I still remember the dumbfounded look I wore when my good friend asked me: "So what era of Velvet Underground are you into?". All I could say was "Err...".
As you might've guessed, I wasn't into any VU whatsoever at this point. Not for any particular reason, I just hadn't really happened upon their music. We've all been there. We all have bands or artists that we hear of and intend to check out, but fall off our radar. Very occasionally, we remind ourselves and say "Yeah, I must get round to checking them out at some point", but never do. So much music, so little time and sadly, something has to give.
Had I not met said friend, and had he not asked the above question, VU would've remained as such a band for me, and I would've missed out on a blinding record, one that is arguably foundational to much of the music I own.
I first heard 'White Light...' when visiting my friend one evening for a gaming session. It was just a group of us guys in his flat getting stoned and playing video games and he'd sometimes play music he liked as we waited for everyone to show up. The first thing that struck me about this album was the chaos and dissonance. Of course, being more than familiar with a lot of 80s and 90s noise and alt-rock, it wasn't new to me, but hearing it on a record from 1968 was utterly shocking. What's more, as it would be at least another 20 years before guitar music would dare to be noisy in this way again, it meant that WLWH was completely ahead of its time.
So that's how I ended up being turned on to this album. I could not fail to appreciate its prescience and the fact that it happily sat alongside some of my more contemporaneous music without sounding out of place. This was the kind of 60s I could genuinely dig. And then my mind split open...
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