News archive

Lastest issue of French weekly magazine Les Inrockuptibles (N° 296, June 26-July 2, 2001 has a news item announcing the release of the Velvet Underground Bootleg Series Volume 1 on August 28 (read p. 4).

More info now available on Sonicnet: Velvet Underground Dig Up Bootleg Series by Jon Wiederhorn.

Check out Billboard.com Daily Music News: 'Bootleg Series' Reveals Velvet Underground by Troy Carpenter, N.Y.

Due mid-August: The Velvet Underground - Final View Live 1971-1973 - new Japanese-only 4-CD set recorded live in London 1971, Holland 1971, England 1972 & Boston May 1973, with picture sleeve and lyrics.

Now available:

John Cale
New York In The 1960s - Disc One
Sun Blindness Music
CD Table of the Elements TOE-CD-75 / Audio ArtKive 03

1. Sun Blindness Music [42:42]
John Cale: Vox Continental Organ
October 28, 1967

2. Summer Heat [11:06]
John Cale: Guitar
August 1965

3. The Second Fortress [10:36]
John Cale: Electronic sounds
Late 1967/Early 1968

[Source: Dan]

Check out Tales From The Underground on NME's website for details about a new forthcoming Velvet Underground compilation.

[Source: Andrew]

Now available! First official release of the recording from Lou Reed live in Hempstead New York on December 26, 1972. Comes with 24-page booklet loaded with Mick Rock photos and liner notes.

Lou Reed - American Poet
Pilot 83, UK

1. White light white heat (4:04)
2. Vicious (3:13)
3. I'm waiting for my man (7:14)
4. Walk it talk it (4:04)
5. Sweet Jane (4:38)
6. Interview (5:01)
7. Heroin (8:34)
8. Satellite of love (3:28)
9. Walk on the wild side (5:55)
10. I'm so free (3:52)
11. Berlin (6:00)
12. Rock 'n' Roll (5:14)

Pre-order at CDNow!

Another Cale date: July 19 - Cortile del Castello Estense, Ferrara, Italy.

[Source: Hans Werksman (a.k.a Johan Molenaar)]

More dates for John Cale in Germany - he will perform on July 26 at the Zelt-Festival in Kassel, on July 27 at the Tollhaus-Zeltival in Karlsruhe, on July 29 in the Fabrik in Hamburg and on July 31 at the Kulturufer-Festival in Friedrichshafen.

[Source: Gerd]

A vinyl replica of the original edition of Loaded has just been issued - same catalog number as original edition: Cotillion SD-9034.

Back cover has a sticker which reads "Manufactured by Rhino Records. Produced under license from Atlantic Recording Corp.; exclusively distributed by Scorpio Music, Inc.". Cover is a fine (printed, not pasted) repro of the original edition.

John Cale will be playing at the Kulturarena festival in Jena (Thüringen, East Germany) on July 25, 2001.

[Source: Gerd]

John Cale will perform on July 24 at the Stimmen Festival Lörrach.

[Source: Florian]

Moe & Band will be opening for The Kropotkins in NYC later this week. They'll be at Joe's Pub on 5/24, and then at Tonic on 5/25-26 - all NYC.

Then on 5/27 they are playing a show at East End Cafe in Newark, Delaware.

[Source: John Craig]

Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson have composed several tracks for the filmscore of Before Night Falls - a new film by Julian Schnabel (who previously directed Basquiat).

[Source: Les Inrockuptibles N° 289, May 8-14, 2001]

Lou Reed's multi-bootlegged 1972 WLIR radio show is finally officialy released.

LOU REED - Hampstead New York 26.12.72
Pilot 83

Previously unavailable recording from Lou Reed, recorded live at the Hampstead Theatre on Boxing Day 1972, during the "Transformer" tour, with the backing band, 'The Tots'. Features material from the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed (first Album), the just released "Transformer" and an early version of "Berlin", togerther with a rare interview highlighting the recording of "Transformer".

Cover and booklet photos are from the "Transformer" cover session taken from the Scala Cinema in Kings Cross. All photos are totallly unseen and are shot by the legendary Mick Rock.

1. White Light/White Heat / 2. Vicious / 3. I'm Waiting For My Man / 4. Walk It, Talk It / 5. Sweet Jane / 6. Interview / 7. Heroin / 8. Satellite of Love / 9. Walk on The Wild Side / 10.I'm So Free / 11.Berlin / 12.Rock 'n' Roll

[Source: NMC]

Third volume of the Japanese American Rock magazine, published on November 15, 2000 features a Velvet Underground 31-page special.

It also covers John Cale, Nico, Lou Reed and Moe Tucker solo careers.

[Special thanks to Kou]

John will be playing at Experience Music Project in Seattle, WA on April 27, 2001. Details at http://www.emplive.com.

[Source: Greg]

• June 3, Hay-on-wye Litfest [still unconfirmed]
• June 16, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, England (tel. 0161 907 9000)
• July 18, Duomo, Cosenza, Italy
• June 19, Archa Theater, Prague, Czech Republic
• June 21, St Davids Hall, Cardiff, Wales (tel 02920 8784440)
• June 23, City Hall, Cork, Eire [venue changed from St Finbarres Cathedral]
• Two dates in Germany end of July
• Tour of Italy and Sicily, July 17-25

[Source: Gary & Hans Werksman]

John will be playing at Experience Music Project in Seattle, WA on April 27, 2001. Details at http://www.emplive.com.

[Source: Greg]

Sun Blindness Music has been postponed and is now due May 24th.

[Source: Gary]

The April 2001 edition of The Wire magazine is now available - it features an 8-page article/interview with John Cale about the forthcoming New York In The 1960's CD series.

[Special thanks to Gary]

• Sun Blindness Music, CD TOE-CD-75, May 8, 2001
• Dream Interpretation: Inside the Dream Syndicate Vol. II, CD TOE-CD-79, May 22, 2001
• Stainless Gamelan: Inside the Dream Syndicate Vol. III, CD TOE-CD-80, June 26, 2001

[Source: Hans Werksman (a.k.a. Johan Molenaar) - Fear Is A Man's Best Friend]

• Nevin's Live, 4/20, on sale 11:30 AM Friday (4/6), 847-869-0450

• June 28, Paradiso, Amsterdam
• June 29, Grote Markt, Groningen (free concert!!)

[Source: Hans Werksman (a.k.a. Johan Molenaar) - Fear Is A Man's Best Friend]

New Lou Reed biography to be released on March 14:

Electric Dandy by Bruno Blum
574 pages, Serpent A Plumes, ISBN: 2-84261-233-7

"Dandy that can not be ignored, the singer and founder of the Velvet Underground embodies some of the US's worst nightmares : rock'n'roll, homosexuality, marginality, drugs, provocation, decay, suicidal tendencies. But the Rock'n'Roll Animal decides to survive his faustian myth and tries to negotiate his soul. From Heroin, Walk on the Wild Side to Dirty Boulevard, from Perfect Day to Perfect Night, his songs reflect every stage of this initiatory course, from savage avant-garde to redemption, until freedom.

Lewis Reed, alias Lou Reed, is an essential icon to the rock culture of the second half of 20th century. This exhaustive biography is to date the most complete in France, and relates his extraodinary course in two parts : Self-destruction (1942-1978) and Redemption (from 1979).

About the author: Bruno Blum was born in 1957 in Vichy. He is the co-writer of the Dictionnaire du Rock. He has also published Le Reggae (Éditions Librio)."

[Source: Le Serpent A Plumes & Les Inrockuptibles]

Two links for information regarding John's work on music movie Beautiful Mistake.

• The Sounds Works audio post production studios
• Beautiful Mistake

[Source: Stu]

John Cale is featured in the April issue of the WIRE magazine available on March 27.

[Source: Gary]

March 1, 2001, St. Finbarre's Cathedral, Cork City, Eire

[Source: Gary]

Cale has added two concerts in Brussels to his Euro tour on March 3rd and 4th - support for Belgian shows are Anne Pierle and Jools Holland Big Band.

• March 3, Rosselare
• March 4, Leeuven

Negotiations for a record deal with a major label are in the final stages and a new album is expected early next year.

[Source: Gary]

Fiel Garvie is a band that often gets compared to the Velvet Underground ("the bastard child of The Velvet Underground and PJ Harvey" - New Musical Express). They're also all great fans of the band. Their debut album ¡Vuka Vuka! is released in March. If you'd like to hear some of their music (realaudio/mp3) have a look at/listen to their website: http://www.fielgarvie.co.uk

[Source: Adam Green - Fiel Garvie]

Year Of The Dog, a tribute album dedicated to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (leaded by 'Legs' Larry Smith - check out Cale's The Academy In Peril), should feature a contribution from John Cale.

[Source: Record Collector No. 258, February 2001]

From promo sheet for soon to be released early Cale on TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS

What is haunting and disturbing about "minimal" music was the epidemic disruption it unleashed all up and down the cultural scale, a musical plague that seethed at every margin without discrimination as to class or social sophistication. Critics may try to "explain" minimalism as a high-class irruption, or a the contagion of "world music" imported from India and Africa; but there was a fire in the belly of the originators that the critics' feeble hand-wavings can't touch - a white heat that is still incendiary in independent imaginations.

In the early years the hunger for SOUND suddenly seemed to issue from every direction: Celtic piping, gagaku court music, 60 cycle hum-Tony Conrad found it in Bill Monroe and early Baroque composers, La Monte Young in shimmering telegraph lines and Indian ragas, Steve Reich in African drumming. Whatever their excuses, the musicians' actions spoke loudest in their dismantling of the dominant musical conventions. Classical music, already having sunk into elitism, was easily pushed over the brink. But it was to John Cale that it was left to break up the hegemony of commercial pop. By teaming with the VU, Cale mainlined the poison into rock.

While the VU was inventing Heroin, the radio was belching Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and Dorothy Springfield. The Velvets inhabited a parallel universe from platinum and gold vinyl, where they rebuilt rock and roll to incorporate SOUND. John's great credit was to have found the inoculation dosage that would addict the music industry to SOUND without alienating one world from the other. But outside the "official" VU there was also an uncut version of the virus, incubated behind the slum walls of the 1960's Lower East Side, and maintained live in the liquid nitrogen of these few insolently recorded reel to reel audiotapes.

The earliest recording in this collection is "Hot Scoria" recorded at 56 Ludlow Street, where the Velvet Underground was formed, with Angus Maclise playing cimbalom - a Rumanian instrument which Tony Conrad had bought on the Lower East Side, and which he gave to Angus after hearing him play it once.

Shortly after the Velvet Underground teamed up with Andy Warhol, Andy suggested that John compose a dance suite as part of a proposal to the Harkness Ballet Foundation. There was an abandoned piano in John and Lou's West 3rd Street flat above the fire station. John reduced this instrument to its frame, in the barren hope that the band could take it on the road, and fitted the skeletal remains with one of the crystal contact pickups then available for amplifying instruments. This is the "piano" heard in "(Untitled) for Piano", which was recorded as part of the Harkness proposal. "Big Apple Xpress" is also part of this unfinished ballet.

During the 1960's Cale frequently employed unusual and alternative instruments and performance techniques. The thunder machine heard in "(Untitled) for Piano","Big Apple Xpress" and "After the Locust" was a mechanical reverb unit crash produced by shaking or dropping the Vox Superbeatle amp head. Tony Conrad had introduced the "bouncing screwdriver handle" guitar technique used by John in his and Sterling Morrison's performance of "At about this time Mozart was dead and Joseph Conrad was sailing the seven seas learning English". This piece uses overdubbing in which the instant pause control, which was a feature of the Woolensak tape recorder, was used to "scratch" on a reel-to-reel tape. "Stainless Steel Gamelan" was performed live by John and Sterling, both playing on a single guitar. While Sterling played the fretless above the bridge, John produced percussion sounds on the short strings behind the bridge.

The electronic sounds of "The Second Fortress" and "Carousel" are actually generated on the Vox Continental organ, the same instrument that became a trademark of the Doors. In "Ex-Cathedra" John uses the deep vibrato of the Continental; in "The Second Fortress" he manipulates the draw bars over jammed keys in the upper register to build fluctuations of timbre. Most of the solo Continental recordings, and "After The Locust" were recorded at John and Betsey Johnson's apartment at 504 LaGuardia Place. Dream Interpretation was recorded in Tony Conrad and Beverly Grant's studio at 111 West 42nd Street.

• January 30, Vox Club, Modena, Italy
• January 31, Barrumba, Torino, Italy
• February 2, Auditorium S. Fedele, Palazzolo, Italy
• February 4, Teatro Fiamma, Terni, Italy
• February 5, Granhattan, Napoli, Italy
• February 6, Real Teatro, Palermo, Italy

[Source: Hans Werksman (a.k.a. Johan Molenaar) - Fear Is A Man's Best Friend]

For Immediate Release

In an effort to keep you informed, RCA would like to make fans aware of upcoming releases via the world wide web.

We wanted to notify you of RCA's upcoming Lou Reed release, Sally Can’t Dance, available in stores on 2/20/01 (CD 07863-69383-2).

Originally released in the fall of 1974, Sally Can't Dance, Lou Reed's fifth album for RCA, proved to be his most commercially successful. This record hit the Top Ten, a first for Reed.

Among its highlights are the classic rockers "Sally Can't Dance" and "Kill Your Sons" along with "Billy" one of Lou's best ever ballads.

This reissue has been produced in cooperation with Lou Reed and features two bonus tracks - "Good Taste" from the original Sally sessions, plus the single version of the title track.

The album has been remastered from the original first generation tapes and also includes a new essay by Michael Hill.

Track Listing

1. Ride Sally Ride
2. Animal Language
3. Baby Face
4. NY Stars
5. Kill Your Sons
6. Ennui
7. Sally Can't Dance
8. Billy
9. Good Taste (previously unreleased)
10. Sally Can't Dance (Single Version)

Pre-order at CDNow

[Source: Jennifer, RCA Music Group]

The 3-CD set has fourteen tracks about half of which are Cale solo. Tracks range in length from a few minutes (Carousel) to over 42 minutes (Sun Blindness Music). It's due for release in March on Table of the Elements. John Cale is in London next week giving an interview for THE WIRE magazine which will run a huge Cale article and review in their March issue.

The tracks were recorded by Tony Conrad during the mid-late sixties and feature contributions from Angus Maclise, Sterling Morrison, Terry Jennings (who was in the La Monte group with Cale) and of course Tony Conrad himself.

Tracklist:

Disc 1: SUN BLINDNESS MUSIC

1. Sun Blindness Music (42:42) recorded Oct 28 1967
2. Summer Heat (11:06) recorded August 1965
3. The Second Fortress (10:36) recorded late 67 early 68

Disc 2: DREAM INTERPRETATION

1. Dream Interpretation (20:33) recorded Feb 6 1969
2. Ex-Cathedra (5:03) recorded late 67 or early 68
3. (Untitled) for piano (12:28) recorded early/mid 60's
4. Carousel (2:32) recorded late 67 or early 68
5. A midnight rain of green wrens at the worlds tallest building (3.19) recorded Feb 8 1968
6. Hot Scoria (9:21) recorded March 2 1964 0r 1965

Disc 3: STAINLESS GAMELAN

1. Stainless Steel Gamelan (10:30) recorded May 67 with Sterling
2. At about this time Mozart was dead and Joseph Conrad was sailing the seven seas learning English (26.27) recorded May 67 with Sterling
3. Terry's Cha-Cha (8:20) recorded mid 1960's
4. After the Locust (4:18) recorded circa 1968
5. Big Apple Xpress (5:45) recorded early/mid 60's

[Source: Gary]

WXYC is doing a 3 hour special on Lou Reed, mostly his solo stuff, Thursday January 18, 2001, 9PM-12AM EST. Go to http://www.wxyc.org for info on their on-line transmissions.

[Source: P@ J]

Some of John Cale's most unknown works will soon surface, released by Table Of The Elements label. John Cale: New York in the 1960s is a set including 3 CDs: Sun Blindness Music, Dream Interpretation: Inside The Dream Syndicate Vol. 2, and Stainless Gamelan: Inside The Dream Syndicate Vol. 3. It offers hours of recordings made in the mid-60s with Tony Conrad andTerry Jennings, but also with appearances by Angus MacLise and Sterling Morrison.

[Source: lesinrocks.com]

Maintained by Olivier Landemaine
Last modified: October 25, 2008