Warhol foundation release difficulties.

Lou needs an extensive box set of unreleased, demos and live to tie all this stuff together..

Unfortunately I think it is very bogged down by legalities. From what I have read it seems the tapes from the Warhol archive are not accessible to the general public and cannot be released (but are available for scholars). The author of this work could not even quote lyrics directly because the work is a combination of Warhol’s words and Lou’s lyrics. She managed to describe things based on references to other sources like interviews and managed to include audio clips because portions of the songs are found on a tape in Lou’s NYPL archive and his estate gave permission to include them.
She also makes an interesting point about Warhol’s video and tape methods (disjointed cuts, recording everything around you) inspiring the tape interjections in the song ‘Kicks’, which I had never connected before but makes sense.

She also makes an interesting point about Warhol’s video and tape methods (disjointed cuts, recording everything around you) inspiring the tape interjections in the song ‘Kicks’, which I had never connected before but makes sense.

That might explain the severe (in the sense of aesthetic contrast) edit in the #5 piece.

That jetphaser'd Kicks is incredible. As I was telling bleach, THIS is the stuff that fans want. Imagine a collection of bizarre, tripped out Lou experimentations like that! It's unfortunate that 99% of Lou-philes, who can appreciate this stuff, will never be able to hear it as Andy was meant to.

Whether it's Andy's or Lou's estate that's at fault for keeping so much of Lou's music behind bars doesn't matter. The tragedy here is that people who love Lou's music the most, and would pay for it, will never be able to.

But how about a reprint of Lou's book of lyrics? EVERYBODY wants that, right? RIGHT?!

Lou Reed himself and also Sterling Morrison or Nico, could have released a lot of stuff while they were still alive. Remember the Velvets didn't record their concerts or rehearsals and wiped some tapes according to legend. So did they want it to be available ? And Cale still have a lot of reels, nothing came out.
For me these guys died a second time.
Dylan issued the bootleg series and a lot of other stuff of interest right now.

pineappleaftermath wrote: ↑

31 Oct 2019 00:49

Musicologist discovers tape of unreleased Lou Reed music:

A dozen previously unreleased songs by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame artist Lou Reed have been discovered on one side of a cassette tape from 1975, currently stored in the archives of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. The songs are based on Warhol’s book, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again).”

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/1 ... eed-music

Sounds amazingly cool but doesn't sound like it will be available to the general public anytime soon. The article and snippets of songs can be heard here: https://jm.ucpress.edu/content/36/4/401.article-info
(I don't have a subscription to the journal but I'll see if I have access to the full article tomorrow on my work computer)

A lame PR exercise for Judith Peraino and Cornell University.

Man you guys are pessimistic!