Brown Bird "Bilgewater"

How do you walk the line of being respectful without being opportunistic?

David Lamb of the band Brown Bird passed away this week.  He had been battling leukemia and had received tremendous support from the Rhode Island (and beyond) music community.

When listeners started letting us know that Lamb had passed away, I remembered that we have a Brown Bird performance in our archives.  And my first thought was to post it on Facebook, or make it this week's MVY Live.
But something about doing that felt like it would be too self-serving, too self-promotional, too opportunistic.

When Lou Reed passed away, we did many a tribute to him on the air.  But even before his passing, not a day had gone by where we didn't play a few Lou Reed/Velvet Underground tracks.

The same isn't true for Brown Bird on MVY.

So would promoting it, just be co-opting a tragedy?

These are the weird, unexpected questions that they never teach you to answer in DJ School.


For a really beautiful rememberance of David Lamb, read this.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Joseph Arthur "Walk On The Wild Side"

A minor footnote to the announcement that David Letterman is retiring, was that Mike Mills of R.E.M. fame, broke the story.

He was part of the band for the scheduled musical guest that night, Joseph Arthur, so he was at the afternoon taping, and tweeted the news.

Joseph Arthur was on, because he has recently released a cover of "Walk On The Wild Side."  Arthur was a friend of Reed's, and recorded this reworking, as a tribute to his late friend.

See the Letterman performance below, which includes Mike Mills, and Peter Buck of R.E.M.


See the video on Youtube.

Velvet Underground "After Hours"

I was at a pumpkin carving party on Saturday with my wife and kids, when someone looked up from their phone and said, "Lou Reed died."

Looking at Facebook a few hours later, my feed was filled with Reed songs.  Obvious choices like "Walk On The Wild Side" and "Perfect Day."  Less obvious ones like "Street Hassle" and "Vicious."

Funny enough, the first song I thought of was one he wrote, but didn't sing.  Because it encapsulated my thoughts on his passing.

Back in the day, when the parties I went to didn't have pumpkins or children, but instead had copious amounts of alcohol, the Reed-penned/Moe Tucker sung/Velvet Underground song "After Hours" was our choice for our end-of-the-night anthem.

And if you close the door
the night could last forever
Leave the sunshine out
and say hello to never

It would be 6 in the morning.  The sun would be coming up.  We knew the party was over.  We'd always known that the party would end.

But we didn't want it to end.  There was always this kind of faint hope that the fun could continue, that we'd never tire, that the night could last forever.

I can't say that I'd thought about Lou Reed in the last few days (it had been a couple weeks).  I wasn't wondering if he were alive or dead.

And after I heard "Lou Reed died" today, I immediately wished I could un-hear it.  That I could close the door and go on assuming that Lou Reed was still out there, being Lou Reed.

Parties end.  Rock stars pass away.  You say goodbyes.  Things change.

But sometimes you just want to put on an old record and pretend, even for 2 minutes and 10 seconds, to say hello to never.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Velvet Underground "Last Night I Said Goodbye To My Friend"

Here's the dream I had a few nights ago:

I was in a police academy, and we had to run a very complicated obstacle course.  There was lots of crawling through small spaces and climbing walls and ladders and narrow points of entry to the next step.  I was actually doing pretty well, meeting the challenge, making it through at good speed, except . . . there were many, many other people on the course and the congestion they created was making things complicated.


My wife had a very difficult last week.

(Let me stop here to say that I put a lot of my personal life out there/in this blog, but am also sensitive of her feelings and the feelings of the many folks that are involved in the story that follows.  So I'm keeping the details very general, hoping only to draw the larger point)

She lost a close friend.  A former co-worker.

They spoke (texted, actually) one day.  The next day, the friend was gone.  Sudden, and shocking.

As you would expect, my wife experienced a range of emotions in the following days.  Deep, bottomless-feeling sadness.  Anger.  Blame.  Helplessness.  And that weird, familiar need that we have to do something.

Her first reaction was to go to the place where she used to work.  Where her friend had continued to work.  She reconnected with mutual friends and former colleagues and shared in their grief.

But when she got home, she questioned herself.  Was that an appropriate thing to do?  To show up at the old workplace?  Was that something that would seem out of line to other folks still on the job?

My wife is an artist.  And part of her do something response was to create some art for the memorial service.  And to invite as many mutual friends and former colleagues as possible into her studio space to join her.  She spent the afternoon buzzing around the house, trying to get the studio ready, and calling, calling, calling people to get the word out.

After one particular call, she questioned herself.  The friend she had just spoken to was in a very dark place, overwhelmed with sadness.  My wife was in do something mode, very upbeat and resolute.  After hanging up the phone she said, "My God, I must've sounded completely insensitive!  I was zipping around talking about creating art, and she's on the other end of the line, a complete mess."

One more vignette.  At the memorial service, she approached someone that she expected was hit hard by the loss.  She hugged this person.  The person asked, "So how's PJ?"

"It was a complete disconnect," my wife told me later.

"Everyone is in a different place right now, processing this all at different speeds," I said.  "(This person) is probably in a very numb place right now."

Over the course of the week, my wife had felt deep, bottomless-feeling sadness, anger, blame, helplessness, and that weird, familiar need that we have to do something.

All her friends were feeling those things too.  But not at the same time.

The hardest part of grieving, sometimes, is dealing with other people's grieving.  If what they are feeling in the moment isn't the same as what you are feeling in the moment, you can appear insensitive to them, and they to you.

You can be like Lou Reed, John Cale and Mo Tucker, and write and perform a song for your friend Sterling Morrison, because that is how you process the loss.  But maybe to someone else, doing so comes of as self-serving or attention seeking or somehow inappropriate.

You can choose to ignore the feelings of others, and grieve the way you need to grieve.  Or you can moderate your feelings, in deference to others, and perhaps not process your grief in the way you need to.


I think my dream was basically telling me this.  There are obstacles in life.  You can run to meet them and even relish the challenge.

But there are other people running the course.  And ultimately, the real challenge is navigating people without bulldozing them to get to where you need to go, nor letting their progress (or lack of it) hold you back.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Foxygen "No Destruction"

Several years ago, while doing a periodic look at the gaps in some of our "library" stuff, we decided to put a couple of Velvet Underground songs into rotation at MVY.

Of course, we'd had a number of Lou Reed songs in rotation for years, including his more contemporary work.  (His visit to the station in the 90s is a great slice of MVY lore).  But adding Velvet Underground served the dual purpose of beefing up our representation of the late 60s and 70s without resorting to any worn-out classic rock, and it was an important nod to some of the roots of what MVY is.

We've always prided ourselves on playing bands that no one else plays, or songs that no one else plays.  And in particular, we want to show the blueprint.

There's a reason we play a lot of Bob Dylan.  It's because his stamp is directly on many, many of the artists and songs that followed, and that we play today.

And that was part of the reason I felt strongly that we should include some Velvet Underground tracks.

Last week, I heard "Pale Blues Eyes" on the station, and I had this thought:  Where are the Velvet Underground influenced bands?

I mean, there are guys out there who are cribbing straight from Dylan (Jake Bugg, Tallest Man On Earth).  There are bands who are direct descendents of R.E.M. and Talking Heads (Decemberists and Bell X1).  And folks drawing influence straight from The Grateful Dead ("Queen Of California" and The Chris Robinson Brotherhood's "Rosalee").

To be sure, The Velvet Underground's influence is within many, many current bands.  But its an influence that's two or three steps removed.

Not long after having this thought, I heard Foxygen's "No Destruction."  And there it is.

Straight out of the Lou Reed school of vocal delivery, complete with New York City images, here's a band that directly references The Velvet Underground, instead doing it of by way of R.E.M. or Talking Heads or any other Lou Reed/VU acolytes.

What do you think?  Does this track have a place on MVY?


Hear the song on Youtube.

Victoria Williams "You R Loved"

Here's another Weekend Post:

After last weekend's weekend posts about bands that seemed to have the talent to break through in the 90s, but didn't quite get there, I went searching for a few more of my favorites.

Victoria Williams was beloved enough by other musicians in the 90s, that when she got sick, a Who's Who of great 90s bands made a fundraiser record of her songs.

Maybe the masses couldn't quite hook into her voice, but damn her songs are good.  I mean, you can probably name 10 artists right off the top of your head who's singing voice you'll forgive, because their writing is so strong (I'll get you started . . . Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Richard Thompson, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen . . . ).

Even if you don't love her female-Neil-Young-ish voice, how can you not be charmed by lines like:

Jesus walked on water/He turned the water into wine,
Go down to the drunkards/Tell them everything is fine.

Hear the song on Youtube.


Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show.  They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.
 

Lou Reed "Walk On The Wild Side" (Live)

Last week's Record Store Day got me thinking about my early record store experiences, back in the day where, if you wanted a record, you had to go to a record store.

I mean, I think Sears had some cassettes, but that was the only place other than a record store that I can remember finding music.

I can remember being of late-Middle School age when I started to discover music beyond the world of what my parents listened to.  WBCN and such.

I remember knowing, and liking, Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side."

I'm SURE I had no real understanding of what Lou was talking about.  But damn that little bassline was catchy.

I know that I knew the song well enough from the radio, that hearing this live version was a part of a whole weird experience.

There was a record store in my town called Gilmore East, and, on all levels, it felt very mysterious to me.

First of all, it was in one of the newly renovated buildings on Inn Street, but it was one of those below ground stores.

I know those of you who lived in the City are accustomed to walking from the sidewalk, down an outside set of stairs, into a store.  But for Newburyport in the early 80s, this was kind of novel.  I mean, we lived at sea level.  You didn't put anything in a basement that you wouldn't want to get wet.  Certainly not your records.

Because it was below ground, I remember it being dark, poorly lit.  I don't think it was actually smoky, but that's how I see it in my memory.

The stacks of records were built for, you know, adult height.  I was a very small kid in Middle School, so just to see the records, I had to be on tip-toes.

I remember a section of rock and roll photography in one corner.  Black and white framed photos of Jim Carroll and Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen in action/in concert, with the same tiny, handwritten price tags that my Mom used on the stained glass she used at craft fairs.

And I remember they always had music on the stereo.

I say that and you think, of course they did, but you forget, that back in those days it was pretty uncommon to walk into a store and find them with a soundtrack blaring overhead.  This was in the days where the only music feeds were MUZAK, and stores in the mall didn't yet have their own crafted personal market-researched soundtracks.

There wasn't just music on.  It was foreign music.  Not foreign, as in from another country.  Foreign, as if from some distant planet.  There was never anything playing that I might have previously heard on the radio.  It was always some alien rock and roll, yet to be discovered by me.

I'd love to tell you that it was an exciting world that opened up for me.  But truthfully, it was all a little scary at the time.

It was dark and smoky and underground and felt a little dangerous against my otherwise tepid sense of adventure.

I can remember hearing this live version on Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side" in Gilmore East.

As I said, I knew the song well enough to sing along to the album version.  And when the familiar baseline kicked in, I felt some kind of sense of comfort that there was something familiar in the room.

At this point in my life, I'd never been to a concert, and it never occurred to me that live songs could sound significantly different than their album counterparts.  Or worse, that the artist could intentionally fuck with the tune.

On this track Lou keeps talking and talking and occasionally throwing in some actual lyrics.

But mostly, it felt like I was listening to an unhinged lunatic with a microphone and an audience.

I don't think Gilmore East lasted too many years.  But eventually, I got taller, braver, more curious and developed an appreciation for unhinged lunatics with microphones.

Strangely, I don't think record stores ever lost their sense of mystery for me.

I still like to go, and to look.  It's a little late for a "Record Store Day" plug/post, but I just wanted to say, I'm glad you're still around, actual-brick-and-mortar-dark-and-mysterious-Record-Stores.


Hear the song on Youtube.  Note that it contains quite a bit of profanity.

Lou Reed "Dirty Blvd."

Here's another old song, that I've been thinking about bringing back to the library.

But let me ask you, if you were driving your kids to school and you had mvyradio on, would you be upset if you heard Lou Reed mention urination, not once but twice?

Flat-out FCC-hackle-raising words (F**k, S**t, etc) are obvious no-nos.

But what about a line like this:

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em
that's what the Statue of Bigotry says

"Dirty Blvd." is such a well-crafted portrait on New York City, it's a shame to let a great work from Reed languish in the Hold category.

Here in modern times, the record company would have the artist record an alternate, "clean" version ("Forget You," anyone?). But I don't have access to a clean version of this one.

Maybe Laurel, our production director can make an edit?

Either way, is this line a little too much for the unsuspecting broadcast audience?


Hear the song on Youtube.


Hear a live version on Youtube.

Peter Gabriel/Lou Reed “Power Of The Heart”

Peter Gabriel picked a beautiful, unusually sentimental Lou Reed song, for his covers project “Scratch My Back.”

Lou started performing this tune live in the Spring of 2008, but it hasn’t made it onto a proper album yet.

I say unusually sentimental, but I can’t think it’s a coincidence that this love song first appeared in Spring 2008, right around the time the Reed got hitched to his longtime partner, Laurie Anderson. Perhaps it was a wedding gift?



Lou Reed's version


Peter Gabriel's version