On March 8th (which was also International Women's Day), my band Moskau played a show honouring the 50th anniversary of the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat album. We've played the album in its entirety (I've written a few posts on this before: https://steemit.com/music/@grobens/the-velvet-underground-white-light-white-heat-50-years-on and https://steemit.com/music/@grobens/lady-godiva-s-operation-improvising-for-the-upcoming-show) and it was much more of a success than I hoped for. It took a lot of time to get a hold of the tracks and then twice as much to mix the whole show but I've finally managed to do both. So, as promised, I'm sharing a link to the entire show as it was played live. But first, a little song by song walk-through of how our versions came about. P.S. this is about RE-INTERPRETING the album, NOT ABOUT COVERING IT!
WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT
The original song is about the use of amphetamins. It's a full blown rock'n'roll track with a bunch of fuzz blasting out of the speakers. We wanted to capture the atmosphere but to make a slightly different version so we slowed it down and made it sound more dark and atmospheric. Since the show wasn't about covering the VU bur rather re-interpreting them, we agreed upon having only two classic Velvet Underground elements - the mantric drums and the droning violin. Although those two components are not so present on this particular album, they enabled us to make different versions of the songs while still having the specific Velvet Undergound vibe. So our version of White Light/White Heat is more NO LIGHT/white heat, a very dark rendition, exploding into minimalistic rock'n'roll.
THE GIFT
An 8 minute drone narrative about a guy mailing himself in a box to his girlfriend. This one sounded the closest to the original since day one so some kind of a plot twist was much needed. Since the music was played almost like it was on the record, the plot twist was in the lyrics. I translated the lyrics to my local kajkavian croatian dialect. This amplified the black comedy effect of the original lyrics for those members of the audience who can understand kajkavian. For those who don't understand it, it produced an exotic effect. It was a win-win situation.
LADY GODIVA'S OPERATION
This is one of my favorites. Originally, it's about a transsexual woman's lobotomy and it's driven by a mighty bass line. We converted the bass line into a loose guitar line and an even more loose violin line. The idea was to record ad hoc loose loops of all the instruments so they go in and out of the rhythmic structure while Django (vocals) intensifies his singing as the operation progresses. We also used a mobile phone app that generates random vocals which were later taken over by Buga (drums, vocals). This one was all about intensity following the narrative.
HERE SHE COMES NOW
The most gentle song on the album. This one was simple - just make it into a most violent song on the album. It has a sort of a Einsturzende Neubauten industrial vibe and the majority of the noise is actually me screaming into a telephone connected to a whole bunch of pedals.
I HEARD HER CALL MY NAME
The same principal was used on this one. The original sounds like John Coltrane playing a fuzz guitar so we decided to make this one gentle. What I love most about this one is the violin - the violin plays these beautiful lines that flow above the music and the violin player decided to play as if the rest of the band is none of her concern. So, no matter what we do and no matter how we intensify the song, the violin doesn't care. The result was this very Dirty Three like number, only with vocals. Another thing was that the vocals also don't care about the tempo, so the drummer most follow the guitar in order to set up a certain rhythm.
SISTER RAY
Not much to say here except - TOTAL CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION.
Here's a link to the entire show! I hope you'll like this and I hope we did a good job, worthy of the genius of the Velvet Underground!