Heroin

Heroin by The Velvet Underground

Editor's Note: Who is the greatest American band? This week I present the arguments for who I think should be in the running.



Pros: As Brian Eno once said only a few dozen people bought this record ["The Velvet Underground and Nico"] -- but that all of them were then inspired to start their own band. The Underground has been called the most important band so many times now, that it's hard to not know who they are. Never commercially successful, the band's importance has been and will forever be their foresight. They've always been considered ahead of their time, which warrants the question, has time caught up with them yet?... Are they the hippest band ever?... Where American music would be with out these guys, I haven't a clue. Their influence is undeniable—from Julian of the Strokes trying to sound like Lou Reed to every art rock band that ever play a chord of music—pretty much every cool band of the last 40 years has been influenced by the Velvet Underground at some level. So in that regard, they're the Beatles of American music.

Cons: How many people have actually listened to the Velvet Underground? Are they best know for being on the Royal Tannenbaums soundtrack, the Juno soundtrack, the High Fidelity soundtrack, or because of Andy Warhol?... You almost get the feeling that the album cover of "The Velvet Underground and Nico" is better known that anything the band actually played... Who wakes up and says, I could really go for some Loaded right now (other than people in bad bands of course)?...

Best Album: Loaded -- This comes down to taste. I don't like Nico, and since she had been kicked out of the band by this point, Loaded is my favorite and what I consider to be the best Velvet Underground album. However, I think every single rock critic, hipster, and pretentious son-of-a-bitch will tell me I'm an idiot. That Loaded is just the Underground trying to be radio friendly. Some may even claim that it's a sell out album (these are the same morons who like Beach House because Pitchfork said so). But you know what? Loaded is much more assessable than the band's self titled debut. It might not reach the highs (literally) of "The Velvet Underground and Nico", but the album is consistent and versatile, you can play the album at the beginning or the end of a party.

Best Song: Heroin -- I'll let John Leland take it from there: ""Heroin" begins with single strokes on the guitar, not quite marking time. Reed's voice enters before the full band, starting the problem, which is not drugs but life: "I don't know just where I'm going." As the first verse gathers momentum, the music rises around the words, cranking and stopping on the screech of Cale's viola and Maureen Tucker's no-breaks tom-toms. The sound grows denser as it accelerates, compressing time into ever-shorter measures. The verbs are gerunds, arrested in mid-action... From any point in the song, you sense that things are only going to get worse. Then, rather than build this rush to a crescendo—closing all the way in on death—the musicians abruptly stop, leaving the hangover of feedback and disordered time...

"...The stops in "Heroin," on the other hand, show how unmoored time has been all along. Like Twain's river or Kerouac's open road, which restart the action at each bend, "Heroin" interrupts the sequence of cause and effect, building to climaxes that never come. When Lou starts to look backward, wishing he "was born a thousand years ago," sailing "in a great big clipper ship," wearing a "sailor's suit and cap," the lyrics don't register; they're part of the distortion and feedback, like random noise." (from Hip: The History).