Last Podcast On The Left - No Dogs in Space: The Velvet Underground Pt I

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

No Dogs in Space is back for Season 2! So we're slipping this new episode onto the Last Podcast feed so everyone knows!Marcus and Carolina return, and this season we shift our focus towards a sub-genre of Music, that much like Punk, encompasses a wide range of different styles cross-pollinating organically in the underground music scene of the 1970's, this season we're diving headfirst into Alternative.Kicking off with the first series, covering one of the most influential acts in musical history, The Velvet Underground.In this episode we meet a young, complicated Lou Reed and learn how his friendship with John Cale and their mutual love of experimental music would lead to the formation of what would become The Velvet Underground.As always, Follow Marcus on Spotify to listen to all of the songs used in this episodeAnd taking us out this week is Pyrex - TouchFor Early Access to Episodes and Exclusive Content join our Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/nodogs

🎵 🎵Under the blues mixed up with summer tunes 🎵 🎵 A little gospel devotion, free for youth, full of motion 🎵 🎵 Red, the mountains in jazz, threaded through rock and rose bath 🎵 🎵 And we dance and we jump to the music we love 🎵 🎵 Don't dogs in space? 🎵 🎵 Don't dogs in space? 🎵 🎵 Don't dogs in space? 🎵

I don't know what's on this place. Season two. Season two. It begins now. I don't know how to start it. I mean, give me like a show. Give me like a really good season two show. Oh my god, lost.

Okay, give me another one. Oh yeah, the trade you know. I haven't seen that one. Oh yeah, that's, uh, Frazier. Let's go back to lost. Let's go on. Okay, okay. All right, all right, all right.

What happens in the beginning of season two? Oh, they open the hatch. Oh, okay, good. They open the hatch and they go down and they, they crawl down the ladder and they find an angry Scotsman there and he fires a gun at them. And he asks, what does one snowman say to the other?

And then it goes from there and so on and so forth. We can't lead with that. No, but it starts with a great mama cast song. It plays, make your own kind of music. It's really cool. It's a great season two starter. All right, there we go. That's what we're going to start.

What's in the fucking hatch? Marcus, go find that hatch. There's a Scottish person and there's mama castes down there. Let's open it up. Welcome to No Dogs in Space, everybody. I'm Marcus Parks. I'm Carolina Dogo. And this is season two,

where we explore our favorite bands in the rock sub-drama collectively known as alternative. So out of all the genre designations in rock music, very few are as broad as alternative. Unlike say punk or rockabilly, alternative is not the most evocative term. Partly this is because alternative was a term created by record company marketing executives

to replace the cumbersome classification of college rock. So named because bands in the 80s like R.E.M., The Replacements, Camp Revanpe, Dilvan, and The Pixies were mostly played on college radio stations like my alma mater, 88.1, KTXT, FM, love it. You always find a way to just ease that in an everyday conversation. Yeah, man, I miss it.

I miss it. I miss the old KTXT. They fucking shut it down and then brought it back as a shadow of its former self. I miss it so much. Love it, lost something essential when they shut down that station. Anyway.

Now in 2021, genre designations like alternative are effectively meaningless. To put it simply, let's compare it to eating out. I'm a child. I'm such a child. Working with you and Henry is just two sides of the same fucking coin. Anyway, continue, continue, continue.

In the past, choosing a music genre used to be like choosing from one of 10 or so restaurants on a single city block, country, rock, oldies, classical, et cetera. Very simple. Today though, music genres are so numerous that it's like walking into a food festival held in a stadium parking lot with thousands of food trucks that all sell fusion cuisine,

like fucking post-hardcore noise rap, or Eastern European bluegrass funk. And you know what, that's fine, except just don't put any aioli in it. Don't put any aioli in my bluegrass funk, never good. I like garlic, I like mayo, but they should never meet. Never ever, Jesus Christ, if you own a Brooklyn restaurant,

stop putting aioli in everything. We just started season two, and we both found our hills to die. And it's been five minutes. This is great, continue. And while there are plenty of great modern bands who exist in this space, I mean, you got Black Country New Road, Catholic Action,

The Common is Coming, Black Midi, Fontaine's DC, Sorry, The Garden, Hines, and Idols. Yes, Idols. Yeah, the roots of all these bands are in what used to be known as alternative. Now I think what makes alternative hardest to pin down is that it's a negative definition, as in it's defined by what it's not,

rather than what it is. Like if I describe the color blue as not yellow. So let's try to find a positive definition of alternative. And in doing so, we can also gain some insight into what made the band will be covering first this season, so goddamn special. So where pop music is a reflection of culture and punk is a reflection of society,

alternative is more a reflection of the artist themselves. In other words, this isn't about making music to be successful or making music to make a point. Rather, this is music that is for somebody, whether it be for other weird kids like yourself or to satisfy the urge to express some inner truth. In other words, we're gonna be talking about some very sensitive boys and girls this season.

And that's great, we just moved into this glass house. So it really, we're in the neighborhood, it's great. But just because it's for yourself doesn't mean it's masturbatory. Because when we think about the word for, I think most alternative music, while it is made for the sake of creativity,

it's still made with an audience in mind. For example, when you're making unconventional music with no audience in mind, it usually falls in the experimental category, which, let's face it, has a tendency to be more masturbatory. I love experimental music, I make experimental music. Most people don't wanna hear it because it's not really for anyone.

Or maybe just his wife, because I get to hear it all the time, it's great. You like it. But if you're making unconventional music that's for an audience, you're getting closer to the realm of alternative. Sometimes though, a band makes music that is barely noticed in their own time,

but instead finds their true audience years later. And our first band this season certainly falls into this category. This band was made up of truly unconventional people trying to find their place in 1960s America, but they were too dark, too abrasive, too mean, and just too goddamn real to fit in with the hippie movement that seemed to be swallowing up all the weirdo air.

I like that, that's a good writer's line. All right, that's great. But yet to be fair, the hippies did bring a lot to the culture. They brought roomy minivans and road trips and festivals. They did. Thanks to hippies, we have festivals. I don't know if that's true, but I'm gonna make it true.

Guy DeSorta, and this band also is an immune from 1960s turns of phrase. Different colors made of tears, are you fucking kidding me? That's one of the most 60s lines I've ever fucking heard. But this band was a conglomeration of musicians, artists, and writers who collectively chose rock and roll as their medium, just as a sculptor uses clay.

And all this back when rock and roll was still considered a low art fad by most quote unquote serious people. But with this band, that low art was combined with high art. And when those perspectives converged and were combined with a reflection of the artists who made the music, the result was the velvet underground

and the beginnings of alternative. I've been waiting for my man, 26 dollars in my hand. Up to Lexington, one, two, five. A few second dirty, more dead than alive. I'm waiting for my man. Hey white boy, what you doing uptown? Hey white boy, you chasing all women around? Who bought me stuff, it's for this from my mind.

I'm just looking for what's different in my mind. I'm waiting for my man. I'm gonna work it, hell yeah. Now for sources, Carolina went above and beyond for this series, as she always does. Thank you. So I'm gonna let her read out the stack of books she used for research on this series.

Cause again, she is the research brain of the show. I cannot stress this hard enough. I have a brain. And it is there, it is in my head and it read, it read the life of Lou Reed. Notes from the Velvet Underground by Howard Sunes. Lou Reed by Anthony DeCurtis. Transformer, the complete Lou Reed story by Victor Bacchus.

The Velvet Underground companion for decades of commentary compiled by Albin Zach III. And White Light, White Heat, The Velvet Underground. Day by day by Richie Unterberger, which is also a very, very decent read. And Delmore Schwartz and The Life of an American Poet by James Atlas. And Chronicles, one, part one by Bob Dylan.

And that's just for us to get started for this part one. Yeah, that's today. Yeah, so as we do the other parts, part two, part three, part four and everything, we'll add more books to it and I'll make sure to mention them at the end of the episode. And at the very end of the series, we'll name them all in case you're interested

in reading them because I've been getting some messages of like, what books do you use? I'm like, I'll show you exactly where we're gonna put them. At the end of the series, they're gonna be right there for you. It's the gold at the end of the rainbow. Yes. Now saying that The Velvet Underground is one

of the most important and influential bands in rock history is kind of like saying George Washington was an important figure in American history. It's just sort of understood. But this band is a cornerstone of more than just American culture. Rather, The Velvet Underground is an earth treasure. We bring this from Earth.

Yeah, man. I like that. It should have been on the gold fucking record. Now this was a band so powerful that their songs alone helped bring about the end of communism in the former Czechoslovakia simply by virtue of existing. It's not like Lou Reed went over there and made a bunch of speeches.

And we'll get into the full story at the end of the series and it's a fantastic story. Yes. But yeah, I mean, The Velvet Underground was a domino in the toppling of communism in Eastern Europe. It's fucking insane. Famously, musician and producer Brian Eno said that while very few people bought the first Velvet Underground

record in 1967, every person who did went out and started a band. And it was those bands that helped define first punk and then alternative music for decades to come. So in order to see exactly how The Velvet Underground happened, let's start the story with their lead singer and principal songwriter, Lou Reed. Or Louis Allen Reed.

Or Louis Rabinowitz. Well, actually his father, yeah, his father changed the name from Rabinowitz to Reed. So over his crib, it said, where the mobile was, Louis Allen Reed. Okay, all right, all right, all right. Yes, but soon to be known as Lou Reed, like you said, he was born right here in Brooklyn, New York

on March 2nd, 1942. And he came from like a very regular middle class Jewish family, his dad, Sydney, who changed his name from Rabinowitz. He was an accountant and his mom, Toby, you know, Lou's mom, she was a sonographer, like a secretary, like type is lady, turned homemaker once she married Sydney.

And together they had Lou and then his younger sister five years later. So perfect little family. What's in his mom also a beauty queen, like a former beauty queen? She won a local pageant, like prettiest stenographer in New York, and she was very pretty. She was one of those like very pretty,

like suburban moms like, dude, your mom's hot. Yeah. Kind of thing. Yeah, stepford wife. Yes, kind of, yes. But she was very sweet. So Lou and his family lived in Brooklyn until he was about nine when they were finally able to afford

to buy their own house in Freeport, Long Island. That was about an hour drive from Brooklyn and it's deep in the suburbs, you know, a safe neighborhood in a nice house with a yard, milkman at your door, kids on their bikes, you know, that kind of 1950s suburban life. Yeah, it's picturesque. Yes.

This is fucking Norman Rockwell. Right. And Lou Reed is Edward Scissorhead in this. Yeah. Okay, so he was actually known as the quiet kid, but he had a few close friends. He got good grades. He liked to play basketball and tennis.

He was even on the track team at his high school, but there was also a side of Lou that was difficult. Yes. Lou could be difficult. Difficult is going to be a word we're going to be using a lot this series. I have never heard a single person described as nasty so much in my entire life.

Yeah, I know. It's like that just again and again, like Lou Reed, he's a nasty person, nasty. That's right. He could be confrontational and hostile. And a lot of this probably had to do with his anxiety issues. Yeah.

Because according to Lou's younger sister, Lou would get panic attacks. He'd be avoidant and withdrawn from social situations. He would refuse to meet anyone who was coming into the house. He's like, I didn't know they were coming to the house. And he just locked the door in his room and hide under his desk. And he also had a very fragile temperament,

which got a lot worse in his teenage years. So that anxiety and that angst, which could be very relatable, except he could also, like you said, be nasty. He could be a total dick. And there's no excuse for that. I give him a three out of four on the Eric Clapton nastiness game.

Well, so Eric Clapton is four out of four. Yeah, obviously, that's a perfect score. Congratulations, Eric Clapton. You're the nastiest person around. Anyway. Now, like a lot of musicians who emerged in the 60s and 70s, Lou Reed discovered early rock and roll through the radio, specifically by listening to New York City radio DJs

like Alan Freed and Marie the K. Those guys are the originators of rock and roll radio. Reed said that New York radio showed him that there was a world outside of Long Island. Life on this planet, as he put it, and among the more influential of tunes, according to Reed, was a little known track from Alicia and the Rockways called Why Can't I Be Loved?

Now, this song sounds fairly standard on its own. But when you put it into the context of Lou Reed's early musical influences, one can hear its echoes throughout Lou Reed's entire songwriting career. Why can't I be loved? Why can't I be loved? Why doesn't someone take me if I've been asleep? Won't someone please come in and wake me?

Why can't I be loved? Full moons have lost their meaning, and it seems so wrong to waste such a lot of the evening. I mean, it's not an A to B type of thing, but you hear the echoes, definitely. Now, by high school, Lou Reed had begun to actually play music. And after he and a couple of his friends put together what they called a little Richard act

at a high school talent show. As long as they didn't do anything to their faces. That sounds great. A neighbor approached them saying he had contacts in the music industry. Now, this wasn't quite as odd as you might think, because remember, Long Island is very close to New York City, and in the late 50s, New York was still where most

of the players in the music industry operated, big and small. And a lot of those guys lived in Long Island, taking the LIRR into the city every day. So Lou and his friends, Richard and Phil, and what a fucking Long Island trio that is. Lou, Richie and Phil. They put together a group called the Shades,

and played Long Island bars, parties, and shopping malls on weekends in an early rock and roll style reminiscent of the Everly Brothers, R.I.P. Don, passed away just last week. Eventually, the Shades even recorded a few songs, but did so as the Jades, because there were not surprisingly already dozens

of groups called the Shades. Get it, because we wear our song glasses all the time. Jesus Christ. Not a genius from the get-go. This song right here, this is Leave Her For Me, with Phil singing and Lou Reed backing him up on Ooze, Oz, and Guitar. Take away the oceans, take away the sea,

take away the sunshine, take away the tree, take away the rosebud that grew in the spring. Take all the blossoms, all I ask is one thing, leave her for me, leave her for me. I don't care for the oceans, I don't care for the seas, I can do without blue skies, or flowering trees, but I can do without my baby, so please leave her for me. I can see him in the back.

Oh yeah, definitely. No, it's a great song. It's like a 1950s version of Jolene. I like it. Yeah. But while Lou Reed's music in high school was pretty standard for the time and place, his creative writing projects were what you might call a bit much

for suburban Long Island in the 50s. Influenced by contemporary beat writers like Jack Kerouac, Lou Reed wrote Sex and Violence short stories that alluded to secret gay liaisons in which the protagonist would catch someone of indeterminate gender having sex in a public bathroom. Wink, wink. And this discovery would inevitably lead to a brutal beating.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, so that was a little bit much for the suburbanites. I mean, he was reading a lot of Henry Miller, some Marquis de Sade stuff, and writing these stories and poetry basically, yeah, directly influenced by all these. And when his friends would read his stuff, they would ask about it.

They're like, hey, what's up with all the sex and violence and all this fun gay stuff that you're doing? And Lou would just respond with like, don't you ever think about this stuff? Like sex and violence and experimenting, just like fantasies. And his friends would be like, no, actually we don't. And Lou would just shrug and say, well, this is life.

This is what people think about. This is what I think about. Yeah. And that's the thing is that you got to find the other people to think about the stuff that you think about. Right. Yeah. Now concerning Lou Reed's sexuality,

some writers that we read believe that it's the skeleton key to understanding both Lou Reed's life and his music. And those writers place Reed firmly in the confused homosexual space. Others, however, us included, believe that while Lou Reed's sexuality is certainly important, it was either something that he was not even able to figure out himself or it was something that he purposefully muddled to make himself more interesting.

And why not? And why not? Yes. Really knowing as much as we do about Lou Reed's personality, the latter is probably more likely. It probably is. I mean, it's difficult to ascertain what his sexuality was. And believe me, there are plenty of people who asked.

Yeah. And Lou had said in interviews, yeah, I'm gay or later, wait, I'm marrying a woman and then, oh, no, I'm actually something else or his other answer. What's the difference? Yeah, which is probably the right answer. Right. He liked to keep everyone guessing and maybe, as you said,

it was part of the fun. But what's been said from the people who knew him was that he was either bisexual or maybe even fluid or just an experimenter. Whatever it was, there definitely wasn't a term for it in the 1950s Long Island suburbs. God, no. Like, remember, this is back in the day when homosexuality was completely taboo, at least not out in the open.

Yeah. I mean, it's not like today where, you know, you have gay couples living in the suburbs and waving to their neighbors and kissing each other goodbye in the driveway. Like, this is a time when homosexuality is a dirty, dark secret for the vast, vast majority of America. It's not the vast majority of the world. Yeah, that's true.

But oh, so going back to Lou Reed's life story during his teenage years, he only dated women, but still not conventionally. Like while his friends dated the nice girl next door, like Becky from Cam Class, Lou never had a steady girlfriend. Like he would often go out with girls who supposedly had bad reputations or what floozies or whatever the term was at the time. And then Lou would discard them as quickly as he met them. Loose floozies, right?

Loose women? Yeah, loose women. Yeah, I guess floozies is, it's like, Lou, what are you doing with that floozie? Like Blanche. No, that's a floozie. Yeah. But we don't flooze shame here.

Not at all. Not at all. I dated my fair share of floozies. Okay. I married a floozie. Hey. Okay. We're even moving on.

All right. So Lou even told his friends at the time, I like girls with black hearts. So he was a bad boy who liked bad girls, I guess. I mean, he did rebel a lot by drinking beer, smoking pot, hanging out with girls of supposed questionable morality, you know, talking back and arguing with his parents. Cause remember he had a fragile temper and he seemed to enjoy

challenging people or confronting them for whatever reason, like the time in high school when Lou walked into his like neighborhood candy store where the kids would hang out and a girl from his class saw him and smiled and asked, Hey, Lou, did you just get a haircut? And Lou just responds with that. Oh, fuck you, Carol. And walks away.

Carol's like, what the fuck happened? And Lou's like, where's the goddamn chupa-chups? Bring me the black licorice. I said I want to happy. That was the kind of attitude he would give out all the time. And that attitude frightened Lou's parents. They didn't know how to deal with this rebellious teenager, you know, cause his parents, they grew up in a different era,

like during the depression where you don't disobey your parents, much less talk back. You're trying to survive. But now we're in rebel without a cause era right now. And Lou was doing all that, the talking back, the disobeying. They argued, they shouted at each other's door slamming. A lot of you can't tell me what to do. I don't want your life.

And a lot of that seems like teenage rebellion stuff, but there was a lot more to it. Like Lou was struggling with depression and anxiety, stuff that was kept quiet in 1950s America. And this might have exacerbated his behavior. Like one difficult point in Lou's life was after he graduated from high school, he enrolled in NYU and moved to the uptown campus in the Bronx.

There he only lasted months until his parents had to go and get him because he had suffered a nervous breakdown. His sister said that when they brought Lou home, he was limp and unresponsive. We don't know exactly what happened there, but it was enough for his parents to realize that their son now needed professional help. Unfortunately, this was 1950s professional help.

Where the doctor immediately thought he might be schizophrenic. And the doctor even went as far as to suggest that Lou was in this condition because Lou's mother hadn't picked him up enough when he was a baby. So Lou's mom just cried and cried fearing that she did something wrong. She also suffered from anxiety as well. And she had that, I need to be a perfect mother and wife thing,

you know, that upbringing of back in the day. And Lou's dad, Sidney, he also grew up old school. Like he saw his old tactics of sending Lou to his room or grounding him and telling him what to do. None of those things seem to work and it really confused them. So on the advice of these medical professionals, Lou's parents consented to let them do whatever they needed to make Lou better.

He was very lucky he didn't get a lobotomy. Yeah. Wow. That's nuts. Yeah. So after Lou's nervous breakdown at NYU, he was prescribed a thrice weekly eight week long treatment of old school electroshock therapy,

ostensibly to treat his severe depression, anxiety and possible schizophrenia. Nowadays, ECT as electroshock therapy is now called. It's painless. It works on severe depression when nothing else can make a dent. And I've heard people swear by the effectiveness of modern ECT. You're out like a light. Like you are actually put under before it happens.

And it doesn't feel bad at all. This was not the case in 1959. First of all, the institution where Reed's electroshock therapy was done, Creed Moore was a hell hole on a rapid downhill course. By the 70s, conditions have become so bad that three rapes, 22 assaults, 52 fires, six suicides, a shooting and a riot, all occurred within 20 months of each other.

Oh my God. Yeah. It's terrible. But how do you get to a 50 second fire? I mean, at this point, do we all agree like no more fires? Yeah. No more fire Friday. I have a hard time figuring out how do you get to the third fire?

Oh man. That's rough. Yeah. 52 fires. And this, you know, this is of course, you know, about 20 years after Lou Reed was there, maybe 10 years after Lou Reed was there. But still the seeds were planted. It's called Creed Moore.

That is the name of a crooked mental institution. Second, Reed was also given the anti psychotic Thorazine, which caused a never ending restlessness that's often seen in old movies about psychiatric institutions in which zonked out patients are seen endlessly shuffling from one side of the room to the other, the famous Thorazine shuffle. Lastly, the electroshock therapy was so badly administered that Lou later claimed that it temporarily destroyed his

short term memory and made him feel as if he was perpetually stuck in a bad acid trip with none of the benefits. However, concerning Reed's electroshock treatments, there's a fair amount of disinformation out there. And that disinformation came specifically from Lou Reed. You see what I've been telling you? Three out of four, three out of four. I used the word disinformation on purpose.

Lou claimed in a 1979 interview with cream magazine that his parents forced him into electroshock treatments as a kind of gay conversion therapy. Now, there were certainly a lot of people who were tortured by this brutal brand of aversion therapy where the pain of electroshocks are associated with homosexual images while heterosexual images are marked with an absence of pain. But Lou Reed was not one of those people.

According to Lou Reed's sister Bunny, their parents were certainly anxious and controlling. She admits that. But they were ultimately Long Island Jewish liberals who were in no way homophobic. And as we said, the only reason why they gave Lou this treatment was because the doctors told them that this was the only way to bring him back from his breakdown.

Yeah, I mean, he was anxious. He was hiding under a desk. They don't care if he's gay or not. They just want their son to be, like, okay. They want their son to be a functional human being. Right. That's baseline. And then maybe later he could marry a nice Jewish girl.

That's his mom always at the end of that. She always texts that on. But no matter the reason, Reed came away from his ECT experience with nothing more than a letter from a psychiatrist that had accused Reed of being a schizophrenic that regularly elucidated spiders growing on the wall. And of course, Lou Reed later framed that letter

and kept it on his wall. It's a cool letter to have. Of course he did. He has, like, there's so many, like, the seeds of goth, you know, in all of this. Yeah, that's my spider letter. Got that from a psychiatrist. You want to come over and see my spider letter?

Boy, do I. So, okay, so after all of that, by 1960, this is a few months later after his electroshock therapy, Lou started to feel better and he decided to try to go to college again. But instead of going back to NYU, he went to Syracuse University.

And Syracuse, that's where we saw Weird Al. Yeah. And I got food poisoning at that awful restaurant. That's right. But Weird Al was great. Well, that's the fun part about Syracuse. Weird Al was great. Loved it.

And yeah, that's where Lou went to school. So Lou came in as a freshman and luckily he already had a friend from his neighborhood in Freeport, Allen, Allen Hyman. And he was already a sophomore by then. And he already knew all the going-ons and the happenings at school. So Allen was excited to bring Lou under his wing

and told him, like, I'm going to show you the quad, the cool place to sit in the cafeteria, introduce you to all my friends. Oh, and you should join the fraternity I'm in. We're the Sigma Alpha Mu. We call ourselves the Sammies. Why don't you come to a rush party and I'll introduce you to some of the senior members

and get you in with them. Just make sure you dress real nice for it. He's saying that to Lou Reed. Yeah. So let's get into Lou Reed at a frat party. So Friday night comes. And Lou just walks into the Sigma Alpha Mu frat party wearing a stained and tattered jacket.

No tie. Real mess. The shoveled hair everywhere. Allen called him indescribable. But Allen still took him to meet the senior members who told Lou, you're dressed like a fucking bomb. You expect to join this fraternity looking like that? To which Lou immediately replied with,

I wouldn't join this frat even if you paid me, especially if you're in it. You're the biggest asshole I've ever met. You should kill yourself. Don't hold me back, Allen. This guy's a real jerk. So Lou takes, I mean, Allen takes Lou outside and asks them, like, dude, what are you doing?

Why did you even come? And Lou said, because you asked me to. What a fucking asshole. And I like this jacket. Where are you going? Allen, I wasn't going to wear pants. Anyway, that actually did not affect his friendship. Lou and Allen continued being friends throughout all of college.

And they actually even started a band together called LA and the El Dorados. Yeah. And it was more than just a garage band. Like this was a gigging band. Oh yeah. Absolutely. And they, you know, there was already a band called El Dorados, which is funny because they took it from a well-known band.

They added the LA law, the LA part, Lou for L and A for Allen and the El Dorados. And yeah, as you said, with a couple other friends playing drums and bass and guitar, they would go play at college parties and frat parties and make some extra money while going to college, you know, that kind of stuff to get your laundry done. Part time job. Yep. Now LA and the El Dorados were another standard late 50s rock and roll do-op cover band showing up at gigs in a flame adorned 1959 Chrysler wearing matching gold LeMay vests.

I would like to add that the Chrysler itself wasn't wearing a gold LeMay vests. It was in people inside. Yes, yes. Later, Reed would say that LA and the El Dorados were so bad that they had to change their names constantly because venues would never book them twice. And while they did have to do this, the reason given is again another Lou Reed switcheroo. The venues refused to have LA and the El Dorados back because Lou Reed was a nightmare of a person who at times had to be physically dragged to the venues by his bandmates where he'd

then sulk and be intentionally hostile to everyone who came into his orbit. But being difficult wasn't the only thing that got LA and the El Dorados banned from performance spaces. Mostly it was because Lou Reed would sometimes decide to play an original composition called Fuck Around Blues, which was a little too spicy for Long Island in 1960. Yeah, all the women at the frat party would be like, what's going on? I mean, it's not even necessarily the frat party. It's more the shopping mall, I think.

It's everywhere. And so they would have to come back and be like, we're actually Pasha and the prophets. Yeah, that's where we are. Or Moses and his brothers. We're going to have to keep circulating this because no one likes us anymore. Yes, Lou would get intentionally hostile if things didn't go the way I mean his way in a lot of ways. I mean, it had to be his way.

Like it had to be on his terms. Like one time the band was booked to play on a boat cruising the St. Lawrence River as part of the entertainment for the afternoon. And once the band got there, Lou said, yeah, I'm not playing on a boat, like that boat especially. And his bandmates are like already exhausted by Lou and said, like, dude, you have to play. We came all the way here. We're at the docks.

We booked the gig. They're paying us good money. It's only an hour. Let's just do this. Come on, Lou. It's three against one. What are you going to do? Fight us?

To which Lou responded by punching his hand through a plate glass door injuring his guitar playing hand with blood just streaming down onto the floor. So his bandmates defeated by Lou again, just sighed and just took him to the emergency room where he got stitches. I don't even know how he explained that to the doctor there. Like I said, I didn't want to play on that fucking boat. His arm all patched up or something. But it has to be on his terms.

Always. And you know what? And I think we're talking right now, we are given a lot of examples of how extremely difficult Lou Reed is when it comes to performance. He's not always like this. You know, like here in Long Island, like I think this is one of those square peg round holes things. Right.

And sometimes like when you try to put a square peg into a round hole, some square pegs are a lot more difficult than others. Right. Some of them scream. But for some reason, Lou Reed's bandmates stuck with him. As one member put it, he and Lou really hit it off, but hit it off wasn't really the right term. With Lou, the best you could do was find commonality and then you'd just deal with his bullshit.

This sentiment will become a familiar one as the series goes on. And really part of the reason behind Lou Reed's erratic behavior could be that starting in college, he upgraded from just plain pot to full on heroin, using it in such a casual way that it's hard to pin down exactly when he starts using right out of all the biographies that we found every single one of them to the letter, all just casually at one point go like, oh, and also he was doing heroin at some point. And it's not even they don't even make a declarative sentence. They just sort of treat Lou Reed's heroin use like they almost treat like he's been

doing heroin since he's five years old. We don't know when it happened because he tried it a couple times here and there. He's just a dabbler. Yeah. It's a very strange thing. And obviously he's not going to be very forthcoming with that kind of information. Obviously not. I mean, isn't there some debate as to whether he ever really did heroin in college?

Yes, there is. Yeah. Some people at Syracuse said, no, he never did it. But then again, he has Lou has many sides. He does. And those like a parfait. Fucking Shrek me. You're tracking me right now.

You know, it's got many layers to him, you know, there's the nice, the yogurt layer. There's the knowledge. There's a fruit layer. I know what a fucking parfait is. It's just different. Now, besides just playing in a band, Lou Reed also had a short lived radio show on the Syracuse College Station called Excursions on the Third Rail, which got canceled because Reed insisted on playing music that was too edgy, too weird and just too fucking much.

Among Reed selections was one of his heroes, Ornette Coleman, whose 1959 debut album, The Shape of Jazz to Come, went far beyond what most people at Syracuse could handle. Lay it on me. Let's check out Lonely Woman. Lookin' so cool. some strange shit yeah it's great yeah love ornate Coleman especially that album is fucking great one of the upshots of excursions on the third rail was that it led Lou Reed to a serendipitous encounter one night in

Lou's dorm he heard someone on the floor below playing light and Hopkins records real goddamn loud which is perfect because Lou needed some new blues to play on his show so he went downstairs and knocked on the door to find Jim Tucker brother of future velvet underground drummer Maureen Tucker Jim opened the door fully expecting Lou to tell them to turn the music down but when Lou explained that he was into it he was invited inside where he met the dude Jim Tucker had been listening to records with and that dude was Sterling Morrison whoa the future guitarist of the velvet underground now concerning this

meeting light and Hopkins plays more of a role than just an unknowing matchmaker see if you listen to lightening Hawkins and keep the velvet underground in mind you can hear how Sterling especially on songs like run run run took a note or two from the blues have you ever looked over my thing one you ain't never seen have you ever looked over my thing a mountain you'll never see

have you ever laid down in your bed and had one of those dreams she gives you that is some wonderful devil tree right that's lighting Hawkins song called awful dreams really if you listen to run run run I don't care if it's two fucking courts the entire time just like just hitting one cord for a long long long time to take it do what you do but it's still a fucking blue song and during college Lou and Sterling just talked music and occasionally jammed and nothing would come of their friendship for years to come but Sterling was just one of the three people that Lou Reed would meet at

Syracuse who would change the course of his artistic life the second was Lou Reed's first muse Shelly Albin oh Shelly Shelly Albin so at this time she's a brand new freshman at Syracuse University she's majoring in art she's going to her classes and making some friends and one day after class she's getting a ride from a friend and they're driving around in his car when they come across Lou Reed on the sidewalk so Shelly's friend you know the driver in the car he looks at her and says that's Lou Reed

and he's evil he's evil oh he's so evil look at Lou Reed he's an evil man and so the so the guy just pulled over and said hey Lou you want to ride let's pick up this evil man and see what sorts of dastardly deeds he has for us it does sound like like a novel like you pick up a hitchhiker so Lou let's make a deal so Lou hops in and immediately Shelly and Lou felt this instant attraction to each other and that ride only lasted a few minutes

but within an hour Lou was calling Shelly up at her dorm room and asking her out and she said yes no because she was intrigued by this evil guy he knew he was a bad boy a rebel a sophomore English major but he's also not bad looking yeah they hey don't don't not be an English major in college some girls are impressed I am very impressed thank you but Lou was not a bad looking guy like he was a lightweight kind of guy wearing black jeans you know James Dean turtleneck tweed jacket with

beaten elbow patches and curly dark hair on top it's pretty cute so he's cute and he's bad but he's actually more than that he quickly told her about the electro shock therapy he had to undergo because of a nervous breakdown his time at the psychiatric hospital and he pretty much made it known that he had a very needy and controlling personality and Shelly on the other hand is this young naive stunningly beautiful woman and just lovely to be around which is why everyone was wondering what the hell she was doing with Lou yeah

because he's e but Shelly was hot for him and submitted to his neediness but refused to be controlled by him which made them a good match that's a nice compromise yes I'll be okay your neediness is fine but controlling no no no no yes you're not gonna control me you don't own me yeah so the two of them would spend time I think in the last like two minutes you've quoted like two Shangri-La songs yeah because we're in that era I'm getting us in that era I think you're one Shangri-La song and one Leslie Gore song yeah you're doing great thank you

where is the whiteboard and the two of them you know they would spend time together while Lou would write a poem or a story and then Shelly would draw or paint something about that poem or story so you know it was a cute dirty college thing to do it's standard stuff that weirdos do together in college I love it but Shelly Alban besides just being a companion she ended up inspiring what is now the most popular Velvet Underground song and that wasn't the only song that she inspired

deceptively simple in its execution Lou reed waited until the third Velvet Underground album to deploy this classic although its simplicity does imply that it's fueled by the feelings of an emotionally underdeveloped college kid that song is the sparse and beautiful pale blue eyes love it sometimes I feel so happy sometimes I feel so sad sometimes I feel so happy but mostly you just make me mad

baby you just make me mad linger on your pale blue eyes linger on your pale blue eyes I mean that song wasn't written in college of course anyone who knows that song well there's a whole verse about marriage later on but it was directly inspired by Shelly because Shelly would be a presence in

Lou reed's life for many years that's right that's right and she didn't have blue eyes but it didn't matter still about her yeah so yeah their relationship Lou and Shelly's relationship it's pretty much like the song they had some good times they had some stormy times and after a while Lou starting lending his guard down a little bit with Shelly remember Lou has been doing drugs yeah all kinds of drugs not just the pot that he started in high school but also popping pills taking one too many placidils

dropping acid and of course dabbling in heroin which is I don't know there's not many people who are casual visitors of the BH no no no no but Lou could be he could be like yeah no one I I would say there there's one person on this fucking earth who is a casual heroin user and that was Lou reed no one else can do that he's sick boy yeah and from Transbot he's sick boy yep so Lou was even dealing drugs in college he sold weed at the fraternity houses and even got Shelly to hide his drug stash in her room

Lou even got Shelly to come with him to Harlem so he can score some drugs in a rundown seedy apartment building right there on Lexington Avenue in 125th street Lexington 125 and Shelly didn't do any of these drugs she didn't even drink but she still allowed Lou to have peyote sent from Arizona to her address to hold for him so after about a year or so of dating this was about the time that she was starting to realize that Lou was maybe just using her yeah so the last straw was when they were at a party

where Lou was playing at with his band and one of his friends came up to her and told her that Lou was getting a blowjob and wanted to let her know that she was invited to come and watch she finally had enough yeah and walked out of that party saying that's it i'm done yeah it's over oh no that's too much and also psa you can't dabble in heroin i'm not talking with caroline i'm talking to the listener you cannot dabble in heroin no one just don't do it don't try it you're not lou reed don't dabble in heroin you can't do it don't try it don't try it don't try

but as important as shelly was to lou reed in the muse department the most important influence to lou reed in a literary sense during this time period was a washed up creative writing professor named delmore schwarz now schwarz have become a literary darling at the age of 25 when he published a short story called in dreams begin responsibilities that received the highest appraise from writers like t.s aliet who is best known for his post-world war one masterpiece the wasteland now t.s aliet was certainly in the dark alternative influence chain with such great lines as

i will show you fear in a handful of dust and this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper oh i like that for delmore why are we talking like this because it's fucking awesome you know delmore schwarz actually had that a letter that t.s aliet wrote to him uh he carried it everywhere like in his breast pocket every day until the day he died yeah but for delmore schwarz all this early praise from geniuses like t.s aliet seem to be too much too soon in the 20 years since the publication

of in dreams become responsibilities which is amazing by the way so fucking good it's like five pages you can find it for free online go read it yeah the former wonder boy was depressed divorced and paranoid teaching creative writing at syracuse in mismatched socks and sometimes mismatched shoes all through a haze of uppers downers and a whole lot of booze yeah lu took a few of delmore's classes and soon enough he just realized oh delmore's just at the bar i can just go to the orange bar and hang out where delmore schwarz is holding

court with a bunch of students you know pontificating and all that yeah but also like delmore schwarz was a highly unstable extraordinarily paranoid human being yes well i mean he was a genius brilliant mind and he was also very paranoid he was convinced that his estranged wife was having an affair with nelson rockefeller who is like one of the wealthiest people in new york at the time in the world he had this theory that you know nelson rockefeller was paying everyone at syracuse a spy on him and you know like running into lou's dorm

like we gotta go break into the rockefeller estate my wife is being held prisoner there now be ready by dawn i brought the grappling hook and he just closes the door and lou just goes back to reading on his bed another pistachio nut but like that was honestly like that that kind of paranoia got worse and that's why he he kind of became estranged from the whole literary crowd and then ended up holding court with a bunch of students which is a shame but it's kind of the end towards the end of his spiral

yeah it really is and you know that what he's talking about it's known as gang stalking you know that when you believe have this paranoia belief that there are there is a conspiracy against specifically you that is just making your life difficult right it's terrible now in this grizzled middle-aged drug-addled writer lou reed found a mentor and an influence specifically when it came to writing style see schwarz used a minimalist writing style keeping his words simple and his sentences declarative for an example here's a short excerpt from delmore's most well-known story

and dreams begin responsibilities where in the narrator is watching the beginning of his parents courtship in a movie theater my father wants to settle down after all he's 29 he's lived by himself since he was 13 he's making more and more money and he's envious of his married friends when he visits them in the cozy security of their homes surrounded it seems by the calm domestic pleasures and by delightful children and then as the waltz reaches the moment where all the dancers swing madly then

then with awful daring then he asked my mother to marry him although awkwardly enough and puzzled even in his excitement at how he had arrived at the proposal and she to make the whole business worse begins to cry and my father looks nervously about not knowing at all what to do now and my mother says it's all i've ever wanted from the moment i saw you sobbing and he finds all of this very difficult scarcely to his taste scarcely as he had thought it would be and on his long walks over brooklyn bridge in the reverie of a fine cigar

and it was then that i stood up in the theater and shouted don't do it it's not too late to change your minds both of you nothing good will come of it only remorse hatred scandal and two children whose characters are monstrous god damn it that's the last time i'm going to union square theater there's always that guy and the rats eat all the popcorn and leave them for us no it's a beautiful fucking story you know there is actually a point in the story where there's a woman next to us is like calm down honey it's just a movie it's just a movie it's like you can't do anything about this

you can't act like this yeah it's a beautiful beautiful short story now from shorts is writing read took that minimal language style and transposed it to rock and roll songwriting as you heard earlier and pale blue eyes i mean the first verse sometimes i feel so happy sometimes i feel so sad sometimes i feel so happy but mostly you just make me mad yeah it's so simple but it's so deep well he also took relatable yeah exactly he's reliable he took from william s burrows he took from alan giddensburg hubert s you know selby

hubert selby hubert selby's like last exit to brooklyn it's like you know six vignettes like six short stories i mean he had a cities of the night poster in his room in college he had a it was a it's a huge huge poster so obviously he's taking a lot of direct influences and especially from delmore shorts especially that now he has somebody that he can talk to go back and forth on this that he's able to transpose this into short stories and poems that he's writing now now shorts was lou reed's mentor when it came to writing

but as far as influences for the music world went the person who changed what reed thought was possible when it came to pop music was bob dillon specifically on his breakthrough album the freewheeling bob dillon well it ain't no use to sit and wonder why baby even you don't know by now and it ain't no use to sit and wonder why baby it'll never do somehow when your rooster crows out the break of dawn look out your window and i'll be gone

you're the reason i'm traveling on but don't think twice it's all right it's just so good it's bob dillon it's just so good there's nothing else you can say about that yeah it's just it's just bob dillon now right here i think it might be helpful to talk about how the term pop music was used in this time period the early 60s today pop is a genre and style all of its own and pop is often a term that's used derisively sometimes deservedly sometimes not but back then pop music was a catchall term rather than a genre

designation i.e anything that was popular was pop and anything that was popular was to many people low art the intellectualization of music was reserved for classical and jazz while country was for hillbillies folk was for the grinnage village crowd and rock and roll was for children teenagers at best yeah nowadays you have college courses taught on the history of rock and roll i actually took a pretty good one myself at texas tech way back in the early 2000s but back then most of the older intelligentsia

were actively scoffing at the idea that any of it could be taken seriously in fact delmore schwarz absolutely despised rock music in all of its forms i opened a folder on the Beatles just today oh they're coming they're coming soon and actually he wasn't wrong about that the british invasion did come that year it did come that year or the next year and actually there was one fun story where a lu and a bunch of college kids and delmore schwarz all saying i want to hold your hand together one night or would i want to hold your hand was it love me do

no uh it's one or the other anyway one of the one of the early beatle songs yeah lu read a grizzled old writer and a bunch of college kids all singing i want to hold your hand at the top of their lungs in a bar one too many dovenays dovenays i don't know it's some sort of wine but lu read and trying to find his own place in the world saw that you could do very intelligent things with what was considered pop music and the only person doing something like that in lu reads periphery in 1964

was bob dillon bob dillon the legend i mean he's not he's 22 right now yeah hey he's well on i mean he's a legend by 24 yes no he's getting there he's a singer songwriter poet and then much later obviously in 2016 noble prize laureate yeah you know his real name was a what no and by and by 2020 uh jfk conspiracy theorist you see there's so many things that he can do robert zimmerman can oh that was his real name by the way robert alan zimmerman robert

robert zimmerman from hybben actually do you know how he got a stage name bob dillon no he was gonna go by robert alan because that's his name but there was a saxophone player named david alan alan with a y instead of an a like the second one you know a l l y n yeah and he liked that so he figured okay i'll put a y in my name and i've just been reading some dillon thomas poems because that's what he would do he would read poem after poem memorizing them that kind of help him learn to tell the stories

so he liked the name dillon and it was like alan with a y but the d that's a stronger sound so he said okay i got it here it is robert dillon no no no that's not it that's not it okay okay how about bobby dillon no there's too many bobby's bobby darin bobby b bobby ridell okay let's not do that uh and so one day he was back home in his state in minnesota where where was it hybben in hybben actually i think he was in a twin city somewhere and he was gonna go on and someone asked him what his name was and he just

instinctively said bob dillon that's it yeah that's my name bad and then he said the next thing he had to do was get used to being called that because it'd be like bob and he's like oh me me oh i'm next okay so he had to learn that which is adorable so bob dillon uh he's obviously another singer songwriter who felt that popular rock music was too shallow and didn't reflect life in a realistic way yeah so he's like instead i'm gonna write about you know rebellion songs about nuclear disarmament the cuban missile

crisis and getting dumped by my girlfriend the real shit yeah the real shit no don't think twice it's all right is a insanely deep song like it's a it's a very real very real it's much more real uh than leave her for me like so much very much but bob dillon he just wasn't another folk singer you know in grannies village he he definitely sang folk music but he's then started gradually writing songs at the same time he's learning about the world and trying to learn how to make a point

about it so you would go to the public library and read newspaper articles and find subjects to write on and taking that to a new level with new imagery and an attitude one that reflected something no one had heard before that's a big part of what makes bob dillon so special and i'm barely scratching the surface here yeah just barely and so when 22 year old bob dillon played at the regent theater in syracuse in november of 1963 lou who was just 10 months younger than bob was in the audience of that show and he was blown away by bob dillon and he went home and played along to his

records which he had two at the time but they're very good and it might have been one of these times when lou realized maybe this is possible to write poetry and make him into songs you don't have to be do what did he do you can write a short story you can write a poem you can set it to music you can set it to rock music yeah you can use characters absolutely you can be that character it doesn't even have to be you you just have to have real write about real things about real people and that will if you're honest and open about it

whether it's you or a composite of you and other people or other people it grabs people's attention and they want to listen to the words so that was what lou read wanted to do obviously his mentor delmore shorts was like go to grad school go to harvard i can get you in easily and lou could write the next american novel and be the next delmore shorts can marry shelly and and have a couple kids and stay in the suburbs but none of that's gonna do no no that would be way too conventional too narrow so he needed to do what he wanted to do on his own terms

he needed to be out there writing the real things he was ready to go out into like the real world yeah so inspired by the way that bob dillon could elevate what was then known as pop and inspired by the simple language of delmore schwarz's writing lou reed combined his influences moving forward but while dillon's writing influence ran through dillon thomas reeds was more following the path of controversial beat writer william s burrows sometimes called the true godfather of punk see instead of using euphemisms to talk about real dark shit in rock and roll

lou reed went straight for the throat and in his last days at syracuse he wrote one of his best and most influential songs from this perspective written from personal experience this song's aim was to simulate the actual feeling of doing hard drugs how both thrilling and frightening that feeling is with all of its ups and downs and how quickly its use can get out of control confidently and confrontationally lou reed gave the song the unambiguous title of heroin gonna try for the kingdom if i can because it makes me feel like i'm a man

when i put a spike into my vein and i do your things aren't quite the same when i'm rushing on my run and i feel just like jesus' son and i guess that i just don't know and i guess that i just don't know i have made a big big decision i'm gonna try to nullify my life because when the blood begins to flow and it shoots up the dropper's neck when i'm closing on death lou reed said that song is everything the real thing it's doing to you

it doesn't sound like fun no i mean it's real that's what it is i mean i thought i love that song so fucking much uh like it changed the way i thought about music when i heard it for the first time uh way way way back when like in college uh but man it does not make heroin sound like a whole lot of fun it makes it sound fucking awful yeah well that's the point to show the real it's realistic yeah yeah i mean and there are times like oh this could be cool and then it just showed like the way it comes up and down up and down like you feel kind of ill by the end of it you know like a little

bit like you definitely you feel uh knocked off balance by the whole thing which i mean i would imagine heroin knocks you off balance a little bit just 10 just 10 i don't know we're speculating you so lou graduates with honors with a pa in english from syracuse university in 1964 which obviously surprised a lot of people because supposedly there's a few stories out there where lou got in trouble with the dean for a few things he was on double secret probation or whatever you call it um so one of them was for smoking pot

one of his friends read him out but the dean couldn't prove it so he warned him all right that's the last time and another one was when lou read was actually writing a student magazine with his friends the lonely woman quarterly actually he also wrote it with uh jim tucker as well they released this literary magazine and of course lonely woman that's a reference to ornette colman that's right it only lasted a couple issues they kind of got bored with it but in one of them lou wrote a profile on a fellow student named michael kogan and now somewhere

right out here in the world i feel like the real michael kogan today is like twitching a little bit like he's having lunch with his grandson and he's just like his tea cup is just like shaking a little bit he's like she's gonna tell that story there's someone fucking bringing it up again i fucking buried that i buried that so michael kogan was a fellow student and he was actually uh one of the leaders of the young americans for freedom organization which is a right-wing conservative group founded by william f buckley that has boasted members like ronald reagan

and jeff sessions okay so whatever your politics are well you know ours so lou writes this profile on michael kogan calling him a reptile who has the american flag placed neatly up his rectum and can be heard pontificating over issues like defending macartheism with sundry sophisticated and misleading arguments his adeptness arising from what has been rumored to be a misdirected sex drive oh i don't know why that fucking quote i don't know why misdirected sex drive is such a burn but fuck it is

and then he called him fat which that's not cool no not cool not called the fat shape but anyway so michael kogan obviously gets a hold of this literary magazine it's like oh my god so he complained and his dad well i never exactly his dad he's like dad come over here it was a big corporate lawyer also complained to the dean and wanted lou expelled and he's like okay finally i get my chance and according to sterling morrison the dean had michael and his dad come in

and found him so obnoxious and so horrible that the dean just told lou just say you're sorry so we can just move on and lou did apologize but according to michael kogan he didn't mean it he was a forced apology um and because he was interviewed for one of the books he was interviewed for howard soon's book on lou read and michael kogan goes on to say i detest lou read i found him a lonesome person lonesome who uses that fucking word so lou got off again he was able to graduate somehow

and as i said with honors but right after that he got sick with hepatitis unfortunately he had to go back home to freeport long island and recover from his illness which he probably got from dabbling from arwin yeah even dabbling gets you hepatitis right now after he recovered from that first of many hepatitis infections lou read was scouted by a record company representative named terry phillips who ran a label in long island city queens called pickwick records remember lou read he is not going into the literary direction he's going to

music now pickwick specialized in copycat albums which took obscure recordings by established stars and surrounded them with thrown together ripoff songs written by young no-name musicians who could be hired cheap i.e lou read perfect see from what terry phillips said lou read couldn't play or sing at least conventionally but read had a sound that could sell and a smart point of view so terry hired lou to write cheap imitation songs for pickwick from what lou said they'd throw him and three other guys into a room

and tell them to write 10 california songs 10 detroit songs 10 surf songs and 10 hot rod songs and then all go downstairs and cut three or four albums in a couple of hours wow this is where lou read came to get to know a studio right as an example of the avid song that lou read wrote and recorded for pickwick here's him singing with a band billed as the beach nuts in the 1964 track psychilani and this is unmistakably lou read she tears up those beaches alongside pasodina this psychilani they just don't come any meaner y'all better

watch out for little psychilani watch out for little psychilani watch out for little psychilani watch out for little psychilani got a competition in harley california high bars class a strailers she can take on any cars her ain't so important got a four-speed kit now little psychilani she's a real tough chick y'all better

watch out for little psychilani watch out for little psychilani watch out for little psychilani got a little psychilani yeah you hear lou read that's the fun thing about this stuff with lou read is that the stuff that he records during this time period it's not like really like anything that he records for the first velvet underground album but for the fourth velvet underground

album with loaded like you know you hear like shades of sweet jane in there yeah you you hear like he kind of goes back to that old style once you know once the band changes just a little bit and when certain members leave that's right so lou read says that one day he was reading the newspaper and there was an article that said that ostrich feathers were gonna be a huge fashion trend so he and his co-workers full of booze and pills wrote a song called the ostrich and it's

fucking weird i love it and of course this you know and with all the songs that lou read recorded for pickwick records they weren't released as you know written by lou read or recorded by lou read like with psychilani it was released as you know a band called the beach nuts and for the ostrich it was released under the name the primitives that's right let's check out the ostrich i fucking love this song it's great it's like some dr. de ninto shit all right

Hey, do-do-do-do-ba! Oh, do-do-do-do-ba! Hey, do-do-do-ba! Oh, do-do-do-ba! Hey, hey, hey, go, go, go! Hey, come on, baby, move your muscles. All right. One more.

Okay, so it's not William S. Burroughs in a rock song. Quite yet. Not quite yet. You know, you put your head on the floor and have someone step on it. It's a new dance craze. But it's just so fucking good. In fact, I mean, it's so weird

that, like, Lou Reed, when his boss told him, like, we're going to release that as a single. He goes, really? That? Okay. Whatever. Fine. And the ostrich, even though it is weird, it's still pretty damn catchy. Yeah. And Terry Phillips thought so too.

He's like, yeah, let's do this as a single. But to promote the single, he needed a touring band who could pretend to be the primitives alongside Lou Reed. These other primitives were found at a party in New York when Terry was introduced to two musicians named Tony Conrad

and John Cale. Within a short period of time, Tony Conrad would leave the primitives, leaving Lou Reed and John Cale to form the creative core of what would become the Velvet Underground. And that's where we'll pick back up

for part two. Okay, great. That's the first episode of No Dogs in Space season two. And with a new season, comes a new way of doing things. Oh, I love changing things around. Well, you know,

there was a lot of change last season of how often episodes would come out. Sometimes we'd be late, and sometimes we'd be early. So we are trying now to do it a new way where it'll be consistent every time. Finally.

So what we're going to do now is that episodes are going to come out weekly once more. But that only goes for individual episodes for each series. There will be intervals between series, probably between three, four, five weeks, something like that.

Just, you know, that's just so we have enough time to make these episodes as good as they possibly can be every single time. That's right. So for the Velvet Underground, one, two, three, four, and five are going to be weekly. Yeah. We're going to take a bit of a break just to catch up and work on the next series

a little bit, and then we release those. So that's how it works. So that way you don't have to wait every two weeks to finish the story. Yes. And you also won't hear us so harried and exhausted at the end of those two weeks. You know, because we just, we want to make sure

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You just get them as soon as we're done. Yeah. That's it. Off the frying pan into a plate. Oh God. I made up an analogy that's weird. And since we're doing a Patreon, all No Dogs in Space episodes will now be ad-free. Yeah. Whether you subscribed

to our Patreon or not, everyone gets ad-free episodes. I'm so glad because it was really hard to say words like bespoke posts. No more ads. I've gotten so many nice knives from them. Yeah. No, they're great. It's just the words. Yeah. Bespoke posts. It's so awkward. Yeah.

Anyway, so no more ads. No more ads. So if you want to check that out, go to patreon.com slash No Dogs in Space and give however much you feel like given. And we appreciate every single one of you that contributes to this funny little muddle

that we do every week or every other week or every once in a while. But either way, free episodes ad-free no matter what. Yep. No matter what. And so we come to the end of the episode, which means we come to the first

band of the week for this season. This band, I fucking love this band and I cannot wait to go see them live because they are a Brooklyn band. They're out of bed style. They just released a single on Filthpot Records,

which I'm so excited about this because the person who started this, she said that she started this label after listening to our Dead Kennedy series and getting inspired by all this DIY stuff that we talked about last season. So be sure to check out this band. Their name is Pyrex.

Their hard garage post-punk. It's great shit. It's so fucking good. So enjoy it everybody. And we'll see y'all next week for Velvet Underground Part 2. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.