I got a shot of morphine in the ER once. I had asked them to give me something for pain, but I expected nothing more than a couple of pills. They hooked me up to an IV and I assumed that they were just giving me fluids--when, very suddenly and very powerfully, the morphine hit. What came out of my mouth as I sank back onto my pillow was, "Whip it on me, Jim!" The nurse, who was nice and cute and no older than 22, looked at me uncomprehendingly; she had no idea what I was talking about.
@@jonathanmitchell9886 Sister Ray coulda been that hospital’s morphine injection backing track! Love your connection to the song, thanks for sharing the story
The sounds John Cale got out of that Vox have to go down as one of the most ferocious and distorted organ displays in Rock history. How on earth did he do that back in 1968, predating the likes of Suicide or early Cabaret Voltaire. Considering his further career Cale was/is, on so many different fronts a visionary of the sounds to come. Thanks for the great narration, realy enjoyed it.
@@ComradeTrotsky1017 Why not reliable? I would think they would have been more reliable than the tube amps. I also read at some point that the Velvets had some of their guitars modded to include fuzz FX built in to the actual guitars, but not sure. Or other boosting FX and such. Possibly Lou's old Gretsch. But I know the Vox amps had that, and also Vox were already making some fuzz/wah pedals by then.
@@thiscorrosion900 Idk why they weren't more reliable. When I was thinking about purchasing one, all the Vox forums told me I'd be paying to repair it, so I avoided it. And yes, Lou's Country Gentleman was heavily modded. He even got rid of the frets at one point before it was stolen. Would love to hear what that monstrosity must have sounded like! Vox Tone Bender is pretty much the basis for ALL fuzz pedals now. Killer tone.
@@ComradeTrotsky1017 Oh, the Tone Bender, gotcha. Wow that's odd that the Vox solid states weren't reliable, of course the older the vintage ones get, the more unreliable maybe also. The wiring and whatnot may not have been nearly as good as the older tube Vox, then. They were starting to bang stuff out cheap by then.
Sister Ray Live At The Matrix. 226 times this year according to spotify. It parodies the rock genre and itself as it goes along. Self indulgent, psychotic, intoxicated, relentless, monolithic and completely non user-friendly. And it´s so much fun. J-j-j-j-just like Sister Ray said.
'I heard' ... not sure how true...that this version was from a tour with the Grateful Dead, when the VU got pissed off with their alternating headliners the GD, going off on jams, so they went off on a 34 minute version of Sister Ray, just to pay back the GD and pinch a bit of their set back as revenge I am not sure if this is true, the tour happened, but I agree with you that it is the DEFINITIVE version of Sister Ray
that's good to know. you're the same age as my parents, I hope in 20 years time I'm still listening to the VU with the 50 year old mind set I have now, never mind 20, hahaha...
Who knew I needed a 20 minute dissection of Sister Ray, well I guess I did. Besides the smart narration, the video itself is a work of art. Thanks much for your hard work. I'm a NYC kid, teenager in the 70's, allowed in to some of the clubs (drinking age was 18, but I was 15/16), and seeing all the mid 70s bands who were on the up. The whole Warhol scene vibe was still all over, especially the drag remnants. We missed the VU by years, but their ghosts were all over everything. Women in Revolt was running at the art movie house, and the trash plays of Jackie Curtis were memories down on the lower east. The city was dirty and the music hot.
You must be a wealth of information on all of the 70's 'underground' bands and celebrities of the time! Any New York Dolls stories?!? I was a teen stuck in Michigan and was obsessed with anything to do with NYC at the time. Lucky you!!!
Not a wealth, but it was in the air@@MishLaRue I saw many of the CBGB bands, but often at other venues like The Kitchen. The Bowery and the Alphabets were really dangerous at times. I was a teen and the late subways were far apart- I still remember the empty stations at night- unless you lived down there, you still had to get back home. Never saw Television, but pretty much everyone else. I moved to Atlanta for college, so it was a whole other scene just starting up and I was finally old enough to hit the limited Athens/Atlanta venues. Cheers.
No band before or since can hold a candle to the Velvet Underground. They were the best and Sister Ray is just perfection - if you happen to like that sort of thing :-)
I would like to agree, however I must namedrop their only equals here ..... The Birthday Party. Mutiny in heaven is one of the greatest pieces of chaos ever controlled onto tape.
I'm from the UK, born into the hot summer of punk in 1976. I finally made it to NYC in April of 2012, took the subway down town to look for a record shop, wandered round Washington square park and found myself on Bleeker st. Got drunk in wicked Willy's and fell into the record store, bought 3 velvets albums on coloured vinyl WLWH on white vinyl and walked back up to midtown, along the Bowery past the old CBGB'S and hitting a couple of other bars, before devouring a pastrami and passing out back at the hotel. Every time I put sister Ray on i take a deep breath of the inner sleeve and it immediately transports me back to that amazing day.
Thank you! Sister Ray deserved every minute of your detailed analysis. With its partner in grime, I Heard Her Call My Name, Sister Ray completes one of the most gloriously incendiary sides of recorded music. At over 50 years old it is fresh, unfathomable and endlessly challenging still. Instant new subscriber!
I remember being a teenager and getting what felt like "really drunk" (hilarious in retrospect) at the time and listening to this song. About thirteen minutes in, the bottled-up aggression I felt from trying to sit perfectly still with headphones on, enduring the completely unrelenting auditory assault of this song at nearly the maximum volume my amplifier could put out, my eardrums screaming in pain, something snapped in me and I proceeded to do probably the silliest thing I've ever done in direct response to a piece of music: I got up, took the record of the turntable and attempted to destroy the grooves containing the second half of "Sister Ray" with a pair of scissors. It only took about 40 seconds of doing this for me to realize what an idiot I was being and stop. Embarrassed and ashamed of myself, I went to bed. Days later, I played that part of the record again to see what had become of it. Much to my surprise, the locked grooves my scraping had created, by complete random chance, were all exactly the length of a bar, with four downbeats, as if the repetition was on purpose. Eventually, after listening many more times to this uniquely altered copy of WLWH that I just happened to own, something absolutely insane dawned on me: I had accidentally turned a VU record into a Can record. Taken out of context, the dissonant sounds of individual bars of the climax of "Sister Ray", repeated exactly the same way over and over instead of with endless variations, sounds EXACTLY like Irmin Schmidt, Holger Czukay and Michael Karoli locking in with each other on Monster Movie or Soundtracks or Tago Mago. Reed even comes off like Damo. "Aww, she hasn't got....Aww, she hasn't god.....Aww, she has a god...." I still haven't bought a new copy on vinyl. I enjoy my version too much! Moving the needle manually again and again is just part of the fun!
F**cking brilliant. Lets just say im in the right "mood" for my fave VU track. Searching for my...., and this pops up in the feed. Its Saturday night in 2023 but im journeying to the dark dirty New York of '67. First heard this when i was 17 or so, after reading that my then best kept secret band, the mighty Janes Addiction were a "Velvet Underground-inspired band" in a Playboy article. My music, my style, my code were formed. Somehow, Im still alive..
Well put, i can't count the times ive subjected my friends to this song. I love every second of it and am glad to see it getting some respect and recognition. If you wanna clear out a bar, try playin it on the jukebox!
This was Cales album I was 17 in 1978 & was listening to Stooges & a Lou Reed Bowie fan I paid a lot of money to get an import from Germany Loved pissing off neighbors playing Sister at full volume !!❤From Australia
True words at the ending, after all these years nothing sounds like it. Those Quinne tapes at the Matrix you brought up have some gems. One of the Sister Rays on there is fantastic! But just as a stamp of approval on saying true VU fans love this album. Put The Gift on just the left speaker, and turn it up as loud as comfort allows. I still flip out to this day.
Been a while since I've listened to the album and never listened to just one speaker. I don't have the option of doing that at the moment either. What's on each side? Music in one and story in the other?
Maybe my second favorite VU (after “Black Angel’s Death Song”). Just fucking relentless. I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to “Sister Ray”. Many. It still overwhelms me every time. Favorite moment: “Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim!” Perfect.
I didn’t like Sister Ray until “The Quine Tapes” was released. It has 3 outstanding live performances of the song - then I finally fell in love with the song, about 16 years after buying “WL/WH”. Brilliant song, brilliant band - and I mean ALL 4 members.
Cales GNARLY fuzzed out vox continental organ really makes up for him not playing bass. While there is no bass guitar, he is holding down the lows with his left hand. The Doors style!
Such a lovely little ditty...😂 This album is pretty much the DNA which got spun into what Irmin Schmidt referred to as "the CAN virus". You can hear this get filtered back through the inceptive days of Krautrock, as "White Light/White Heat" served as the template for Can's debut, "Monster Movie". It's not as anarchic as "WL/WH", but the madness and racket is still in there...particularly on the closer, "You Doo Right", where Can goes for their own "Sister Ray" but arrives at some twisted prototype for My Bloody Valentine's wall of droning sludge approach a couple of decades early. It's a must-listen for anyone who loves the Velvets' second opus. It's better-arranged, thanks to the razor blade and splicing tape magic of Holger Czukay, but it's also no less jarring!
Quite possibly the quintessential Velvet Underground song, really encapsulates their sonic intensity and Lou Reed's brilliantly transgressive lyrical approach. I do prefer the first album because of its variety but White Light/White Heat is definitely one of the most ferocious and idiosyncratic experimental rock albums ever made.
I got into the velvets because Joy Division did a live cover of this song (it’s on the album ‘Still’) so White Light White Heat was the first Velvets record I bought/heard, mind was blown obviously.
I was in my first 'band' (i.e. bedroom recording punk experimentations) age 15 and we did a cover of Joy Division's cover. I hadn't heard the VU original at that point. But being a huge Jesus and Mary Chain fan (this was 1985), it wasn't long before I caught up. I still love White Light White Heat so, so much more than the banana record.
In the tropical heat of Bumfuck Australia I remember being in the back of a van somewhere in the bush, something around January 1980. I was 15. It was night and very, very dark, no moon and only starlight. My first experience with white light/white heat. And playing on the crappy cassette system, none other than- Sister Ray. I thought I’d found god. A message from another planet, New York in the 60s, over a decade before. Many difficult years later, clean as a whistle, the music still talks to me in a way I can’t describe. I spent years as a musician and audio engineer, and that one experience, in the humidity and dark, with brief moments of the cabin light so we could see what we were doing as that iconic line, ‘searching for my mainline’ resonated - that one seminal experience and my world flipped. Plenty of regrets but the purity of that night will never leave me. I still feel the echo of the rush when I hear that guitar start up.
So funny you said that I'm 47 and last year I discovered joy division and velvet underground both last year . I saw documents in apple tv and watched it
Black sheep? I'd call Squeeze the black sheep of their catalogue XD The amount of textures they accomplished in this track is outstanding. The bass sounding guitar by Lou that turns into a feedback monster, Sterling's rock and roll and blues licks that make the climax thriilling with his rhythm variations, Moe's drums that feel like a heart beat of someone trying all the drugs these guys tried, and Cale's keyboard that goes from everrything between beautiful counterpoint melodies to industrial noise. Even if they are playing for most of the time a single chord, it's never monotonus. It is ever changing like if it was alive.
Without question the most extreme music ever recorded in 1967-68. There's this part of the liner notes to Metal Machine Music where Lou Reed half-jokingly claims to have invented heavy metal. Well, kids, "Sister Ray" makes the case that he was absolutely, 100% right. This is as "metal" as anything you've ever heard. This is rock as raw and intense as you can possibly ever get.
I heard WL/WH around 1975, at 19 or 20 yrs old, it was an education away from the hippy/stoner stuff everyone in high school listened to. I'd heard the Dolls a few years before and loved 'em, much to the disapproval of everyone else i knew. Started going through a roots rediscovery into 50's rock, brit invasion. I read Lester Bangs's take on this record, of I Heard Her Call My Name's "inhuman flesh flaying guitar onslaught careening into Sister Ray" and was expecting more "shredding", but SR had a bedrock guitar hook with the twangy guitar fills reminding me of Dave Davies, and then Cale's surprising melodic and poppy organ solo. All that then becoming increasingly chaotic but still weaving around the basic theme. Interesting that Jonathan Richman could take this riff and guitar/organ combo as inspiration for "Roadrunner" and the sound of the first ML album, with completely different lyric themes.
I always loved how mechanical everything from Sister Ray sounds. The guitar riff, the drums, and the organ all give off this intense sense of drive and rhythm. It feels like getting on a train and going from 0 to light speed in a matter of minutes!
Likewise! I think the only music that compares to me is some stuff by Les Rallizes Dénudés. They’re kind of like what would happen if you turned “Sister Ray” into a band.
I was house sitting for a musician friend who had this album on vinyl (I only ever had the CD) and another of my friends had passed out on the jam room floor. I was trying to prompt him to get up to crash elsewhere so I put on Sister Ray cranked it to 11. He didn't move, so I figured he was really out of it and left him there on the carpet for the night.
this was the first VU album I bought... from the delete bin... and I bought it because there was a spoken reference to the VU on We're Only In It For The Money... I loved it but everyone else I knew hated it.. I couldn't figure out why... it's so magnificent... from the opening of White LIght/White Heat, to the final notes of Sister Ray
It seems like the VU hits every generation, sooner or later. I started listening to them early in college (1988) and then a new CD compilation was released sometime in 1990. My fellow philosophy student BF kept a cassette with VU & Nico on one side and White Light/White Heat on the other permanently in the boom box in his bedroom, and we did our stimulants and drank and read and argued and wrote and passed out on the regular with that tape playing, back and forth, back and forth, until it was (and still is) inscribed on the inside of my skull. It was like a language immersion course in the Velvets. To this day, I can hear three seconds of Sister Ray and know exactly where we are in the song. You always know you're in good company with other VU fans
I've been waiting 50 years for this video. For 50 years I have said this is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. Thanks a million. Now guess what I'm gonna be doing for the next 17 minutes
Sister Ray was a great song from a great album, I was fortunate enough to see the Velvet Underground when they reformed for a one off European tour, I them at Wembley arena in London and without a doubt it was the best gig I’ve ever been to, they were legendary.
Essentially John Cale’s own album with the velvets as a backing band Lou wrote the tracks and has led vocals except for two tracks but John brings his touches that make this album awesome
Love this vid. Sister Ray is the VU song I go back to time and again all these years. Sometimes only this will do, maybe some Fall behemoths too. It's an urban threshing machine. That crushing riff. There are live versions spilt over youtube here and there all different all good.
It's their best song and one of the greatest songs of all time, as in easily top 5 songs ever. Some of te best moments of my adolescence and I suppose of my life were listening to Sister Ray. Tucker and Morrison's best moment. Thanks for making this great video.
Also, probably my favourite guitar moment of all time, Sterling's cool solo and my favourite drums moment of all time, when Moe gets tribal towards the end. Your channel will go the same way as the Velvets - very few fans but you'll have the exact kind of fans you want.
I am SO lucky: my Primary Care Physician is named "Jim". And NO, my profile name has nothing to do with him, dope or even VU. Simply I needed a name I could remember. Anyway. Point be, Biopsy tomorrow and I forgot in-office to say to my Doctor (who prefers that his patients call him by his first name.), to say to him--after he told me that, he would 'take care of me'. I should-have said to my Doctor, *" 'Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim!' ".*
Man that was fantastic..The best explanation for me of why they are Americas greatest band ..Although I juggle that with the Byrd's and The Beach Boys ..Please do a short for Sweet Jane or Some Kinda Love ..
I love VU and i like some industrial music, even some noise sometimes. But goddamn i think i heard this song in its entirety only twice. That riff though is sick. So dirty
@@DissectingtheDisco Just like Sister Ray said. Seriously, I first played the whole album through on a trip when I was working in Tokyo and we took a trip to the countryside. I played it on my Discman and felt completely hypnotized by it.
it's stunning how ahead of the curve the VU actually were, they were so far ahead they were virtually unmarketable, what a band !!! we'll never see anything like them again, thank fcuk they left us with something that makes life more bearable !!
Well, Lou Reed was insane (insanely great!) so this song shouldn't surprise anyone. Also, I was lucky enough to see John Cale and his band play about five times up in Chicago in the 70s. Great memories!
That moment when they all come back together at 16:00 always gives me goose-bumps. One of the greatest pieces of rock 'n roll ever recorded. When it comes on it just grabs hold of you and takes you with it - you have no choice !
Hipster bar near me 20 yrs ago had a VU best of CD in the jukebox. Every time i went i put a quarter in and selectdd Sister Ray. I did this maybe 6 times and then one day the CD wasn't there anymore. Guess they weren't really VU fans.
😂 My buddy did something like that. Thinking it clever he out 26 dollars into the jukebox and set it to all Sister Ray. ...the staff unplugged the machine.
Apart from the opening chords, my favorite moment is about 5 seconds after the third verse, the guitars and the organ all unleash a flourish at the same time and it's hard to even tell which is which for a second before they separate, it's amazing. This is my favorite song of all time and fave VU song and the be-all, end-all of rock and roll, simply cannot be topped.
In 1977 I was sixteen. A good friend played me this - he was an VU obsessive. At a time when I was supposed to be wearing bin liners and listening to the Clash etc, it all seemed hopelessly limp wristed and childish compared with the venomous, literate attack of The Velvet Underground. This was a time in my youth when I was searching for something out of the ordinary, and that had depth whilst not being entirely humourless. Along with the books I was reading and records I was listening to, this music was entirely preeminent.
You need to be in the mood but it’s a great track. I also love the later live Yule era versions (Quine and Matrix tapes) that start off a lot slower/groovier but get there in the end.
one of the coolest video essays i've ever seen!! tvu is my favorite band of all time, with heroin my favorite song of all time. i love how this song cannot be replicated, tvu played it differently every time. while i love this version, the 30 minute matrix tapes version is my preferred version. i just completely space out, i love the trance it puts me in.
: When I was living in New Mexico, local musicians would get together in this weird little building outside of Mesilla every Monday and just jam. A lot of people there were into bluegrass and folk, but some of us were fond of covering The Stones, The Band, etc. I was the one weirdo who tried to get people in on acoustic interpretations of Kraftwerk, with varying success, but I do remember getting everyone to play Sister Ray one night. I was like: "This song's in G - common time - and all you gotta do is follow this simply progression. But when I tell you to go nuts, fucking go nuts." Even with no amplification at all, the same madness that comes in after the third verse of the original studio version came out of what we were doing. That's what makes Sister Ray great - it can be done by anybody, but only those with true grit will make a cover of it something special.
I have a copy of Sister Ray that’s a bootleg or picture disc or something- I’ll have to dig the album out of my collection but I know it was called “A Drug Hit Sally Inside” . That’s what I thought Lou was singing all these years. I have been a huge VU fan since I was 12 ( 50 years ago) when an older friend played Sweet Jane and Rock ‘n Roll. From that moment, I was hooked. The guitar solo in “I Heard Her Call My Name” is still my favorite freak out .
In a way, it is also Shoegaze with how sound-drenched and hypnotic the whole thing is lol. It’s definitely a track that predicated plenty of future rock music
Noise rock (which, once stripped of the chaos and dissonance led to the creation of shoegaze) but definitely not anything close to Shoegaze. This could definitely be seen as a predecessor to bands like Sonic Youth, however.
I think you are really onto something. My Bloody Valentine is not that big a hop from sister ray. Even lush and cocteue twins with their thick sound drenched sounds...
Maybe in a very distant great grandparent sort of way. I think one could draw similarity to this song and Krautrock, (Post) Punk or Noise Music before MBV.
Hopefully this video inspires young artistic and daring imaginations, the ones who live on the outside. If you have any ideas of doing anything fucking do it!
Sister Ray was one of the center pieces of our set list with Death back in the early 1970s (Milwaukee). I think there is a really really poor audio quality live version of our rendition somewhere out in the cloud.
Velvet Underground shocked the World with the Song Heroin
& Sister Ray making them the GOD FATHER OF PUNK.
Not at first. Over the years.
Sister Ray is everything that has ever been called Rock-n-Roll.
I got a shot of morphine in the ER once. I had asked them to give me something for pain, but I expected nothing more than a couple of pills. They hooked me up to an IV and I assumed that they were just giving me fluids--when, very suddenly and very powerfully, the morphine hit. What came out of my mouth as I sank back onto my pillow was, "Whip it on me, Jim!" The nurse, who was nice and cute and no older than 22, looked at me uncomprehendingly; she had no idea what I was talking about.
She found your mainer!
@@DissectingtheDisco I should have tried to win a new convert to the VU cause, but by then I was in no shape to do anything but grin obliviously :)
@@jonathanmitchell9886 Sister Ray coulda been that hospital’s morphine injection backing track! Love your connection to the song, thanks for sharing the story
She COULD hit it sideways. In fact.
@@thiscorrosion900 Could and did! 🤩
The sounds John Cale got out of that Vox have to go down as one of the most ferocious and distorted organ displays in Rock history. How on earth did he do that back in 1968, predating the likes of Suicide or early Cabaret Voltaire. Considering his further career Cale was/is, on so many different fronts a visionary of the sounds to come.
Thanks for the great narration, realy enjoyed it.
By plugging it all into the giant Vox amps and cabs. and turning up all the way! That's how. And adding tons of fuzztone.
@@thiscorrosion900 Yep, Vox Super Beatles. VERY loud solid state amp. Not reliable, but they had a built in fuzz effect. Very cool sound.
@@ComradeTrotsky1017 Why not reliable? I would think they would have been more reliable than the tube amps. I also read at some point that the Velvets had some of their guitars modded to include fuzz FX built in to the actual guitars, but not sure. Or other boosting FX and such. Possibly Lou's old Gretsch. But I know the Vox amps had that, and also Vox were already making some
fuzz/wah pedals by then.
@@thiscorrosion900 Idk why they weren't more reliable. When I was thinking about purchasing one, all the Vox forums told me I'd be paying to repair it, so I avoided it. And yes, Lou's Country Gentleman was heavily modded. He even got rid of the frets at one point before it was stolen. Would love to hear what that monstrosity must have sounded like! Vox Tone Bender is pretty much the basis for ALL fuzz pedals now. Killer tone.
@@ComradeTrotsky1017 Oh, the Tone Bender, gotcha. Wow that's odd that the Vox solid states weren't reliable, of course the older the vintage ones get, the more unreliable maybe also. The wiring and whatnot may not have been nearly as good as the older tube Vox, then. They were starting to bang stuff out cheap by then.
Sister Ray Live At The Matrix. 226 times this year according to spotify.
It parodies the rock genre and itself as it goes along. Self indulgent, psychotic, intoxicated, relentless, monolithic and completely non user-friendly. And it´s so much fun.
J-j-j-j-just like Sister Ray said.
'I heard' ... not sure how true...that this version was from a tour with the Grateful Dead, when the VU got pissed off with their alternating headliners the GD, going off on jams, so they went off on a 34 minute version of Sister Ray, just to pay back the GD and pinch a bit of their set back as revenge
I am not sure if this is true, the tour happened, but I agree with you that it is the DEFINITIVE version of Sister Ray
Lou's guitar solo in that version is EPIC.
Underground fan since 1967 and I lay here at night with my U Tube music listening to Sister Ray I am only 77 yrs old but my mind is only 20 yrs old?
that's good to know.
you're the same age as my parents, I hope in 20 years time I'm still listening to the VU with the 50 year old mind set I have now, never mind 20, hahaha...
Who knew I needed a 20 minute dissection of Sister Ray, well I guess I did. Besides the smart narration, the video itself is a work of art. Thanks much for your hard work. I'm a NYC kid, teenager in the 70's, allowed in to some of the clubs (drinking age was 18, but I was 15/16), and seeing all the mid 70s bands who were on the up. The whole Warhol scene vibe was still all over, especially the drag remnants. We missed the VU by years, but their ghosts were all over everything. Women in Revolt was running at the art movie house, and the trash plays of Jackie Curtis were memories down on the lower east. The city was dirty and the music hot.
You must be a wealth of information on all of the 70's 'underground' bands and celebrities of the time! Any New York Dolls stories?!? I was a teen stuck in Michigan and was obsessed with anything to do with NYC at the time. Lucky you!!!
Please tell me you saw Television. It would make my day
Not a wealth, but it was in the air@@MishLaRue I saw many of the CBGB bands, but often at other venues like The Kitchen. The Bowery and the Alphabets were really dangerous at times. I was a teen and the late subways were far apart- I still remember the empty stations at night- unless you lived down there, you still had to get back home. Never saw Television, but pretty much everyone else. I moved to Atlanta for college, so it was a whole other scene just starting up and I was finally old enough to hit the limited Athens/Atlanta venues. Cheers.
No band before or since can hold a candle to the Velvet Underground. They were the best and Sister Ray is just perfection - if you happen to like that sort of thing :-)
like Lester Bangs did
I would like to agree, however I must namedrop their only equals here ..... The Birthday Party. Mutiny in heaven is one of the greatest pieces of chaos ever controlled onto tape.
Well, i just love it
@@yowiemountain167 you got that right
The band has interpreted the story I guess folks can make out of it what they want
I'm from the UK, born into the hot summer of punk in 1976. I finally made it to NYC in April of 2012, took the subway down town to look for a record shop, wandered round Washington square park and found myself on Bleeker st. Got drunk in wicked Willy's and fell into the record store, bought 3 velvets albums on coloured vinyl WLWH on white vinyl and walked back up to midtown, along the Bowery past the old CBGB'S and hitting a couple of other bars, before devouring a pastrami and passing out back at the hotel. Every time I put sister Ray on i take a deep breath of the inner sleeve and it immediately transports me back to that amazing day.
Kool story
That's fantastic!
Thank you! Sister Ray deserved every minute of your detailed analysis. With its partner in grime, I Heard Her Call My Name, Sister Ray completes one of the most gloriously incendiary sides of recorded music. At over 50 years old it is fresh, unfathomable and endlessly challenging still.
Instant new subscriber!
God, each listen to the Velvet Underground makes me love them even more
Greatest band of all time
I remember being a teenager and getting what felt like "really drunk" (hilarious in retrospect) at the time and listening to this song. About thirteen minutes in, the bottled-up aggression I felt from trying to sit perfectly still with headphones on, enduring the completely unrelenting auditory assault of this song at nearly the maximum volume my amplifier could put out, my eardrums screaming in pain, something snapped in me and I proceeded to do probably the silliest thing I've ever done in direct response to a piece of music: I got up, took the record of the turntable and attempted to destroy the grooves containing the second half of "Sister Ray" with a pair of scissors. It only took about 40 seconds of doing this for me to realize what an idiot I was being and stop. Embarrassed and ashamed of myself, I went to bed. Days later, I played that part of the record again to see what had become of it. Much to my surprise, the locked grooves my scraping had created, by complete random chance, were all exactly the length of a bar, with four downbeats, as if the repetition was on purpose. Eventually, after listening many more times to this uniquely altered copy of WLWH that I just happened to own, something absolutely insane dawned on me: I had accidentally turned a VU record into a Can record. Taken out of context, the dissonant sounds of individual bars of the climax of "Sister Ray", repeated exactly the same way over and over instead of with endless variations, sounds EXACTLY like Irmin Schmidt, Holger Czukay and Michael Karoli locking in with each other on Monster Movie or Soundtracks or Tago Mago. Reed even comes off like Damo. "Aww, she hasn't got....Aww, she hasn't god.....Aww, she has a god...." I still haven't bought a new copy on vinyl. I enjoy my version too much! Moving the needle manually again and again is just part of the fun!
What an awesome connection to the song! Any chance we can hear a recording?
you need to record this. you need to.
You should record it
Wild story - looking forward to hearing this modded version
PLEASE RECORD THIS
F**cking brilliant. Lets just say im in the right "mood" for my fave VU track.
Searching for my...., and this pops up in the feed.
Its Saturday night in 2023 but im journeying to the dark dirty New York of '67.
First heard this when i was 17 or so, after reading that my then best kept secret band, the mighty Janes Addiction were a "Velvet Underground-inspired band" in a Playboy article. My music, my style, my code were formed.
Somehow, Im still alive..
This is fantastic video essay on one of the most important songs to alternative music
Well put, i can't count the times ive subjected my friends to this song.
I love every second of it and am glad to see it getting some respect and recognition.
If you wanna clear out a bar, try playin it on the jukebox!
I am 58 and still find this to be absolute brilliance ❤❤❤
This was Cales album I was 17 in 1978 & was listening to Stooges & a Lou Reed Bowie fan I paid a lot of money to get an import from Germany Loved pissing off neighbors playing Sister at full volume !!❤From Australia
He changed so much after John Cale. Not necessarily for the worse, just change. He’s always fabulous
True words at the ending, after all these years nothing sounds like it. Those Quinne tapes at the Matrix you brought up have some gems. One of the Sister Rays on there is fantastic! But just as a stamp of approval on saying true VU fans love this album. Put The Gift on just the left speaker, and turn it up as loud as comfort allows. I still flip out to this day.
Been a while since I've listened to the album and never listened to just one speaker. I don't have the option of doing that at the moment either. What's on each side? Music in one and story in the other?
This band is one of the reason why I love rock n roll music
Maybe my second favorite VU (after “Black Angel’s Death Song”). Just fucking relentless. I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to “Sister Ray”. Many. It still overwhelms me every time. Favorite moment: “Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim!” Perfect.
This was an excellent tribute to one of the best songs of the 20th century.
im so happy to see someone covering the weird music i love that no one seems to talk about. thanks so much
How many video essays on Pink Floyd do we need? 😅
One of the best album closers ever
This song deserves this. Thank you.
I didn’t like Sister Ray until “The Quine Tapes” was released. It has 3 outstanding live performances of the song - then I finally fell in love with the song, about 16 years after buying “WL/WH”. Brilliant song, brilliant band - and I mean ALL 4 members.
Cales GNARLY fuzzed out vox continental organ really makes up for him not playing bass. While there is no bass guitar, he is holding down the lows with his left hand. The Doors style!
Such a lovely little ditty...😂
This album is pretty much the DNA which got spun into what Irmin Schmidt referred to as "the CAN virus". You can hear this get filtered back through the inceptive days of Krautrock, as "White Light/White Heat" served as the template for Can's debut, "Monster Movie". It's not as anarchic as "WL/WH", but the madness and racket is still in there...particularly on the closer, "You Doo Right", where Can goes for their own "Sister Ray" but arrives at some twisted prototype for My Bloody Valentine's wall of droning sludge approach a couple of decades early.
It's a must-listen for anyone who loves the Velvets' second opus. It's better-arranged, thanks to the razor blade and splicing tape magic of Holger Czukay, but it's also no less jarring!
Quite possibly the quintessential Velvet Underground song, really encapsulates their sonic intensity and Lou Reed's brilliantly transgressive lyrical approach. I do prefer the first album because of its variety but White Light/White Heat is definitely one of the most ferocious and idiosyncratic experimental rock albums ever made.
Single handedly invented ...noiserock....drone and all off shoots
I got into the velvets because Joy Division did a live cover of this song (it’s on the album ‘Still’) so White Light White Heat was the first Velvets record I bought/heard, mind was blown obviously.
I was in my first 'band' (i.e. bedroom recording punk experimentations) age 15 and we did a cover of Joy Division's cover. I hadn't heard the VU original at that point. But being a huge Jesus and Mary Chain fan (this was 1985), it wasn't long before I caught up. I still love White Light White Heat so, so much more than the banana record.
Have you heard the live new order version? :). My favourite
In the tropical heat of Bumfuck Australia I remember being in the back of a van somewhere in the bush, something around January 1980. I was 15. It was night and very, very dark, no moon and only starlight. My first experience with white light/white heat. And playing on the crappy cassette system, none other than- Sister Ray. I thought I’d found god. A message from another planet, New York in the 60s, over a decade before. Many difficult years later, clean as a whistle, the music still talks to me in a way I can’t describe. I spent years as a musician and audio engineer, and that one experience, in the humidity and dark, with brief moments of the cabin light so we could see what we were doing as that iconic line, ‘searching for my mainline’ resonated - that one seminal experience and my world flipped. Plenty of regrets but the purity of that night will never leave me. I still feel the echo of the rush when I hear that guitar start up.
So funny you said that I'm 47 and last year I discovered joy division and velvet underground both last year . I saw documents in apple tv and watched it
@@bryankinney1 version(s)....Somewhere there is a recording of John Cooper Clark fronting New Order from Sydney '82. Somewhere...
Excellent video. I highly recommend the apocalyptic 40 minute live version on The Quine Tapes. It's insane
Oh man this is gonna be a treat. I remember my high school punk band forcing our peers to sit thru a cover of this while we were high on Coricidin
greatest song of all time
Agreed!
I always felt this song was inspired by Hubert Selby's short story "The Queen is Dead".
I think so too. The pieces are definitely all there, especially the Poe references!
Black sheep? I'd call Squeeze the black sheep of their catalogue XD The amount of textures they accomplished in this track is outstanding. The bass sounding guitar by Lou that turns into a feedback monster, Sterling's rock and roll and blues licks that make the climax thriilling with his rhythm variations, Moe's drums that feel like a heart beat of someone trying all the drugs these guys tried, and Cale's keyboard that goes from everrything between beautiful counterpoint melodies to industrial noise. Even if they are playing for most of the time a single chord, it's never monotonus. It is ever changing like if it was alive.
Squeeze obviously doesn't count.
Squeeze is a Velvets album as much as the American Flyer records are Velvets records. You can shit in a McDonald's bag. It doesn't make it a Big Mac.
Without question the most extreme music ever recorded in 1967-68. There's this part of the liner notes to Metal Machine Music where Lou Reed half-jokingly claims to have invented heavy metal. Well, kids, "Sister Ray" makes the case that he was absolutely, 100% right. This is as "metal" as anything you've ever heard. This is rock as raw and intense as you can possibly ever get.
What a cool idea for a piece! Really well executed too
Ayy thanks Tingo! Hyped for new stuff from you
White Light White Heat was my 1st album, I love it, from beginning to end
I heard WL/WH around 1975, at 19 or 20 yrs old, it was an education away from the hippy/stoner stuff everyone in high school listened to. I'd heard the Dolls a few years before and loved 'em, much to the disapproval of everyone else i knew. Started going through a roots rediscovery into 50's rock, brit invasion. I read Lester Bangs's take on this record, of I Heard Her Call My Name's "inhuman flesh flaying guitar onslaught careening into Sister Ray" and was expecting more "shredding", but SR had a bedrock guitar hook with the twangy guitar fills reminding me of Dave Davies, and then Cale's surprising melodic and poppy organ solo. All that then becoming increasingly chaotic but still weaving around the basic theme. Interesting that Jonathan Richman could take this riff and guitar/organ combo as inspiration for "Roadrunner" and the sound of the first ML album, with completely different lyric themes.
In case you didn't know, The ML debut was produced by John Cale, so Richman's sound wasn't very far fetched.
@ForARide Sure I knew Cale produced it. Got a beautiful sound out of the band.
One of the best fun facts about Sister Ray is that Lou posted an edit of the Beatles at the Ed Sullivan show synced to the song before dying
He did? Where? I’d love to see that.
I always loved how mechanical everything from Sister Ray sounds. The guitar riff, the drums, and the organ all give off this intense sense of drive and rhythm. It feels like getting on a train and going from 0 to light speed in a matter of minutes!
Thanks for this. Sister Ray is my favorite song off my favorite album--has been for the last 20 years. Nothing comes close.
Likewise! I think the only music that compares to me is some stuff by Les Rallizes Dénudés. They’re kind of like what would happen if you turned “Sister Ray” into a band.
I was house sitting for a musician friend who had this album on vinyl (I only ever had the CD) and another of my friends had passed out on the jam room floor. I was trying to prompt him to get up to crash elsewhere so I put on Sister Ray cranked it to 11. He didn't move, so I figured he was really out of it and left him there on the carpet for the night.
But did he stain the carpet? LOL
this was the first VU album I bought... from the delete bin... and I bought it because there was a spoken reference to the VU on We're Only In It For The Money... I loved it but everyone else I knew hated it.. I couldn't figure out why... it's so magnificent... from the opening of White LIght/White Heat, to the final notes of Sister Ray
Great video! got into velvet underground recently through the podcast No Dogs In Space. Thought they weren't my cup of tea, but I was dead wrong.
They’re definitely a slow burn but once it clicks they have so much good material. Make sure to check out the Matrix Tapes! Best live album.
It seems like the VU hits every generation, sooner or later. I started listening to them early in college (1988) and then a new CD compilation was released sometime in 1990. My fellow philosophy student BF kept a cassette with VU & Nico on one side and White Light/White Heat on the other permanently in the boom box in his bedroom, and we did our stimulants and drank and read and argued and wrote and passed out on the regular with that tape playing, back and forth, back and forth, until it was (and still is) inscribed on the inside of my skull. It was like a language immersion course in the Velvets. To this day, I can hear three seconds of Sister Ray and know exactly where we are in the song. You always know you're in good company with other VU fans
I've been waiting 50 years for this video. For 50 years I have said this is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. Thanks a million. Now guess what I'm gonna be doing for the next 17 minutes
This break down with all the visuals you collected from the time, what a treat, thank you very much. Hope you get a of love on this one
And in the same year the most popular song was the Beatles 'Hey Jude.'
Give me the VU any day!
Long ago and far away, I was in a little group, we ONLY played our own stuff and occasionally Sister Ray!
Sister Ray was a great song from a great album, I was fortunate enough to see the Velvet Underground when they reformed for a one off European tour, I them at Wembley arena in London and without a doubt it was the best gig I’ve ever been to, they were legendary.
Such a amazing album. Lady Godiva's Operation is probably my favourite VU song of them all
SWEETLY
Mine, too!
LOL....thats funny. :). And that fucking bass!
Essentially John Cale’s own album with the velvets as a backing band
Lou wrote the tracks and has led vocals except for two tracks but John brings his touches that make this album awesome
Love this vid. Sister Ray is the VU song I go back to time and again all these years. Sometimes only this will do, maybe some Fall behemoths too. It's an urban threshing machine. That crushing riff. There are live versions spilt over youtube here and there all different all good.
#199 on the charts, would get a good laugh to see the 198 above them
white light/white heats is my favorite bunch of sounds i love with my heart
YOU'RE EDITING IS AMAZING-TRULY, NEXT LEVEL. WELL DONE. THANK YOU.
It's their best song and one of the greatest songs of all time, as in easily top 5 songs ever. Some of te best moments of my adolescence and I suppose of my life were listening to Sister Ray. Tucker and Morrison's best moment. Thanks for making this great video.
Also, probably my favourite guitar moment of all time, Sterling's cool solo and my favourite drums moment of all time, when Moe gets tribal towards the end.
Your channel will go the same way as the Velvets - very few fans but you'll have the exact kind of fans you want.
Loved the freaking album. Laying down stoned on the floor between the speakers. Just has to be one strange level of heaven.
Enjoyed that, I've listened to Boot leg version (which, I don't know) that I like better than the album. But what a song. As crazy as European Son.
I am SO lucky: my Primary Care Physician is named "Jim". And NO, my profile name has nothing to do with him, dope or even VU. Simply I needed a name I could remember.
Anyway. Point be, Biopsy tomorrow and I forgot in-office to say to my Doctor (who prefers that his patients call him by his first name.), to say to him--after he told me that, he would 'take care of me'. I should-have said to my Doctor, *" 'Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim!' ".*
Man that was fantastic..The best explanation for me of why they are Americas greatest band ..Although I juggle that with the Byrd's and The Beach Boys ..Please do a short for Sweet Jane or Some Kinda Love ..
I love VU and i like some industrial music, even some noise sometimes. But goddamn i think i heard this song in its entirety only twice. That riff though is sick. So dirty
What a perfect chaos
This is fantastic! I always felt that this song needed a real breakdown, and you did it so well!
You didn't hit it sideways!
Thanks so much!!! Really tried to hit the mainline on this one!
@@DissectingtheDisco Just like Sister Ray said.
Seriously, I first played the whole album through on a trip when I was working in Tokyo and we took a trip to the countryside. I played it on my Discman and felt completely hypnotized by it.
I hope you make more videos about this band
it's stunning how ahead of the curve the VU actually were, they were so far ahead they were virtually unmarketable,
what a band !!! we'll never see anything like them again, thank fcuk they left us with something that makes life more bearable !!
Incredible video...Great work my friend.
Well, Lou Reed was insane (insanely great!) so this song shouldn't surprise anyone. Also, I was lucky enough to see John Cale and his band play about five times up in Chicago in the 70s. Great memories!
I shot herion in those days and loved this album. All the junkies loved it we thought it was recorded for us.
This is amazing work, love it 🌈😍
Been there since day 1, Poulii 🔥 thank you!
It wasn't a Vox Continental. See Cam Forester for the weird actual organ details.
Much love to Cale! Great video!
"Hello sailors, goodbye sailors, thank you for the memories"
That moment when they all come back together at 16:00 always gives me goose-bumps. One of the greatest pieces of rock 'n roll ever recorded. When it comes on it just grabs hold of you and takes you with it - you have no choice !
Hipster bar near me 20 yrs ago had a VU best of CD in the jukebox. Every time i went i put a quarter in and selectdd Sister Ray. I did this maybe 6 times and then one day the CD wasn't there anymore. Guess they weren't really VU fans.
Hahaha.. Love it.
Can relate.
😂 My buddy did something like that. Thinking it clever he out 26 dollars into the jukebox and set it to all Sister Ray. ...the staff unplugged the machine.
@@AveragePicker I'd like to buy that man a drink
Apart from the opening chords, my favorite moment is about 5 seconds after the third verse, the guitars and the organ all unleash a flourish at the same time and it's hard to even tell which is which for a second before they separate, it's amazing. This is my favorite song of all time and fave VU song and the be-all, end-all of rock and roll, simply cannot be topped.
In 1977 I was sixteen. A good friend played me this - he was an VU obsessive. At a time when I was supposed to be wearing bin liners and listening to the Clash etc, it all seemed hopelessly limp wristed and childish compared with the venomous, literate attack of The Velvet Underground. This was a time in my youth when I was searching for something out of the ordinary, and that had depth whilst not being entirely humourless. Along with the books I was reading and records I was listening to, this music was entirely preeminent.
Time is something only the very best drummers have, and Moe had it. She sounds like a human tape loop here, and that is a compliment.
And it’s basically just one chord!
Great video. Bravo.
Thanks for checking it out!
You need to be in the mood but it’s a great track. I also love the later live Yule era versions (Quine and Matrix tapes) that start off a lot slower/groovier but get there in the end.
this is video longer than sister ray itself
Fantastic! Do “I Heard Her Call My Name”!!!
Probably the most influential piece of music in the second half of the 20th century - and its still casting its spell. A masterpiece!
Just like Sister Ray said
Sister Ray said turn it up to 12, so they did
one of the coolest video essays i've ever seen!! tvu is my favorite band of all time, with heroin my favorite song of all time. i love how this song cannot be replicated, tvu played it differently every time. while i love this version, the 30 minute matrix tapes version is my preferred version. i just completely space out, i love the trance it puts me in.
: When I was living in New Mexico, local musicians would get together in this weird little building outside of Mesilla every Monday and just jam. A lot of people there were into bluegrass and folk, but some of us were fond of covering The Stones, The Band, etc.
I was the one weirdo who tried to get people in on acoustic interpretations of Kraftwerk, with varying success, but I do remember getting everyone to play Sister Ray one night. I was like: "This song's in G - common time - and all you gotta do is follow this simply progression. But when I tell you to go nuts, fucking go nuts." Even with no amplification at all, the same madness that comes in after the third verse of the original studio version came out of what we were doing. That's what makes Sister Ray great - it can be done by anybody, but only those with true grit will make a cover of it something special.
I see Browning Hi power pistol and VU I click on it 😂 loved both of them since early 80s
I have a copy of Sister Ray that’s a bootleg or picture disc or something- I’ll have to dig the album out of my collection but I know it was called “A Drug Hit Sally Inside” . That’s what I thought Lou was singing all these years. I have been a huge VU fan since I was 12 ( 50 years ago) when an older friend played Sweet Jane and Rock ‘n Roll. From that moment, I was hooked. The guitar solo in “I Heard Her Call My Name” is still my favorite freak out .
best solo ever
I've never listened to the whole thing. I mean, could you? Thanks for the explanation.
Just the TH-cam analysis I was waiting for, great job! Song belongs on every Halloween playlist
Thee ground zero burning heart holy grail of psychedelic transgression
In a way, it is also Shoegaze with how sound-drenched and hypnotic the whole thing is lol. It’s definitely a track that predicated plenty of future rock music
Dont u dare call sister ray shoegaze
Noise rock (which, once stripped of the chaos and dissonance led to the creation of shoegaze) but definitely not anything close to Shoegaze. This could definitely be seen as a predecessor to bands like Sonic Youth, however.
I think you are really onto something. My Bloody Valentine is not that big a hop from sister ray. Even lush and cocteue twins with their thick sound drenched sounds...
Maybe in a very distant great grandparent sort of way. I think one could draw similarity to this song and Krautrock, (Post) Punk or Noise Music before MBV.
@@justinstewart5963Krautrock has more to do with European Son
I love you❤ This is one of my favorite tracks/songs of all time!!!
I am so glad you made this video man I have been obsessed with this song recently
Great timing!
Exceptionally well thought-out, nicely done!
One of my all time favorite records. I have listened to sister ray hundreds of times. Its awesome.
Hopefully this video inspires young artistic and daring imaginations, the ones who live on the outside. If you have any ideas of doing anything fucking do it!
Sister Ray was one of the center pieces of our set list with Death back in the early 1970s (Milwaukee). I think there is a really really poor audio quality live version of our rendition somewhere out in the cloud.
Great video essay on an even greater song. You nailed the edit there Duck!
Thanks a million, Sailor! Watch out for Cecil…