You meet the nicest people on an ostrich.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
© 2026 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
© 2026 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
This is a proto VU with John Cale I just adore Ostrich tuning as it makes guitar so simple to play as it is all in D. The strange part of this song is that it was Lou’s attempt to break into songwriting a la The Brill Building. From a recollection by John Cale:
“When I first met Lou Reed a the beginning of 1965, he was a 22-year old songwriter at Pickwick Records in Long Island City, and I was a 22-year old avant-garde musician in La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music. We were introduced by a Pickwick producer, Terry Phillips, who thought I was a pop musician because I had long hair. He asked me, Tony Conrad and a friend, the sculptor Walter de Maria, to form a band witht Lou called the Primitives. Phillips wanted to publicize a song had written and recorded in a back room and Pickwick has released as a single, ‘The Ostrich’, by a fictious band, the Primitives.
The pop programme American Bandstand wanted them to perform this on on TV, so Phillips was forced to put out an appropriate-looking band together. We thought it would be fun, and as a lark spent a couple of weekends playing the TV show and a few other East Coast gigs. Even though the record bombed, the experience of being in a rock band, however ersatz, gave Lou and me the opportunity to connect.”
Cycle Annie is another funny one from this period. I had it on a bootleg of proto VU material, but it originally appeared on a compilation with Lou Rawls. Sounds like post-Cale VU actually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWG61CocCok
The classic VU example of Lou wielding Ostrich Guitar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmEP2t8V7Cc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_3vyzXmq3s
If you come on an ostrich you can park it.
Heavy Duty