Project 22: The Velvet Underground and Nico

We tackled another full album cover project the classic album, The Velvet Underground and Nico. Our Basement Sketches crew picked tracks, created them, and I compiled them together here. Check it out all together at the download link below or scroll down to check out each individual contribution.

Eric “Czahr” Scott covers Sunday Morning

I vividly remember my first exposure to The Velvet Underground. In 1991 the Oliver Stone film, "The Doors", came out at a time when I was just transitioning from heavy metal to "alternative" music and classic rock like The Beatles and Dylan. The movie was my first exposure to the Doors, and I liked what I heard.  However, what really struck me on the soundtrack was a song called Heroin by the VU.  It was one of the only songs on the soundtrack not by the Doors (I think the other was the classical piece Carmina Burana). As a teen I remember it felt so taboo to listen to and enjoy a song about shooting heroin. Aside from that thrill, the sound of the music was so scrappy and unpolished, yet utterly hypnotic, beautiful and WEIRD that I felt something inside of me change. I'm pretty confident in saying that Heroin was the moment where I realized I was totally in tune with WEIRD music, and wanted to seek out more of it. Naturally the rest of the VU catalog did not disappoint, and I love them dearly to this day.  

I have always really liked Sunday Morning in particular.  When it came time to do the draft pick for our project, I was secretly hoping I'd be able to do this one. One thing I really like about the song is that at a glance it seems like a dreamy, almost cute song about a relaxing Sunday morning.  Upon closer examination however the lyrics reveal an unsettling anxiety or paranoia.

"It's a restless feeling by my side.", "Watch out, the world's behind you." As someone who has grappled with severe social anxiety my entire life, yet is usually a pretty chill and mellow person, the song truly resonates with me. When I read a little history of the song while I was working on my recording I wasn't surprised to learn that the unsettling theme was Andy Warhol's idea. While they were hanging out trying to write another song for Nico, Andy told Lou and John, "Why don't you just make it about paranoia?".  

For my cover I opted for a mostly faithful rendition. I find the celesta in the original to be overly loud and shrill to the point of distraction so I opted to minimize that aspect of the song. 

I don't own a bass, or drums, or real keys of any kind and I am apparently biologically resistant to synths and drum machines so a lot of what you hear is just guitar with various effects, an old Casio that only works when it is upside-down and me striking a 40 year old Pakistani goat skin tambourine with a ripe banana.

Jon Hart covers
I’m Waiting For The Man

Jacob Sharff covers Femme Fatale

The first copy I had of this record was scratched to hell.  No inner sleeve.  Cover was missing the plastic peel-off banana.  Some of the tracks were barely audible, but despite this I listened to it regularly.  The sound of loud vinyl crackle is forever fused with this album in my mind, so I felt like I had to include that as an element on this track.  I slowed it down to an uncomfortable pace to make it feel like the turntable is dragging, and changed the key to drop the vocal range so that I could get a little more crooney and Nico-ish.   Tried to keep it fairly simple - guitar, bass, some weird synth sounds I pulled out of the micro-korg and a tambourine.  Kept it loose.  Let guitars go slightly out of tune.  Didn't spend as much time on this as I would've liked, but ended up with what feels like a rough sketch of some sort.  The Velvet Underground and this album in particular has always been one of my faves. Long live art-rock weirdness!

Kelly Duclos covers Run Run Run

KC McKee covers Venus in Furs

Reba Fritz covers
All Tomorrow’s Parties

The first record that I bought with my own DQ earned money at Northern Lights (Mpls) was VU and Nico. I didn’t know the band but I liked the banana cover, and I was drawn to the woman on the back cover with the long blonde hair and abstract stare. 

This is my first Basement Sketch, and I joined because I heard they were doing this album. 

I appreciate the opportunity this project has for me to just be playful and wing it. With my own songs, I struggle with it-better-be-good or don’t do it, and that’s gotten me very stuck. 

So, I started with a guitar part, I just messing with simple patterns and wanting to hear those cascading melody notes from the original song. Then I scanned through my Nord Drum 3 to tap along some rhythm that felt tribal and 70’s campfirey. I found a couple other abstract sounds, too. 

Last, I got to effect my dream of singing with Nico. I sang as her (an impression I’ve been doing forever), then sang as me. 

I’m really new at recording and mixing— there’s improvements that could be made, but I’m ok with letting it go into the world flawed, and very happy with what the process felt like. 

Hope you like it, thanks for listening. 

Grant Eull covers Heroin

As usual when we decided to do a full album project the first round of submissions and second round of voting were a part of the process that I enjoyed. Revisiting records with a critical ear brings out details I may have missed before. I was nervous (normal for me) when the voting list was posted that the winning selection would not be in my wheelhouse. However, to my delight The Velvet Underground & Nico was selected. This record was my introduction to VU as a band and Lou Reed as an artist. He is a big inspiration to my musicianship or lack of formal music training as a musician. I just love the raw essence and the mix of pop sensibility and tonal dissonance The Velvet Underground played with. To get into that vibe I watched the 2021 Documentary by Todd Haynes and tried to embrace the song selection I was given with a passion for the era. I wasn’t certain on how I would pull off John Cale’s Heroin drone of electronic viola so I started with a single note on a Mellotron through a British emulated amp. Later I layered a cello via the Spitfire Audio Labs VST over the top and a guitar drone using a Sound Stone Resonator/Sustainer device for a bit more grit and dissonant texture. Although its not a super accurate replication of John Cale’s viola - the approach definitely embraced the experimental nature of the band. The most difficult part of recording this song was the transition in tempos, but once I had a basic rhythm guitar track down it became more about artistic expression. Recording extra loud layers of guitar feedback screeching is not something I recommend doing if you have sensitive neighbors, but mine happened to be out of town so just embraced the volume! To complete the track I needed percussion that could be loose, ambient and change tempos so I had my friend Randy Kramer support this submission by playing percussion. His impersonation of Moe Tucker was the perfect capture of spontaneous energy that I wanted from the drums and a much needed lift to the instrument mix to express Heroins emotional journey. It was once again an honor to participate in an ambitious full album project along side the musicians of Basement Sketches… make loud noise and stay inspired. 

Tom Stromsodt and Jason DeMars cover
There She Goes Again

Noah Warren covers
I’ll Be Your Mirror

I really didn't know how to approach this until a few days ago. I was studying and I forced myself to switch to this to get started on it. 

I had been listening to Mitski's Laurel Hell album on a loop and streaming some interviews she had given when it was released. They had been trying so many different styles until they backed into a drum track that was very 80's new wave and the entire sound of the album suddenly clicked for them.  

I remembered that one of my dream karaoke songs is Tina Turner's "Private Dancer". I just like the sheer dramatic pathos of it. 

Anyway, I guess I had been unconsciously marinating in lots of 80's. For some reason the synth melody line in this(the sound is called "light bulbs") makes me think of Cyndi Lauper and her "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" single. It was the last thing I added before shipping this out.  

Anywhoo, all hail Tina! 

Tal Tahir covers
Black Angels Death Song

Slowed my version down to a chill, wide open half-time waltz in contrast to the 6/8 amphetamine rush of the original. It’s got quite a lot a verses, which according to Lou Reed were just gibberish he thought sounded cool, and no chorus really except for what could be considered one at the very end. It’s very repetitive yet there’s a variety of lengths to the verses and the spaces between them. Almost feels like they did it live and just felt the changes as they went. I mapped it out and stuck to the structure as they recorded it. My favorite part was reinterpreting the John Cale “hiss”.

Bill Fricke covers European Son

I originally had All Tomorrow’s Parties to cover, but ended up switching to ES.  It’s one of the more challenging songs aesthetically, at least for me, as it was very experimental and noisy.  It was also quite long.

I did a noisy version, toyed with a free jazz version, and then, as per usual, something showed up that made me choose the direction.  I received a CD in the mail with a UK music magazine, that had a song by the band SUSS, who put out a new album.  Their style is ambient, Americana, slow, haunting, and full of space.  I started getting into their back catalog, and it inspired the work on this version of European Son.  Pretty, but still a little menacing. The droning quality still fits with the VU style.

We had more interested participants than album tracks, so we opened it up for additional “bonus tracks.”

BONUS TRACKS

Barrett Haroldson and Andrew Charon cover
These Days by Nico (written by Jackson Browne)

When this album was chosen and all of the songs were spoken for, we talked Neil into letting us pick These Days by Nico as it was part of the Super Deluxe version even though this song was on her album Chelsea Girls. Our intention was to make it feel like a bonus track to what everyone else was doing and try to tackle it as a collaboration.

In true Andy Warhol factory fashion, Andrew reached out to a few singers on Fiverr to do our vocals. The beauty of the Nico version of These Days is in the vocals and, unfortunately, neither Barrett or Andrew were equipped with the skills to do the song justice so we relied on the element of randomness and put it out into the universe to find a way to manufacture a solution. We got a few amazing vocal takes back from a singer named Margarita from Belarus. In his excitement, Andrew paired the vocals with the guitar part converted to a blippy Postal Service-esque keyboard accompaniment. He texted a track called “vocals-test.mp3” and the song already felt finished. To keep the minimalist magic of the initial demo, we added more sparse string swells and focused on getting the right balance of keyboard to vocals without too much getting in the way.

We’re really happy with the way this bonus track turned out and hope you enjoy it!