white light / white heat - velvet undergound

Well, the new White Light / White Heat remaster. What a noise!

 

As expected, it's a mixed bag. With very little previously unheard material to work with the surprises are few and far between. 

 

I'll start off with the live set from the Gymnasium in April 1967. Most dedicated VU fans will already have this, as it's been bootlegged for years. The sound quality, to these ears, isn't noticeably any different from my existing bootleg, so it's ok sound for 1967, but is still rather harsh. Sadly there are still a number of minor volume fluctuations - these must've been on the original tapes, but it’s odd that these haven't been smoothed out. It's not much, I'll probably do it myself in CoolEdit, so it's a little annoying that they've not been dealt with properly. And the new version also misses out some of the between song tuning and silences, which makes the Velvets sound a little more polished on stage due to the lack of protracted gaps. The only real difference between the boots and the new version is the inclusion of "The Gift", which to my knowledge has never appeared on any of the boots. Sadly, it's just the instrumental, and isn't actually all that interesting on it's own… 

 

The Stereo version of WL/WH sounds, to me, to be the same as the master prepared in the mid 1990s for the Peel Slowly And See set, which is the one used on subsequent issues. To be honest, there's so little to work with in terms of polishing the sound that it must be virtually impossible to make any sonic improvements to the murk and distortion that was laid down in 1967. And to do so, kind of misses the point. But the stereo disc offers some nice surprises towards the end. 

 

The bonus tracks, those remaining Cale-era tracks familiar from Another View and VU in the 1980s are much better than on previous releases. These are all labelled 'original mix' and this confirms what many had long suspected - that the VU and Another View tracks had been quite extensively remixed to prepare them for release back then. You can immediately hear the difference on "Guess I'm Falling In Love". Still only an instrumental, but the version here is now obviously part of the WL/WH sessions, rather than the much cleaner, bouncier mix that we have on Another View. The 80s mix gave it that drum heavy 80s plastic sheen. Not here - it's all scuzzy and sweaty and far more exciting. And how good is that fuzzed up guitar! The differences on the two versions of "Hey Mr Rain" are less obvious, the viola is a bit higher in the mix, and "Temptation Inside Your Heart" sounds pretty much the same as before to me, but "Stephanie Says" is remarkably different. Some of the viola work sounds different and some of the backing vocals are very different, not as sweet, with different lines and harmonies, to the extent that I wonder if the VU version had received some fresh overdubs in 1985? There's an alternative mix of "I Heard Her Call My Name" which has differences in the instrumentation levels, but nothing too significant. It's labelled as a different take, but it's clearly just the same version that we're all used to, albeit with the rhythm track boosted and the skull splitting guitar a little less lethal. Finally we get a 1968 Cale version of "Beginning To See The Light" which is interesting, though it's a bit lacklustre and nowhere near as good as the finished version recorded at the end of the year with Doug Yule. 

 

The Mono disc contains the mono single mixes of the title track and it's b-side "Here She Comes Now", and you'd have to have better ears than mine to identify what makes them different from the mono albums mixes. We have the vocal version and the instrumental version of "The Gift" which are simply the discrete tracks mixed to mono. The story on it's own sounds very strange, and it really misses the music track. But it's good to hear the grinding backing track on it's own (though I had the story running in my head the whole time!). But the album itself in mono is terrific. I really didn't think this would be so good. I like the weird stereo effects on the original album, the way that voices fly in and out, the split on "The Gift" etc etc. But there are vagaries in the mix, and some elements get a bit lost over there or over here. In mono there's none of that. It hits you between the eyes and like Marsha's sheet metal cutter, it goes right through the centre of your head. There's not much in the way of different instrumentation like you sometimes get between stereo / mono mixes. But the sheer power of the band comes through loud and clear - well not that clear, it's a horrible mess of noise, but you know what I mean. The initial rush of the title track has never sounded better. "The Gift" works better than I thought it would too. The vocals on "Lady Godiva" aren't quite as distracting in mono - I seemed to focus more on the music, and what a mesmerizingly dreamlike track it is. "Here She Comes Now" - here's an odd thing. The percussion is much clearer in mono - to be honest I'd never noticed the percussion before - it's there on the stereo mix of course, but I'd never paid it any attention. Here, it's much clearer, and it's very good. Mo was a much better drummer than people ever gave her credit for. Side two though is the absolute bizniz. "I Heard Her Call My Name" is an amazing track anyway, but in mono it seems so much more relentless than ever with That Guitar firing out of the speakers to decimate your ears. In stereo you can hear where it's coming from, in mono there's nowhere to hide, it just attacks you from everywhere, all at the same time. If you look up the word relentless in the dictionary then you ought to be pointed towards "Sister Ray". My goodness, what a song. Again, as with "I Heard Her Call My Name", it's absolutely vicious. The song almost collapses under the strain of  Cale's organ slugging it out with Lou's guitar in sort of Godzilla v King Kong battle to the death. But, astoundingly, "Sister Ray" staggers on to survive 17 solid minutes of distortion and utter hell. The fearsome crackling that underpins much of the music on the this album points to the sheer amount of volume that the band were using, and it genuinely gives the impression that the equipment was actually on fire and burning up! 

 

So, the box set is good, but it's very expensive for just 3 cds, and I wouldn't say it was really worth the money. There is a two disc version, the stereo disc plus the live set - not the mono disc, which in my opinion, is probably the best part. 

 

Finally, some random thoughts about the creation of "The Gift". Stick with me on this and see what you think. Since the very beginning it's been acknowledged that "The Gift" came about when Lou's story was married to an instrumental called "Booker T". All Velvets fans know this. In 1990 John Cale issued the album Paris S'Eveille which contained a track recorded at the Gymnasium in April 1967. This was the first time this tape was known about, and came from Cale's personal archive. All very exciting, except that the track, called "Booker T" by Cale, is clearly not the same tune as on "The Gift". With this new issue of the whole Gymnasium gig we can see for the first time that the show begins and ends with two longish instrumentals. The end track IS clearly the same tune as on "The Gift" and the opening one is the one called "Booker T". But, perhaps, when Cale was preparing Paris S'Eveille he dug out his old tape and used the wrong instrumental - ie: perhaps the track now labelled "The Gift" on the live show was in fact referred to as "Booker T" by the Velvets at the time, and the opening jam was actually called something else. Certainly the closing instrumental would not have been called "The Gift" at this early stage as we are months ahead of Lou's story being attached to this music. So could the confusion actually all be down to Cale mislabelling or misremembering the title of an instrumental jam? 

 

This was the last release that Lou Reed had a hand in creating. Seems somehow fitting that it's such a stunning mess of noise, distortion and leakage. And that's stunning in its most literal definition ie, it actually stuns you. There's very little else you can do while WL/WH is playing. Although having said that - the instrumental track for "The Gift" is great for walking to - perfect tempo for a decent stroll. 

 

But on the whole it's an overwhelming album, hard and harsh and nasty and unpleasant and violent - it has a similar effect to the Stooges' Raw Power as it basically grabs you by the throat and pins you to the wall. It's also very very loud. WL/WH is an assault on the senses. This is rock music, or whatever you want to call it, at it's most violent and most extreme. By quite some distance.

 

 I hope that we get a 45th anniversary issue of the third VU album. There is already the regular mix and the 'closet' mix, plus I'm sure there's a mono version out there. It would be great if all the VU / Another View tracks could be included too, especially if they are as sympathetically restored as the ones here. I would guess that the 45th anniversary releases would end there as Loaded was on another label, and anyway, is there anything else that wasn't already on the Fully Loaded reissue from a few years ago? 

 

What I would love would be a decent reworking of the VU 1969 Live double album. I wonder if the masters could be found? Even back in 1974, when this set was first compiled, a large number of the tracks were taken from acetate discs, which had been created some years earlier as back ups, rather than from the actual tapes. So maybe the original tapes had been lost 40 years ago? Who knows, but it would be superb if a decent reissue could be created from this stuff. If only, if only, if only...