Featured Song: I'm Waiting For The Man by The Velvet Underground (March 12, 1967/Verve Records/New York, NY)

In 1964, Lou Reed was working as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records in New York City. While there, he penned a satire on the then-popular trend of songs with a tie-in dance (The Loco-Motion, Mashed Potato Time, e.t.c) called " The Ostrich ." Pickwick felt the song had potential as a novelty hit and assembled a band from random label-mates, one of whom was John Cale. A student of experimental musicians like John Cage and La Monte Young, Cale was surprised to find that, for The Ostrich, Lou tuned his guitar so that every string was the same note. This created a droning effect similar to those Young worked with. With an understanding of their shared musical interests, the two started making experimental music together. They got together with Reed's friend Sterling Morrison on guitar and Cale's friend Angus MacLise on drums to become The Velvet Underground. However, Angus left before the band played their first paying gig at Summit High School in New Jersey, as playing for money constituted 'selling out.' Looking for a drummer, Morrison remembered a friend's younger sister played drums.

Except Maureen "Moe" Tucker wasn't a regular drummer. For starters, she taught herself to play the drums by listening to the likes of Babatunde Olatunji and The Rolling Stones. She eschewed cymbals, as they added nothing to the rhythm of a song. Her kit consisted of a couple toms, a snare, and an upright kick drum, which she opted to play with mallets. According to legend, her kit got stolen one night and she had to play on a set of garbage bins until she could replace them. Her style was unique and simplistic and complimented the experimental, often psychedelic sounds Cale and Reed were making. Despite John Cale's reservations about letting a woman into the band, he relented and eventually ate his words. Moe Tucker's work with The Velvet Underground would be a major influence on punk drummers for years to come, though she wouldn't get credit until far later. Unfortunately, She's become a bit of a right-wing crank.

The band's look and sound and shocking lyrics about drugs and illicit sex and an overall disillusionment with American life drew the attention of Andy Warhol. The Velvet Underground became his next big project, plucking them from obscurity to become part of his entourage on the Exploding Plastic Inevitable tour. Despite having no experience in either field, he became their official manager and producer. In reality he was more of an image consultant, designing a bunch of promotional material along with the cover of their debut album. He also insisted they write songs about a number of women with whom he became briefly fascinated. Among these women is Nico, the German singer/actress/model whom Warhol insisted be featured prominently on the album. I don't have anything interesting to say about Nico other than that her dad was in the Wermacht.

The lyrics of the Velvet Underground often touched on hard drugs, prostitution and are among the first rock songs to deal with LGBT+ themes. Lou Reed's bisexuality was something of an open secret at the time. In fact, Lou's solo career includes a song about the lengths his family went to 'cure' him of his 'homosexual tendencies.' However, despite the reaction to his lyrical content, Lou insisted he was never trying to be shocking. The topics he wrote about in his music were easily accessible in works like On The Road or The Naked Lunch or even the book he named his band after. After all, if you could write about it, why couldn't you sing about it?

Like The Fugs before them, The Velvet Underground mostly fell in with the art crowd in New York City, laying the foundations for The Ramones to arrive later on.

Tomorrow, Punk Goes A Bit Crazy