Sweet Jane
Hello, I'm incompetent.
It hasn't been long since I joined the company, but I haven't used any of my paid leave, so I have a lot accumulated and can't take it all at once. It's a rather inexplicable situation where I'm just taking it every Wednesday to use it up.
I seriously can't find a place to move into, so I'm finally feeling a sense of crisis. If I can't apply for a place by the 15th, I plan to temporarily live in a shared house I'm considering, even if it's just for a month. Is a 23-year-old like this really okay...?
The Velvet Underground - Sweet Jane
I first heard The Velvet Underground itself around junior high or high school, and the trigger for getting hooked was during high school.
When I was in junior high, there was a YouTube music thread that regularly popped up on the VIP board of what is now 5channel, and it was full of good stuff, so I put everything that was posted into my playlist.
I think my first album was probably the famous Andy Warhol banana album, but it was too 'evil' for me, so I think I stepped away from it for a while.
What was I listening to in junior high?
Back then, I bought CDs of "The Jam" and "The Who" just by their names at a now-defunct record store called J&B in Izumi-Chuo.
From there, my music teacher, who was a woman but quite eccentric, had a class where she distributed Japanese translated lyrics for Simon & Garfunkel's 'Scarborough Fair' to everyone and had us write our impressions. I think that was the first time I seriously tried listening to Western music.
Looking back now, I can't help but feel it was an overwhelming ego trip, wondering what impressions immature junior high students would have if she played her favorite music. But thanks to it, I can still enjoy music now, so it must have been an incredibly good class.
After becoming a high school student
There was a time when the owner of a coffee shop, which I still visit if I have time when I go to Tokyo, started playing it on vinyl.
What surprised me was that it was music I'd heard before, and I remember Mr. Ikeda (the owner) enjoying it in the shop during a quiet weekday, smoking a cigarette and saying, "The Velvets... they're good, you know."
At that time, I had intended to move to Tokyo after graduating high school, but,
- There were also encounters with people.
- I wondered if I was just arbitrarily convincing myself that "there's nothing in Sendai." So I tried to enjoy Sendai in various ways, and indeed, the food everywhere was delicious, there were many coffee shops, and it was fun.
But thanks to that, even though it was a short period, I made kind-hearted friends who still hang out with a 'decadent' person like me, and somehow, I was able to start communicating again with friends who moved to Tokyo after high school, I guess.
I thought I could live a relaxed life, similar to Takada Wataru's "Goaisatsu" album, which also has a banana album feel... but I was working right up until the New Year holidays, and looking back, I feel like I was working constantly with about 50 days of annual leave, so it wasn't really like that...
Lou Reed's Last Album with The Velvet Underground
Somehow, the conversation has strayed quite a bit.
The Velvets' 4th album 'Loaded' was released in 1970, and Lou Reed's departure was also in 1970. It's often regarded more as a Lou Reed album than a Velvet Underground album.
This is because, after the second album 'White Light/White Heat,' John Cale reportedly left due to conflict, but in reality, it feels like it was inevitable. John Cale, who wanted to pursue more experimental music, and Lou Reed, who was fundamentally a gentle-looking rock boy, probably had too many irreconcilable differences.
In an interview book with Lou Reed from around the 1980s, he even said that when he listened to Ornette Coleman, famous for free jazz, in his student days, he 'felt it was rock and roll.' So, to the extent possible, I feel there must be a difference between the sound Lou Reed wanted to create and the albums released under John Cale's name alone.
In reality, free jazz, as its name suggests, is simply a free form of jazz unconstrained by convention. So, it's not entirely impossible to feel that at its core, with its 'break the mold!' attitude, it's rock and roll.
Incidentally, the 3rd album, 'The Velvet Underground,' was made after John Cale's departure, so he's not on it. But perhaps thanks to that incident, it has a fragile, unstable, and raw sound that feels like it could break at any moment, so I think it can still be considered a Velvet Underground album.
Therefore, regarding the subsequent 4th album, 'Loaded,' it's good because you can feel the 'rock and roll' that Lou Reed originally wanted to do, to the extent that the past 'evilness' is nowhere to be found. The first and second albums, including the lyrics, were quite 'evil'... which might be because the US itself was in a dark period, compounded by the Vietnam War at the time.
Songs like "I’m Sticking With You" on this album, or music with a bit of Delta Blues elements, are also included. The era was the 1970s. It was just a major turning point, a few years after Bob Dylan, who was still too avant-garde as a folk artist, picked up an electric guitar, and prejudices against the electric guitar itself began to disappear. Perhaps because of this, the music feels like a mix of various elements.
Perhaps after 20 years, from the 1950s when electric guitars first appeared and music played with them was considered 'delinquent,' adults who grew up listening to it started having children, and it gradually became mainstream.
From Beat Generation to Hippie
It was also amidst the arrival of the hippie era as a revival of the Beat Generation, so various things probably started to be accepted.
Speaking of PCs, Stallman of GNU is clearly a hippie, and similarly, Patrick Volkerding of Slackware, who openly states he's a fan of The Grateful Dead, is undoubtedly a hippie too.
I'm losing the plot
I've just been jotting down rambling thoughts, and now I can't find a way to end it, so please just play an explosion sound in your head and give it an explosive ending.