104. The Velvet Underground — White Light / White Heat (1968)

Black Tattoo / Black Cover

1. Another Velvet Undergound record, this one wilder than the last. We open with an absolute banger in the title track. I must admit, it didn’t hit me until listening recently how much LCD Soundsystem’s “Drunk Girls” borrows from / references this track. It’s a rollicking Jerry Lee Lewis style track that gets the blood flowing but also serves as a total misdirection for the album to come, at least sonically (lyrically, it’s about amphetamine use, which is right on brand).
2. That sub-3 minute single launches straight into the 8-plus minute “The Gift,” an absolutely wild spoken word short story / punk jam about a man named Waldo Jeffers so worried about his girlfriend cheating on him (she is) that he mails himself to visit her (since he can’t afford to fly) and when he arrives, he’s packed himself so tightly that she ends up chopping his head in half in order to open the box. Yeah. That song’s followed by “Lady Godiva’s Operation,” about a transsexual woman’s botched lobotomy. Yeah. Amazingly, this album didn’t sell well.
3. I do dig it, though. It’s just so unique, so out there. It was supposedly written in pursuit of a more commercial agenda, and if so, it fails wildly. But that’s what makes it so interesting. Suffice it to say, there’s nothing else like it I’ve heard in this list, including The Velvet Underground And Nico.

One Essential Song:

Listen on Spotify: