Thursday, August 12, 2010

Not So Great Barely Released Singles of the '60s

And now, as part of our apparently on-going attempt to post every crappy noise Lou Reed made in his pre-Velvet Underground career, here's the old reprobate in 1965 -- doing business under the moniker of The Beachnuts -- and one of the worst cash-ins on the surfing/car songs trend of the Top 40 era, the quite execrable "Cycle Annie."




As you can hear, it's really him. I haven't quite figured whether it's better or worse than the last early Lou I posted or not, but it's unquestionably awful.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Velvet sound is there, even sounds as if Mo is drumming. A change of lyrics, a tweak here and there and the Velvets are in the house.

ROTP(lumber)

Faze said...

Oh yeah, it's only a few steps away from "Walk on the Wild Side", when he starts fast-talking toward the end. Love this Lou Reed archeology.

Gummo said...

steve, you think this one is bad, check out "The Ostrich."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r998weOUiM

Both of these have circulated on various Velvets boots for decades. I wish some enterprising fan would gather all of the pre-Velvets Reed in one glorious collection.

Michael said...

re: a tweak here and there

Change "Cycle Annie" to "Pycho Annie" and replace the back up singers with a girl that sings flat and has German accent.

Edward said...

I think it evolved into Waiting For The Man, with hints of There She Goes Again.

But wow, how did that guitar solo survive the editing process?

Wendy said...

Could be on the soundtrack for a John Waters movie ...

Anonymous said...

strangely, embarrassingly catchy and as many here have noticed, not all that far off from what was about to follow. Someone call Rhino with Gummo's idea for a pre-Velvets Lou collection!

AP

Anonymous said...

Gotta love the intertoobz.

Check out this website for all things Velvet:

http://thenunsareontheseawall.blogspot.com