details Up-tight - Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams performed at EPI

[threechordwonder]

Here's a brief quote from Peter Hogan's Dead Straight Guide book, reviewing the first disc of Peel Slowly and See (the rehearsals).



It looks like everyone got to bash that poor sarinda.

And here's a sarinda.

[hkmartin]

I was just reviewing the old thread on Electra (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3372&p=18272), and I came across this mention of an interview later in her life where Electra refuted Cale's recollection of her playing any instruments, though what I heard on the demo isn't necessarily inconsistent with this. Whoever was hitting the sarinda (if it really was a sarinda) wasn't exactly "playing" it.

Interviewed by the author in 2011 and 2012, Lobel (who now uses her given first name Marcia, having picked up the nickname Elektrah at a party on San Francisco’s Haight Street) didn’t remember much about her brief stint with Lou and John, but did want to clarify her role in the pre-Velvets. “When I was with them, I never played any instruments,” she emphasizes, denying the anecdotes Cale recounted as her playing a guitar with bleeding fingers: “I was a singer. This thing about me breaking a guitar or something, that was not me!”

(I was going to credit the original poster in the old thread, but it apparently was myself!)

[mangue]

Thanks to all who replied in this topic, but so far comments are about 1965 demo version[s], while I'm after WYTiD played at EPI performances [1966-67], as described by Ingrid Superstar in Up-tight.
So basically info [preferably contemporary] about live versions of WYTiD performed between the 1965 demos and 1967 Nico's CG version.
For my specific questions see the starting post in this topic.

[Wick Pick]

Worth mentioning is that on the January 1st, 1966 rehearsal tape, Sterling Morrison can be heard playing the riff to Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams(right before Lou asks him to play Walk Alone) on his electric guitar. Sounds pretty enticing, and to me might just be the best (non) version of the song.
Great thread by the way.
Wick (I hate my name)

[mangue]

Worth mentioning is that on the January 1st, 1966 rehearsal tape, Sterling Morrison can be heard playing the riff to Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams(right before Lou asks him to play Walk Alone) on his electric guitar. Sounds pretty enticing, and to me might just be the best (non) version of the song.
Great thread by the way.
Wick (I hate my name)

Thank You!!
Don't have those recordings at hand now [stil didn't unpack everything after moving], will dig it up and listen in the weekend.

[mangue]

Personally, I'm interested to know if they performed It Was a Pleaure Then at the EPI. That's my favorite collaboration of theirs with Nico.

Nico about It Was a Peasure Then.
Source: 1982.Mar.24, Muziekkrant OOR #6, page 25/27, interview by Bert van de Kamp [note in same issue on page 24/25 is an interview with Lou Reed by the same writer]

BvdK: Wanneer ben je begonnen met het schrijven van songs?
Nico: Ik ben er serieus mee begonnen in 1968*. Ik schreef er toen twee, waaronder It Was a Pleasure Then, tenminste de tekst, de muziek was volledig geimproviseerd.** Het was oke. Ik vind ze nu niet meer goed.

BvdK: When did you start writing songs?
Nico: I seriously started it in 1968*. I wrote two songs then, one was It Was a Pleasure Then, at least the text, the music was fully improvised.** It was OK. Now I don't anymore consider them being good.

*must be 1967 of course as IWaPT was recorded before 1967.Jul.21, when being mastered for the CG album [acc.the book "The Clef/Verve Labels: The MGM Era"]
**music by Cale and Reed as stated by Reed in interviews [see e.g.booklet of VU&N - 45yrs SDE]


Another interesting VU-Reed related part of the interview:
Q: Why did you leave the Velvet Underground?
N: They kicked me out, because I thought that John Cale's music was better than Lou Reed's. Lou got very jealous and threw me out of the band. Later he made up for it by dedicating Berlin to me.
Q: Caroline, the Germanic queen, that's you?
N: The whole album is about me. Lou himself has told me so! Later he has even written it several times in letters to me.

[mangue]

Just started checking some of my Up-tight detail questions in Unterberger's White Light/White Heat book, didn't find anything new about WYTiD, but found this as related and very interesting [to me at least]:

p145 [1967.April - Also...]:
Gregg Barrios notes that he supplied footage of Nico singing 'It Was A Pleasure Then' with The Velvet Underground for the promotional video put together by the Elektra label for the 1991 CD reissue of Nico's 1968 LP The Marble Index. This performance, he explains, was not shot at a concert, but as "a set-up for a later film called ****. The guys are in the background, [but] Andy just focuses on [Nico]. He was experimenting with these [strobe cuts], doing editing in the camera where you shut it off and then you reset the camera, then you turn it back on again. So it would say, 'It was a pleasure bztt bztt bztt then,' or something like that. It was staged somewhere in New York City." As far as Barrios recalls, this sequence is used to open ****, which will barely be screened at all on its ‘release’ in December 1967 before becoming inaccessible to public viewing.
(If it could be found and restored with sound, **** would be a holy grail for those seeking footage of The Velvet Underground performing an actual song.)

I was flabbergasted! A promo video for the reissue of The Marble Index containing live footage [and audio?] of IWaPT.
Anybody knows more about this? Has may be seen/heard this? Etc...

[peppergomez]

Ha, rumors like this just add to the mystique

[Low]

Just started checking some of my Up-tight detail questions in Unterberger's White Light/White Heat book, didn't find anything new about WYTiD, but found this as related and very interesting [to me at least]:

p145 [1967.April - Also...]:
Gregg Barrios notes that he supplied footage of Nico singing 'It Was A Pleasure Then' with The Velvet Underground for the promotional video put together by the Elektra label for the 1991 CD reissue of Nico's 1968 LP The Marble Index. This performance, he explains, was not shot at a concert, but as "a set-up for a later film called ****. The guys are in the background, [but] Andy just focuses on [Nico]. He was experimenting with these [strobe cuts], doing editing in the camera where you shut it off and then you reset the camera, then you turn it back on again. So it would say, 'It was a pleasure bztt bztt bztt then,' or something like that. It was staged somewhere in New York City." As far as Barrios recalls, this sequence is used to open ****, which will barely be screened at all on its ‘release’ in December 1967 before becoming inaccessible to public viewing.
(If it could be found and restored with sound, **** would be a holy grail for those seeking footage of The Velvet Underground performing an actual song.)

I was flabbergasted! A promo video for the reissue of The Marble Index containing live footage [and audio?] of IWaPT.
Anybody knows more about this? Has may be seen/heard this? Etc...

There is a couple of seconds from This (I think) in Seven Ages of Rock series, ep 2. No sound. I hoped Haynes would have included material from **** in the documentary, was probably the only thing that I missed among all the film footage he used (since Upbeat prob doesn’t exist anymore)

[iaredatsun]

Nico did a voice over for Warhol's (unfinished) 33 minute 1967 Sunset film. Some of the film was also featured in a version of '****'

The sunset in Sunset was filmed in California (TM). While the sun sets (and then seemingly rises), we hear Nico's deep voice off screen reciting a poem. At a couple of points in the film a plane appears flying through the sunset. The whole effect is both beautiful and mesmerizing and is reminiscent of Andy Warhol's earlier works such as Empire where a static camera captured a self-contained event.

(From https://warholstars.org/warhol/warhol1/ ... unset.html)