The Velvet Underground were a jam band. Not, perhaps, in the same category as your Phishes or String Cheeses, but they jammed and jammed—anyone who loves the
1969 Live album or the even jammier
Quine Tapes (featuring several half-hour versions of "Sister Ray") already knows this. So in addition to inventing alternative rock, goth, industrial, dream pop, and so many other sub-niche genres, they also proved that New York noise, applied to simple r'n'b chord changes, could create the same sort of hypnotic grooves their hippy contemporaries were tripping to in the psychedelic ballrooms of San Francisco.
The Velvets' second record, White Light/White Heat (1968), is their darkest, noisiest, ugliest record, with sludgy jams, drugged out and creepy lyrics. There's beauty in the ugly, though, and for proof I submit today's daily nugget. The second track of the record, "The Gift", featured a novel experiment: One channel features John Cale narrating the tragic tale of Waldo Jeffers (a short story written by Mr. Sunshine, Lou Reed); the other channel is a groovy instrumental (originally entitled "Booker T" after the Memphis r'n'b great) with slash-and-burn guitars dueling it out. If you got tired of the story (and, to be honest, most will only need to hear it a few times), you could pan your speakers hard right and just hear the instrumental, but only through one speaker. I've always hoped that the original track of the band working their magic in stereo would surface, but until then, here's the instrumental track converted to mono (with special thanks to Google and Audacity).
Hint: Go ahead and turn this one all the way up. Also, The Quine Tapes are about to be reissued on vinyl by the good people at Sundazed.
The Velvet Underground, "The Gift" [mono instrumental]:
I saw Washed Out play live a while back after being introduced to the Life Of Leisure EP by my friend Jean. Well, the live show was a dud (hey Washed Out dude: watching you sing to your iPod is not very entertaining). But the EP is echoey and bouncy and sounds like waking up at the beach in a hammock, curled up next to your favorite synth. I look forward to future recordings.
I only occasionally leave the sound cave for sustenance and/or diversion, so bumping into new music the old-fashioned way, i.e., hearing it on the radio, happens somewhat infrequently. But in one of those too few serendipitous moments, I heard this track and immediately needed to know whodunnit. I have been reading about Janelle Monáe's The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III) and was planning on checking out her music; well, I think I may have found my Summer Jam '10. It's relentlessly catchy and fun, and the lyrics mention droids, secret Santas, fairygods, and underpants. In other words, resistance is futile.
The Velvet Underground were a jam band. Not, perhaps, in the same category as your Phishes or String Cheeses, but they jammed and jammed—anyone who loves the 1969 Live album or the even jammier Quine Tapes (featuring several half-hour versions of "Sister Ray") already knows this. So in addition to inventing alternative rock, goth, industrial, dream pop, and so many other sub-niche genres, they also proved that New York noise, applied to simple r'n'b chord changes, could create the same sort of hypnotic grooves their hippy contemporaries were tripping to in the psychedelic ballrooms of San Francisco. 
Some of my earliest memories of music were born in the back of a maroon 1968 Volkswagen bus. I can recall looking out the window at the dry Idaho landscape in the late 70s and early 80s, while soft adult contemporary pop gently streamed out of the tiny AM radio: "Africa", "Chariots Of Fire", "We Just Disagree", "Cool Night", "Sailing", "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All", "Forever In Blue Jeans", "I'm Not In Love"...the list goes on and on, and while my pesky inner critic has been conditioned to mock and dismiss such margarine glop, the fact of the matter is that these soft hits are burned into my cerebral cortex. They are my nursery rhymes; I have given up on even calling them guilty pleasures. Like hearing the Johnny Carson theme song and instinctively knowing it's bedtime, exposure to adult contemporary smooth jams circa '77-'83 lulls me into the back of my parents' VW like a hazy childhood daydream.
Originally written by famed 60s hitwriters Gerry Goffin and Carol King (the same team known for such immortals as "Up On The Roof", "Will You Love Me Tomorrow", "One Fine Day", and many many others), this track was first recorded by the Monkees in 1966. Their version is upbeat but pretty slight (and I say this as a Monkees fan), a chipper throwaway. Blues handyman Taj Mahal recorded it first with his little-known band Rising Sons (which also featured Ry Cooder), but that version, while gruffer and bluesier than the Monkees', still sounded a little off. The third time was the charm: rerecorded for Taj's 1969 Giant Steps, it became a gentle stroll, an invitation to better days. This was on almost every mixtape I made in college.
