Detail of the movie poster for The Lady From Shanghai, 1947
I wonder if REM gets too much credit for the resurgence of interest in the Velvet Underground that started in the '80s. Music writer Gina Arnold once said that she'd heard of the Velvet Underground before REM, but she listened to them because of REM. And it makes sense - in the early days, guitarist Peter Buck shaped much of the band's sound, and he was a notoriously snobby record store clerk at the time. It's no surprise that he was listening to Big Star, the Velvets, and the Byrds. In its early days, the band covered "There She Goes Again" for the "Radio Free Europe" single - "Pale Blue Eyes" was the b-side to "So. Central Rain", and "Femme Fatale" was on the flip-side of the "Superman" single.
But I find it's much harder to pin down the VU elements in the REM sound than it is to spot the Byrds influence (hello jangle!) or the big Big Star choruses. The one REM song that always brings the Velvet Underground to mind for me is Reckoning's "Time After Time (AnnElise)", a song possibly best known for being Stephen Malkmus's "least favorite song". "Time After Time" is not an obvious VU rip-off - the layered percussion that creates much of the song's appeal is more complicated than anything Mo Tucker pulled off, but Bill Berry manages to retain some of that primal, tribal-pounding feel. The droney, midtempo melody falls somewhere between "Venus in Furs" and "All Tomorrow's Parties", and the vaguely Eastern dissonance in the Buck's slow-strummed guitar chords has a Sterling Morrison feel. I don't know what Malkmus is on about - this song is clearly better than "Camera".
"Time After Time (AnnElise)" by REM
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