#89. White Light/White Heat - The Velvet Underground

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's Lester Bangs disagrees with my Doors influence I mention in my review.

89. White Light/White Heat - The Velvet Underground (1968) 90/100.  Being such a fan of The Velvet Underground & Nico (reviewed here - http://geekyclowns1001albums.blogspot.com/2011/03/79-velvet-underground-nico-velvet.html), you would think that I would have heard White Light/White Heat prior to today.  You would assume wrong.

I am not really sure why I never went back and picked up further Velvet Underground albums after the first one, seeing as I was such a huge fan.  That has been rectified and I sat down with White Light/White Heat.

The whole album seemed to have more of a rawness to it than The Velvet Underground & Nico.  It was feedback riddled that seemed more like punk at times than psychedelic or conventional rock n' roll.

The first track, White Light/White Heat was good.  The Gift.  What.  The.  Fuck.  Experimental is a word you could use.  It was different.  It wasn't a song with any real lyrics just prose set to music.  While I probably wouldn't listen to that track too often, I did listen to the story rather intently.  Poor Waldo, you dumb bastard.

Lady Godiva's Operation, Here She Comes Now, and I Heard Her Call My Name are more "poppish" if you can ever use that term to refer to Velvet Underground.  Perhaps using the term "traditional" would be more appropriate.  Solid tracks.  Sister Ray was the most interesting for me on the album.  While lyrically it isn't anything special, musically it is the most experimental and avant garde on the album.  It has that live, spacy, experimental thing going for it that you would expect toward the end of the second set of a Dead show.  A couple of times during the musical climaxes, I kept hearing Jim Morrison yell, "kill, kill, kill" as he does at the end of The End on the first Doors album (review coming real soon) so I suppose I can say there may be a little influence there (Cameron Crowe would disagree with me).

A good album, not as good (in my opinion, of course) as The Velvet Underground & Nico but worth a listen.  Listened: 4/13/2011
Favorite Tracks: Here She Comes Now, I Heard Her Call My Name, Sister Ray