If there is to be only one song from Loaded, it has got to be “Rock & Roll.” I’m not saying that it is better than “Sweet Jane.” It’s just that “Sweet Jane” has been so overdone, that I’m kind of bored by it. I still think that the version on Loaded is by far the best. But I’m getting sidetracked.

“Rock & Roll” tells what was apparently a common experience of people living far outside the “big city” hearing rock & roll (or jazz or just about any other kind of music you can think of) and having an epiphany. Life wasn’t constrained the way they grew up thinking. People of my generation had no such experience. Yes, occasionally a great little radio station would turn up. While still in high school, Will discovered KSAN right at the end of its existence. But it wasn’t a mind blowing experience.

But I’m not nearly as excited about much of the rest of the album. I don’t know what “Lonesome Cowboy Bill” is all about. In fact, it’s one of those albums where one side is just great and the other kind of meh. I am kind of amazed to see that pretty much every rock critic around today thinks that everything the Velvet Underground did was a classic. The quality of their work varied widely. And if I have to listen to “Train Coming Round the Bend” one more time, I think I’ll just kill myself.

But “Rock & Roll” really is a great song and this is a great performance of it:

It is not entirely for James’ sake that we are going to listen to “Candy Says” today.

I hate self-titled albums. They just confuse everyone. But if you are going to have a self-titled album, make it be the first one. The Beatles’ self-titled album gets called “the white album,” which I’ve always thought was kind of silly. It’s because it’s white, get it? Of course you do, because there’s nothing to get. It’s grey lettering on a white background. It’s like they were teaching bad website design long before there were websites!

The problem is even worse with The Velvet Underground, which everyone I know just called “the third album” or “that one with the bad photo” or perhaps best, “the folk one.” Okay, not totally folk. There is “The Murder Mystery,” which is more an aural challenge just to see if you are willing to sit through to listen to After Hours. And I’m not sure it is, although I do love that song. In fact, I’d probably feature that song, if Maureen Tucker had not turned into a Tea Party Idiot.

So let me prepare you for Saturday, which is really going to be special. Really: you’ve got to come by; I’ll have a half hour of music you really ought to listen to. But until then, let’s listen to the Velvet Underground song “Candy Says.” It’s clearly one of those song that they would have had Nico sing if she hadn’t had better places to nod. This is, of course, exactly the point that the band was at when they recorded 1969: The Velvet Underground Live. What’s great about it is that, by and large, there is no pretense. For as much as I like Velvet Underground & Nico, there is a certain amount of pretending to be more hip than they actually are. All that is gone by this third album.

I would have moved on from White Light/White Heat today. But James mentioned that he really liked the softer side of the Velvet Underground, so I thought that we would stay and listen to one of their softest, and in some ways sweetest, songs, “Here She Comes Now.”

It’s a strange title for the song. “If She Ever Comes Now” would make a whole lot more sense. I assume that title is meant to provide the listener to a clue as to the meaning of the song. The singer is just impatient. She is coming. In fact, the implication is that she is so close, he can see her. So he’s saying that he will long for her right up to the moment that he can touch her.

Of course, “Here She Comes Now” must be meant as a response to There She Goes Again off Velvet Underground & Nico. That song was violent — even misogynistic. But it’s also quite honest about the violent feelings that a breakup can cause in anyone — but most especially in a man.

So “Here She Comes Now” is about the joy of love when it comes whereas “There She Goes Again” is about the anguish of when loves goes. They make a nice pair. I prefer “Goes,” although not for the lyrical content. It’s just that the music is better and it has that wonderful double time ending. “Here She Comes Now” was probably an effort to get some radio play. And I recall reading (decades ago) that the song did dip into the Billboard top 200 at some point. Wikipedia doesn’t mention it, so I might be wrong. Also, it was the B-side of “White Light/White Heat.” But it’s not like the Velvet Underground was ever well managed.

I certainly could have spent the whole week on Velvet Underground & Nico. I do think it is the most fulfilling of their studio albums. Loaded has some of my favorite material and I really like the production. But I think it’s uneven. I’ll probably come back to that later. But today we are going to start on White Light/White Heat.

The album has a bit too much rock jam to it. And I’ll admit, Velvet Underground jams tend to be more interesting than other jams of that period. But still, “The Gift” is a bit much and “Sister Ray” (which I rather like) is too long. I do know this: after the first album (which was the first that I bought), White Light/White Heat was a disappointment. I do think there’s a tendency to see certain bands like the Velvet Underground (And good God: The Beatles!) as constantly brilliant and perfect. None of them are, as great as they may be.

The song “White Light/White Heat” is a gem. For one thing, I like that it doesn’t much make me think of speed, which it most clearly is about. The background vocals are simultaneously sweet and hilarious. It’s another song that Reed was never able to properly sing during his solo career. I might just have to spend another day on this album. We’ll see. Not a lot of time.

Probably my favorite song on Velvet Underground & Nico is “European Son.” I like its relentless energy. It is the very definition of punk rock. I had forgotten that the song was dedicated to Delmore Schwartz. The song is clearly angry and it seems to be saying, “Screw off!” Schwartz was at that very time dying close by at the age of 52.

Schwartz had been a teacher of Reed’s at Syracuse University. And in interviews, Reed always made a big deal of this because Reed wanted the world to see him as a real poet. Reed probably would have been a much better human being if he had just accepted that he was a real poet. I’ve always thought the center section of “Street Hassle” to be amazing, especially this:

But it now makes me wonder if Reed didn’t spend all those years talking so fondly of the man to make up for “European Son.” Apparently, during the end of his life, Schwartz would not see Reed. But the song is everything that Schwartz was not. I never cared for his poetry, but I’m thinking I would be more open to it now. When I was younger, I liked surreal poetry, which Schwartz definitely wasn’t. He wrote about more mystical subjects — the kind of stuff that I find more interesting now.

It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about The Velvet Underground. Too often, the band is thought of as the Lou Reed band. But that ain’t true. Like David Byrne after him, Reed got far more credit than he deserved. For example, take today’s song, “I’m Waiting for My Man.” It says on the album that it was written by Reed, but that’s not true. It was written by Reed along with Sterling Morrison and John Cale. In any discussion of anything that Lou Reed did, it is important to remember that Lou Reed was a total jerk. He never gave proper credit and insisted on keeping Doug Yule out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Although I’m a fan of much of his work, I don’t think much of Lou Reed as a human being.

The remarkable thing about The Velvet Underground & Nico is that it was meant to be your typical Andy Warhol commercial joke. Yet it is a great album. Much of the songwriting on the album is great. But what sells it is the band, which is powerfully direct. Listen to “I’m Waiting for My Man.” It is stripped down to the barest that it can be without being boring. It doesn’t hurt that it is also one of the greatest rock songs ever written.

Please note: I don’t care what it says on the album cover. I don’t care what Reed might have sung in earlier versions. He is not waiting for “the man.” In the parlance of that time and even now, “the man” is the police. This is a friendly encounter. He’s waiting for his dealer who simply doesn’t have the reputation to be considered “the” man regardless. The most compelling part of the song occurs before the dealer shows up. The narrator is clearly in a place where he doesn’t belong and he has to explain himself to the locals, “I’m just waiting for a dear, dear friend of mine.” Very dear indeed.

There has never been a song written about drugs that is as authentic as, “I’m Waiting for My Man.”

Does it seems like I’ve been skating through this week of Nick Cave? Does it seems like I’ve been skating through the whole week regarding everything? It seems like that to me. I must admit, I’m tired. Really. It takes so much more effort to write for Frankly Curious than it does for my day job. It’s weird, I think. I mean, I can write whatever I want here in any way that I want to. Maybe it is just a matter that I know what is expected of me there. It isn’t crap. But it is soulless. You all deserve something better.

I’m thinking of doing something for the Morning Music posts next week that I know a whole lot about. That always makes things easier. Nick Cave has always been this guy who I admire but I didn’t follow. I didn’t rush out and buy his newest albums the way I did with a number of other artists. So in a sense, I needed to spend as much time on Nick Cave as I did on the music of Mali. But like I said, I’ve been really tired. I’m looking forward to finishing this post just so I can take a nap.

We are going to end the week with a live concert of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from 2001. I do tend to like his later work more. And this concert has the distinct advantage of no mustache. I don’t know what he was thinking. This concert has a couple of unfortunate interview sections, but otherwise it is really great. And I admire what he says about his religious beliefs being fluid. It seems to me that if you take religion seriously, then your thinking has to be fluid. Anyway, this is a fine way to spend three-quarters of an hour:

We move on to “Tupelo” off the second Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, The Firstborn Is Dead. It’s quite a good album. It’s even kind of a blues album, including a very odd song called, “Blind Lemon Jefferson,” but it’s not really a song I quite get, so we are going to skip it. But the whole thing sounds quite a lot like Tom Waits. This may explain why I have such a strangely ambivalent opinion of Cave. I love his music yet I don’t get that excited about it. It probably doesn’t help that I really have to work at understanding the lyrics.

The perfect example of this album is Train Long-Suffering. It’s got a real old folk feel to it. But as usual, with that distinct Nick Cave sound. That’s the thing about him. He’s so him. But as is often the case, I find myself gravitating toward the work that Cave himself didn’t write.

“Tupelo” is a song by Barry Adamson and Mick Harvey. Nick Cave wrote the lyrics, but they don’t much matter. It just sounds so damned cool. Tupelo:

By 1983, there were great tensions in The Birthday Party between Nick Cave and Rowland S Howard. So Mick Harvey left the band and that was the end. As a result, Cave and Harvey formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the band that everyone knows. Really: it’s Nick Cave’s band. Harvey was always a powerful musical influence, but I don’t think he was ever the artistic equal of Cave the way that Howard was.

The first album (which only lists “Nick Cave” on the cover) was From Her to Eternity. The music certainly turned in a darker direction. It is also a lot more portentous. It is, in other words, what we’ve all come to think of as Nick Cave. So we’ll listen to “Cabin Fever!” which is a good indication of just how different the band sounded. It’s also so clear now how influential the band has been. In 1984, I don’t remember anything at all like it.

Well, in our trip down Nick Cave’s career, we come to the last album of The Birthday Party, Junkyard. Like so often with great bands, this last album is when they really gel. Of course, in their case, that means they go totally crazy. It is amazing to listen to. Yesterday, I said that Prayers on Fire was post-punk. This album is… who knows?! Some of it sounds like free jazz. And then it’s straight rhythm and blues. And sometimes psychedelic — but taken by goths. Today we listen to “Big Jesus Trash Can.”

It’s a very consistent album. It has an emotional core of wry despondency. My favorite track is the most straightforward one, “Several Sins.” But it is by Rowland S Howard (maybe I’ll do a week of him sometime). “Big Jesus Trash Can” is a masterpiece of noise as music. I never much cared for noise bands, but that’s because they rarely managed to turn it into music. Here The Birthday Party does.

In “Big Jesus Trash Can,” it is hard to say what Cave is on about. There are various ways of interpreting it. It is hard for me not to see it in the context of the modern American Christian conception of Jesus as this Rambo sort of character. Certainly there seems to be some kind of statement about America being so Christian and yet so militaristic. But the main thing is the sound: