This is the fifth in an occasional series where I look back on forgotten gems from the corners of my collection, giving me an excuse to listen closely to an album I may have overlooked for some years.
Moe Tucker in her VU days
I’m now trying to make these features a little more regular and speedier, and to use them as a more concerted way to play albums I’ve not heard for a long time.
The previous features have covered:
The Idiot and Lust For Life by Iggy Pop
Worlds In Colllison by Pere Ubu
Trapdoor Swing by Benny Profane
Comes A Time by Neil Young
The selection process
As regular (?) readers will know, I’m rather anal, so I have a detailed spreadsheet that contains various minutiae about all my CDs, including the date I last played it. I’m not so bad as to record every single play (which would be fascinating. To me at least!), but it means that (barring any errors) I know that there are around 1,400 discs I haven’t played since before October 2000, when I first started logging CD plays.
As for the Ubu and Iggy features, I used a simple random number-generated system, which guided me to select Moe Tucker’s third solo studio album, 1991’s I Spent A Week There The Other Night, for this piece from that list of c.1,400.
The history lesson
Moe is of course most famous as the drummer with the uber-legendary The Velvet Underground, having started out at the age of nineteen after being inspired by Bo Diddley, The Rolling Stones and Baba Olatunji.
The last of those three was a Nigerian drummer, whose debut Drums Of Passion has now just made its way onto my wish list.
The Velvet Underground at The Forum in 1993 (photo by Brian Rasic)
She got into the Velvets by virtue of her older brother Jim being a friend of Sterling Morrison after their previous percussionist left in November 1965 due to the band ‘selling out’ by taking a paying gig!
As well as her fantastic, minimalistic drumming (done stood upright, as later copied by Bobby Gillespie), she sang on a couple of Velvets’ tunes, including this utter classic, not released until 1985’s VU:
Moe temporarily quit the band in 1970 when pregnant with her first child, returning later that year by which time Lou Reed had left, but parted ways with them again in 1971, leaving the music business for many years, apart from a brief spell with a band called Paris 1942 in Phoenix.
She eventually released her solo debut, Playin’ Possum, in 1982, with all bar one track being a cover, and the whole record being entirely self-recorded.
Playin’ Possum
That’s only ever been available on vinyl, so I only have five of its nine tracks, thanks to the double CD I Feel So Far Away – Anthology 1974-1998 that I received for Christmas in its year of release (2012) from My Beloved Wife.
She quit her job to join Half Japanese on a European tour in 1989, also featuring on Lou’s New York LP that same year.
The wryly-titled Life In Exile After Abdication was also issued in 1989, and I picked it up in late December of that year, for £6.99 from HMV on Oxford Street, also snapping up Throwing Muses’ classic Hunkpapa album in the same purchase.
Exile features versions of Pale Blue Eyes (with great Lou Reed guitar work) as well as songs by Lead Belly, Bo Diddley and a Jad Fair/Daniel Johnston co-write.
Life In Exile After Abdication
Members of Sonic Youth feature on some tracks, most notably on the eight-minute Chase which sounds like something straight off Daydream Nation.
Another highlight is a charming, very minor key tribute to Andy Warhol, Andy.
The facts
I Spent A Week There The Other Night, the third album, came out on New Rose Records in 1991, and I bought it from Selectadisc in Soho in February 1992 for £10.99 – a good day’s shopping as I also returned home with Nick Drake’s debut album.
The CD version has one extra cut, a version of the Velvets’ I’m Waiting For The Man, taking it up to eleven songs.
I saw her promoting this record (billed as Moe Tucker And Her Band, who included Sterling Morrison) in February 1992 at The Grand in Clapham, supported by Irish band Whipping Boy for a well-spent £8. In fact, I saw Lou solo for the first time just five weeks later.
Moe kicked off her set with Spam Again from the second album, with three people in total drumming!
Nine of the album’s eleven tracks (one in a single edit, and one rather unnecessarily as both the single and album versions) are included on the I Feel So Far Away compilation, making it by far the most well represented of her records on that.
Like all her other releases, I don’t think it troubled the chart compilers in any country. Seeing as the Velvets never got anywhere near having a hit in their heyday (and have barely scraped the album charts in the UK and US with reissues since), that’s not exactly surprising.
The album dusted down
The record starts off in fine, rocking fashion with Fired Up, featuring Lou Reed on lead guitar who plays a fabulous, scabrous solo. The track builds and builds and then has a great cold ending.
That’s B.A.D. is one of many tracks complaining about her lot in life, specifically as a low-paid worker. Mo is part of a fine tradition of songwriters lamenting their lot – my favourite being George Harrison who bemoans the taxman and his publishing deal amongst other things on multi-million selling songs.
I Spent A Week There The Other Night
This track has a great mass chorus, and is followed by Lazy, the shortest track on the album, with its lyrics rather contradicting the sentiments of its predecessor. It features some nice country-esque guitar from Daniel Hutchens, and some effective rapid-fire vocals.
S.O.S. has a very atonal guitar sound, which could be Moe herself, long-time collaborator Sonny Vincent or Hutchens, or a combination of the three, as they are all credited with playing guitar on this song.
Blue, All The Way To Canada was co-written with a mystery man named Jim Turner and features Sterling Morrison on 12-string guitar.
This number is musically and lyrically very different to the rest of the LP. In fact, it’s spoken word really, with minimalist backing and quite verbose lyrics.
(And) Then He Kissed Me was written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector. It was first recorded by The Crystals in 1963, with later covers by a whole range of performers including The Beach Boys and most recently St. Vincent, who both reversed the gender, as well as Gary Glitter and The Lurkers, who changed it to Then I Kicked Her, the scamps.
Moe’s version features John Cale on (beautiful) viola, but rather shines too much of a spotlight on her far-from-perfect voice, which makes the song still charming but perhaps not as good as it could have been with a different arrangement.
Too Shy segues well lyrically from the preceding number. It’s another great, driving number with Sterling Morrison on lead guitar. It also includes some great sax work by David Doris (who’s also worked with Half Japanese), and some nicely subtle percussion, presumably by Tucker herself.
Too Shy single
Stayin’ Put is another ode to not doing all that much, with some of the lyrics being a little oddball, such as “People out there are all crazy. Shoot you in the eye and stab you in the knee”.
Baby, Honey, Sweetie is perhaps the most forgettable cut on the LP, despite some decent brass playing from Doris again, and Jim Morris on trumpet.
John Cale plays synths and some very VU-like viola on I’m Not, the longest track on the record. The full Velvets hit is here, as Lou Reed is on lead guitar and Sterling Morrison plays rhythm guitar. Lyrically it returns to the theme of being lazy.
CD bonus track I’m Waiting For The Man has John Cale on (very subtle) synths again, taking her tally of VU covers up to at least five, with another (After Hours) following as a B-side in 1997.
The minimalist, gentle approach works far better on this than (And) Then He Kissed Me, to these ears, making it a great album closer.
Overall, this is probably her best solo LP, though Exile is also a very good record.
What happened next
She participated in the VU reunion in 1993 – fortunately, I got to see them at The Forum in Kentish Town that June (and not Wembley Arena the following night!), with the ace Luna in support.
I distinctly remember heading off from where I was working in Soho Square at the time one lunchtime to snap up a pair of tickets from a ticket agency somewhere near Charing Cross Road. Yes, there was a time before the internet.
She obviously took lead vocals for After Hours and I’m Sticking With You that night.
A ticket from the show At The Forum (not mine!)
Tucker has only put out one more studio LP, Dogs Under Stress from July 1994, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen for sale. I have five of its eleven songs on my compilation, including a good version of Bo Diddley’s Crackin’ Up and a somewhat less essential one of the Irish standard Danny Boy, with the self-penned I Wanna another highlight.
She has guested with some other bands, including appearing on John Cale’s Walking On Locusts in 1996, not one of his LPs I own.
Even more disappointing than the lack of solo material was the fact that she came out in support of the Tea Party in 2009 and against the Obama administration, saying she was “furious about the way we’re being led towards socialism”. I guess being an iconic musician is no guarantee that you can’t also be an idiot.
Before I sign off, I just want to give a quick shout-out to The Jesus And Mary Chain, who included a song called Moe Tucker on their sixth album (and final one before splitting for nearly two decades) from 1998, the underrated Munki (also recording it for a BBC radio session in April of that year).
Sung by the Reid brothers’ sister Linda, the song doesn’t really appear to be about Moe in any meaningful way, seeming to be a general ode to female empowerment. Still, kudos for the track name from this highly-influenced-by-the-Velvets band. Listen to it here:
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Playlist
Here is the LP (well, CD in fact) in full:
undilutable slang truth 