Honestly, this is just psychedelic rock at its peak at its best, with a studio television program that understood the aesthetics of the style of the music, and doing the band justice. It’s excessive in places, but since when does psych-rock understand restraint? Never!
Without any kind of expectations, without anything in my slate of things-to-do, my roommate and co-writer of a potential comedy troupe/series has fostered upon me a Very Lou Reed Kinda Christmas this year. Er. . . Hanukkah, in my case.
After scouring the record shops that he and I regularly frequent, he bought a copy of White Light/White Heat behind my back, and offered it to me on the fifth night of Hanukkah. Indeed, it is missing from my collection, but it’s one I did not think I would so readily miss. I bought the album on CD, and short of one awkward car-ride listen and several attempts to reconcile the album’s extremely polarizing nature (both within itself and in criticism of the Velvet Underground’s avant-garde improvisation and their lyrical content), I haven’t really had the chance sit down with it and judge it for what it is: The 293rd entry on Rolling Stone magazine’s top 500 list of the ‘greatest albums ever made.’ For those of you playing at home, that means that (in the immediate sense), the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams is slightly worse than White Light/White Heat, which is marginally better than Bob Dylan and the Band releasing The Basement Tapes. But hey, it’s Rolling Stone, so take what you will, with many grains of salt.
After the Jump: A good reason why everyone should try heroin at least once, okay? Okay? Here we go.
Nowadays, we think of the Boogie Down Bronx, and psychedelia is the last music to come to mind. Hell, rock in general doesn’t belong beyond 14th street in New York City. Yet, something quite magical has emerged from the Bronx in 1964, and anyone who knows the Nuggets set should know the Blues Magoos like the back of their hand (for those that don’t, they did “We Ain’t Got Nothin’ Yet”). I certainly do (their second album IS the namesake of this very blog afterall). So it strikes me as a little odd that when snooping around the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn*, I should happen upon a pristine, if only a little dusty, copy of the Blues Magoos’ third album (their second for the Mercury label) Basic Blues Magoos. Such a title works both polarities of the word into something extraordinary.
After the jump, a full reflection the lost classic “Basic Blues Magoos.”
Electric Comic Book. 