20JFG has a bit of a bad reputation in certain quarters, they say we’re a bunch of bitter nerds and that we hate everything except the odd gem of putrefact noise that sounds like Thom Yorke’s face, or weird stuff we dig just because it’s weird and wacky and gives us hipster cred or whatever currency you can trade it for these days. And sharks and androids with metal claws.

Poppycock!

We are creatures full of love and warm feelings and we like nice stuff. We like the smell of butter on toast, and the sound of wings flapping gingerly as their butterfly dances with a tabby kitten wearing a pink silken bandana. We watch specks of dust floating in the air while drinking decaf coffee and reading the Observer Magazine with our significant others under cozy duvets on a lazy sunday afternoon. So yes, to demonstrate how we love all the niceness, we’re going to talk to you about the Velvet Underground and Messianism.

Nice things!

(This is Honorable’s see-ya-laters post: he will be away for a bit as he’s going down to Spain on a holiday to see his beloved cat Paddy who is quite ill, please leave comments wishing her a speedy recovery in the box thing at the bottom.)

PART 1- THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

Anyway, as I was saying, the Velvet Underground, yeah, ok, so we know for a fact the Velvet Underground invented music. You say, no, there was stuff before. To which we reply ah, you credulous souls, you live a comfortable fantasy, all the stuff that you think came before the Velvets was put there by time travelling scientists to create an illusion of incremental progression where there was only you know, a big bang of black energy, ask Lou, he might tell you the truth if he’s in the right mood, and not doing tai chi or whatever he gets up to these strange days.

The only stuff that wasn’t put there is the Blues from the Delta but then that is fucking voodoo and you don’t mess with that shit unless you want your intestines turned into berserk rattlesnakes.

So yeah, the Velvets, hush kids, listen to what Unckie Lester had to say about them…

‘Everybody assumes that mind and body are opposed. Why? (Leaving aside six thousand years of history.) The trog vs. the cerebrite. How boring. But we still buy it, all of us. The Velvet Underground were the greatest band that ever existed because they began to suggest that such was not so, in the very actfact of the tragic recognition of such opposition at the most groundfloor extreme angles. Angles? Ha! What is the difference between the curve of a breast on a sex goddess and the bones in the thighs of a stud and the fins on a ’57 chevy? The introduction of the Chevy into the comparison was Americas’ idea, which Andy Warhol later perfected, which is why he is the prophet of our doom. Lou realized early on that what you need to do is touch the other’s cheek and just give them some small recognition and then let them be and maybe record it and thereby perhaps justify their tragedy through art. And all art is an act of love towards the whole human race. Aw, Lou, it’s the best music ever made, the instrumental intro to ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ is like watching dawn break over a bank of buildings over the windows of these elegantly hermetic cages, which feels too well spoken, which I suspect is the other knife that cuts through your guts, the continents that divide literature and music and don’t care about either.’

Which is all right and true and makes me feel a bit silly trying to write about music. The best of our efforts are but pathetic scribblings on the margins of Mr. Bangs’ opus.

I’m not going to post any Velvets tonight, just three cover versions of their ‘Andy Warhol’ album, very different and beautiful in their own little magical ways, I hope you like them.

The Birds- Femme Fatale

The Birds are that lovely Acid Mother Cotton Casino and Norweigian metal overlord Per Gisle Galaen, and this song in included in their transparent ‘Let’s Do the Velvets’ 7 released by Important Records. Its sheer frailty breaks my heart.

And if you were going to say anything about the accent, erm, Nico.

Clock DVA- Black Angel’s Death Song

I only found out about this version a couple of days ago through Corey’s Halloween Mixtape, it’s from Clock DVA’s Advantage. Its harsh metallic post-punk feel is only fitting, and Ady Newton fills Lou’s death muppet beatnik shoes like a glove (that makes more sense than it seems).

Penelope Trip- All Tomorrow’s Parties

Penelope Trip were pioneers & prodigies of the spanish indie noise scene back in the heady 90s when wearing a Goo t-shirt in Benicassim festival was enough to get you laid. Or something. Before you english people colonised it. Below this version’s wild screeching detuned surface the beauty that Nico was lies asleep, perchance dreaming, gently.

The title of this post is inspired by Los Planetas, which I guess could be thought of as Spain’s answer to the Velvets.

PART 2- MESSIANISM

In his introduction to this anthology of Great Works of Jewish Fantasy I am currently reading, Joachim Neugroschel argues that the stories contained therein represent that dialectical tension between skepticism and fantasy which will only disappear when the Messiah comes.

We 20JFG nerds are rather hardcore empiricists etc. and can’t say much about the Messiah (save that Bono it ain’t-someone put him out of his pain please), but I guess if there’s something through which we attempt (and for a second succeed, only to forget) understanding the weird feelings emotions and whatnot that rational accounts of our petty existence fail to grasp, well, that something is in many occasions hidden in the black grooves of a record (or in the pages of a book, or in the bottom of a cup of coffee pleasantly enjoyed in good company).

‘Three gifts’ by Y.L. Peretz, featured in this anthology, tells the story of the soul of a dead man who, upon arriving to the celestial court finds that, when his good deeds and his sins are put in the scale, they are completely balanced. Thus, he is excluded from both Heaven and Hell, ‘Hence, he shall be a vagabond’. He is not very happy about this arrangement and cries bitterly, inspiring pity in an angel who advises him to return back to Earth and find three beautiful and extraordinary gifts with which he should be able to bribe his way into Heaven.

But this is not easy, and the soul is stricken with melancholy, he complains that ‘The world is so wretched, people are so mediocre, their souls so gray and their deeds so small…How can there be anything ‘extraordinary’ about them? I’ll be a homeless outcast forever!’

‘But as he was thinking, a red flame caught his eye. In the middle of the dark dense night, a red flame.’

Lift to Experience- Just as was Told

I know it is wrong to chop this song from the Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads, that intimate conversation between Josh Pearson and God where it belongs, and lay it here recklessly, in the cold void of the pooterweb, I feel like a cruel butcher. But then I guess that’s what 20jazzfunkgreats is about, decontextualising, mutilating and analysing what we love and respect in the hope that a few fellow souls out there will understand, enjoy or perhaps suffer, which is a feeling and always better than nothing, keep searching, make this thing whole again.

I could go on about the beauty of the guitars, like Slint after seeing the Angel of Light, like Mercury Rev would sound if they weren’t, let’s put it plainly, a bunch of pussies, but it’s not necessary, listen.

Let me paraphrase Edmund White, this is the sound of music just being.

And to wrap everything up nicely, we finish with this, included in Creeping Nobodies’ split with Anagram released by the lovely folks at Block Recordings.

Creeping Nobodies- Sacrosanction

Which burns with the same intense mystery (and intelligence) as, say, our beloved Young People. There’s a secret hidden in the exhilarating melodies of this song which reminds me of Mogwai at their best ever, My Father My King of course. Strong intrincate yet straightforward stuff, Creeping Nobodies are one of the best bands out there right now and we bow in awe.

And I think this is it, I am off to have dinner now, take care people, and see you soon.

This one goes to Petra, Marcos & Mark Andrew of the Hamiltons.

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Those in London go to Allez Allez’s Launch party at Catch 22 tonight or die.

Check out their new podcast: it starts with Uma by OOIOO and goes into Rhythm and sound- fucking class.

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with prog rave