One of the greatest, most influential bands in history, the Velvet Underground released their super-trippy album White Light/White Heat 50 years ago today.
This is probably the quintessential album by this quintessential NYC band, the most Velvety-Undergroundy of their four studio albums.
The songs are decidedly noncommercial and not radio friendly, they are wildly experimental and strange. In fact, there are only six songs on the entire album and one of them, "The Gift," isn't even a song at all but an 8 minute-long short story about a guy named Waldo who mails himself to his girlfriend. Yeah, it's a weird one. But it's truly great and a landmark in the history of rock.
Velvets frontman Lou Reed said just before his death, when White Light/White Heat came out, "No one listened to it" but it contained "the quintessence of articulated punk."
And I'm sure people will be listening to it fifty-years from now.
And I'm sure people will be listening to it fifty-years from now.
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