by bill@thephilter.com | Jan 28, 2023 | Pre-VU
John Cale was profiled in The New York Times last Sunday. Creeping up on his 81st birthday, Cale has a new album out, may Jah bless and keep him. The article is well-written and does a better job than I could of summarizing his career. Here’s a link; if you’re stymied... by bill@thephilter.com | Jan 24, 2023 | Pre-VU
It occurs to me that “The Ostrich” must have sold a fair number of copies somewhere along the line, because when I looked for one a while back it was not hard to find. I think I paid $10 plus a few dollars shipping. In addition to the original 1964 release, there... by bill@thephilter.com | Jan 7, 2023 | Pre-VU
Every Lou Reed biography I have tells the story of “The Ostrich” differently, but my favorite version is the one in Victor Bockris’s Transformer: One day in January 1965, Lou, who had not let hepatitis slow him down, had ingested a copious quantity of drugs. As he... by bill@thephilter.com | Dec 24, 2022 | Pre-VU
For those of you keeping track at home, there were five home recordings from 1963–64 on the sloppily titled Lou Reed: Words & Music, May 1965 compilation: the two Dylan “covers” (“Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”); “Michael,... by bill@thephilter.com | Dec 11, 2022 | Pre-VU
. Why, one has to wonder, did Lou Reed record himself doing “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” sometime in 1963 or 1964? Maybe he was applying for a job as a camp counselor, I dunno. In any case I set out to educate myself about this song, which I associate with campfires... by bill@thephilter.com | Dec 4, 2022 | Pre-VU
The most surprising thing about the Lou Reed: Words & Music, May 1965 compilation — which again, for the record, also includes tapes from 1958 and 1963–64 — is how folky it is. Even the demos recorded with John Cale have a lot more granola in them than we... by bill@thephilter.com | Nov 16, 2022 | Pre-VU
Go ahead and click Play on this — I promise we’ll be done by the time it’s over: . On June 6 I wrote, There is no recording of Lou Reed singing Bob Dylan’s “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” in 1963. And technically that is still true! But there is a tape of him doing an... by bill@thephilter.com | Nov 12, 2022 | Pre-VU
New shit has come to light, man.—J. Lebowski Up to this point everything this blog has covered has been in chronological order, or some close approximation thereof. But the recent release of Light in the Attic Records’ Lou Reed: Words & Music, May 1965 has thrown... by bill@thephilter.com | Oct 28, 2022 | Pre-VU
Finally we have arrived at the last song on Soundsville!, and it’s a bit of an outlier: a solo female vocal accompanied only by acoustic guitar. Though pretty folky in sound — it’s the album’s “campus” number — “It’s Hard for a Girl in a World Full of Men” is playful,... by bill@thephilter.com | Oct 20, 2022 | Pre-VU
If the song “I’ve Got a Tiger in My Tank” —credited on Soundsville! to the Beachnuts — sounds like a commercial, there’s a reason for that. According to the extremely helpful web page “A pre-VU discography,” it was “originally a commercial Jerry Vance [part of the...