Whither The Velvet Underground?

Hey! There's a Membership Drive going on at Austin's best radio station! You need to be involved! You need to contribute! If only because they're the sort of station that puts Self Help Radio on the air.

Speaking of Membership Drives, I recall one time when I asked a former KOOP programmer if he were going to do anything special for the Drive. He did a show that claimed to feature "one hundred years of African-American music," but mainly he spun funk & hip-hop. His response was, "Nah. During the Pledge Drive, I just give the listeners the gravy." Meaning he played the popular stuff to encourage people to pledge.

It seems a good idea - but my show isn't really about a specific genre or time period or something like that. It's a freeform show with boundaries - & those boundaries happen to be the themes I (or sometimes a listener) come up with. I do it for a lot of reasons - to keep myself guessing, to keep myself amused, to keep you amused, to take advantage of my unruly record collection. After all, if you just want the popular stuff, you know where to go: commercial, satellite or internet radio will give you 80's stations, classic rock stations, cool jazz stations, whatever. They generally (but not always) are programmed by someone other than the person talking on the air - if there's a person talking at all. I think they lack heart, they lack soul, they lack something human - but you might not be looking for that, so I respect your choice.

But I do want to make my Membership Drive shows special, so recently I've been trying to give listeners "the gravy," but with something of a twist (twisted gravy? Jesus, Gary, your metaphors!). Last spring, I presented a tribute to David Bowie containing not a single David Bowie recording - but instead with his songs covered by others (to show how his own work is absorbed & translated) & songs either mimicking him or celebrating him. It seemed to go over well. (By the way, you can listen to that show here.)

This time around, I tried to think about an artist beloved in the same way Bowie is. Some artists, of course, are a little too easy - Dylan & the Beatles come to mind - & some are painfully hard - I love Elvis Costello, but good covers of Elvis Costello songs are harder to find that someone who can pass a lie detector test in the current administration. Asking people informally, I found there was one group that seemed to have a devoted listener base, a group of discriminating music lovers who held them in very high esteem indeed. That group was, of course, the Velvet Underground.

After several weeks of listening to a lot of VU covers, I am impressed how far & wide the echoes of that band, which seemed to struggle so during its lifetime, have spread. Someone once said, "Not a lot of people bought the Velvet Underground's first album, but the ones who did formed a band." I would also add, "The bands who bought & paid attention to all the albums of the Velvet Underground learned everything they needed to know about writing good songs."

& here I am, giving it a go. Ninety minutes (minus the obligatory airbreaks asking for your cash to help the station) of bands singing VU songs the way they sung them in the shower, with tracks covered from the first album to the last, & a couple of songs about the band & its members in-between. How can it go wrong?

We'll see you Friday as I pay tribute to one of America's greatest bands, the Velvet Underground. Please listen & please think about helping KOOP out with your support.