How Does it feel to be loved: the scenics play the velvet underground
Recorded 1977-1981, live at The Edge, The Cabana Room, The Horseshoe, Larry’s Hideaway, Dixon Hall, Beverley Tavern, Scenics’ Basement.
CD Released January 2008 , Dream Tower Records DT01.
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As well, all sorts of songs that we knew and loved got thrashed by the Scenics- a four piece band trying to recreate the disco lite orchestrations of "Rock the Boat", or dragging Paul Revere and the Raiders’ "Just Like Me" into a half-time swamp and feeding it to alligators.
A few of our remake/remodels (Mony Mony, Where Have all the Good Times Gone) even made it into the studio with us. But the Velvets material was like a second skin. It wasn’t that we defined our sound by the straight-eighths chug of their guitars and Mo’s drums, or Lou Reed’s sneering vocals. We knew our mandate was to sound like US. However, the Velvets’ combination of sweet sounds and John Cale noise, their appreciation of the values of trance repetition, and their awareness that it all had to start with great songs and lyrics made them easy folks to invite over for a cup of tea. At our first gig, for Albert the performance poet and 20 of his inner city middle school kids, our first song was “What Goes On”. At our second gig, at Dixon Hall with 200 inner city high school kids, our first song was "We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together". Then we’d do a bunch of our own tunes (and that was another thing about the Scenics- we didn’t really differentiate between songs we wrote and songs someone else wrote, because we brought our own thing, musically, to both of them.)
The Songs
1. Waiting for my Man We started doing this pretty late, 1980. Brought it in to rehearsal after Mark Perkell and I did mushrooms at Ken Badger’s parents’ cottage, waiting for Ken to arrive on a gorgeous midsummer’s Friday night. I slapped the headphones on and put on the Velvet’s first LP. I got the point.
2. Beginning to See the Light These first two songs were played at the Cabana Room in Toronto, back to back, in reverse order from how they play on the CD. (at the end of ‘beginning’, you can hear me chop the first chord of ‘waiting’, in preperation.) Kind of a magical song- light, extended, what does it mean? CD title comes from it’s endless coda.
3. Here She Comes Now A perfect song for a type of sonic exploration the Scenics favour. Most of these songs are back in our sets at current gigs, and this one is continuing to change shapes. You don’t have to think to play it/sing it.
4. Heard Her Call my Name Was startled when Ken brought this in- how do you do this? Once we all began making noise, there it was. A lot of the audience was pretty straight the night this version was recorded, and in those days (1980) this sort of music was totally unknown to the rank and file- they had no idea what to do with it.
5. I'll Be Your Mirror Around the time this was recorded we were doing half a dozen VU songs together as part of a set. (changing things up kept us entertained) A few nights before the gig I said "Hey let’s do I’ll be your mirror" so we played it a couple of times and there you go. Couldn’t google the lyrics, so we just sang what we remembered they might be. As the song was starting that evening I suddenly had a mental blank- how do you pronounce the word "mirror"? Looking at it in my mind it looked like mere-or, accent second syllable, so that’s what I sang.
These first five songs are from the second era of the Scenics, (80-82) with Mark Perkell on drums. Mark was a friend of mine from high school, a jazz drummer, and he brought with him a lightness of touch, an inquisitive mind, and an endless groove. Ken Badger and I are both playing guitar. "Here She Comes Now" features Ken Fox on bass, who joined the Scenics very young before going on to gigs with Jason and the Scorchers and the last 20 years as a member of the Fleshtones. It’s easy to understand Ken’s success- he had a willing, positive attitude and picked things up fast. The other songs feature rock solid Mike Young on bass. This is the current line up of the band. I think it’s the strongest one (then and now) that the Scenics ever had.
The rest of the CD features the Scenics Mach 1, a trio, where Ken and I traded off on guitar and bass. The sound is rawer, less sophisticated. These were punk years (1977/78). All tracks but one feature Bradley Cooper on drums. Brad was a rocker and a pounder, and he grounded our sound like 5 concrete trucks pouring a foundation for one of those big suburban apartment buildings (that he’d go home to after getting the Scenics blitzed on his hi test Scarborough pot.) Bradley is the one Scenic still MIA. Would love to find him. (Since writing this we have- he's living in Florida. He never did like Canadian winters.)
6. Real Good Time Together This is from a gig at the Horseshoe with the Troggs and the Viletones, remembered in Now Magazine as one of the top 5 punk era Horseshoe Tavern shows. My main memory is of Troggs’ singer Reg Presley, porcine in paisley bikini briefs, sweaty and giggly while a blowsy blonde clambered over him in the dressing room. I am not ashamed to say that I sat quietly, gratefully, and watched. Playing this one again in the new millenium.
7. New Age This goes all the way back to our first ‘open to the public’ gig, (as the “Scenic Caves”), in early 1977, at Dixon hall. On this track it’s Mike Cusheon on drums. So young, (I was 19). Didn’t really know what we had yet. The song unfolds so slowly- it’s stately, makes me think of a story told on a tapestry from the 1700s. Duke Ellington said he kept his band together so that after he was up all night writing a song, he could hear it the next day. Being in a rock band is like that. You can walk in one day and decide to do New Age, and, magically, 10 minutes later you’re hearing it in the room. Did that one day in early 1977, and again in June of 08, and for the first time, heard what the four piece Scenics brought to it, and it was a different song for us.
8. I’m Set Free Goes Almost as far back, to August 1977 and our first gig as the Scenics, first gig with Brad, at the Beverley Tavern. There’s about a minute of the crowd, and it’s a show in itself, so excited about this new wave of music that has changed things for all of us. One guy keeps yelling out “Eno” -which has nothing to do with what we are playing- but Eno exists, and he is changing what all of us understand as ‘pop’ music, so yeah, we’re all that excited. The last two songs were recorded live in our basement practice space. This was our home, our clubhouse. From 77 through 79 we practiced four nights a week, unless we were going out to the Edge or the Horseshoe to see Pere Ubu, the Contortions, or the Lounge Lizards. We played for ourselves, and there were no rules, although we didn’t play blues or country.
9. What Goes On A really early arrangement, although the performance is from mid 78. There’s something a tad too teutonic about Bradley and my Status Quo chug on drums and bass, but Ken is insane on guitar. This one is Andy (leader of Toronto alt-punk band The Government) Patterson’s favorite on the CD.
10. Sister Ray Ken and I would both play guitar, no bass, the lyrics were improv. We’d just do it now and then, and it was every man for himself. This is one of the first times that we did it- could be the first.
notes by Andy Meyers