This show at Paper Dress Vintage was by the latest Velvet Underground tribute act The Young Beats, The Velvet Underground has had a long line of tribute acts for several decades, I own more Velvets tribute albums and tribute band albums, than for any other band in my collection, so was interested to hear what The Young Beats were going to do with those classic songs, I wasn't alone in that, Paper Dress Vintage was sold out.
I arrived just after The Weird Weather Underground came on, due to late running trains, the four piece were jangling intensely while seated singer and acoustic guitarist Death Knell was singing or shouting about things happening Outside. The next song seemed to be about Hypocrisy of some sort with Leah's drums holding steady, while the guitars seemed to be all on the offbeat. Suddenly Death Knell was going on about a suicide cult with the familiar looking Bassist Rory Peacock, acting as band spokesperson, telling us that the next song was the new single, I guess might be called If You Want It even if it wasn't clear what they wanted, other than to keep in the downbeat pocket with Tommy Flanagan twisting his notes and aiming for somewhere just below the stage.
It was unclear what sort of insurrection was necessary for California Falls, that seemed to be calling for an empire to fall with grunge psyche energy, or should that be lethargy, pushing them on to ask What Girls Want, seemingly Leah hadn't told them the answer, before they closed with the only song title I have right New Heaven that was apparently the first song they ever wrote together, it had a good psychotic break energy to it.
After the break the DJ put on Wayne County & The Electric Chairs classic Fuck Off for Andy Warholnot to stand onstage reading from Candy Darlings book before introducing The Young Beats to the stage, the eight piece Young Beats who opened with Katharine Blake singing All Tomorrows Parties and thankfully stand up drummer Angie Adams was playing with Mallets to get the drum sound right, the two or was it three tambourinists gave it just the right amount of dark energy, in a similar vein to Fictions version. Jim Jones welcomed us all and shared the vocals with Katharine on White Light White Heat that had some great ostrich guitar and driven keyboards.
Here She Comes Now was sung by Lucy and had a great energy to it, that was far more focussed than Nirvana's cover, Katharine's violin really adding to the sonic stew they had brewed up. I'm Waiting For The Man was played as a duet with Jim Jones and Rosa Marsh sharing the vocals and not the needles, this almost had the early 70's country rock edge to it. Rosa Marsh then sang Stephanie Says and was suitably fragile unlike Lee Renaldo's cover of it was, this brought out the cool love song side of the song.
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Jim Jones sang Run Run Run as they amped it up and ended up close to the brilliant Hunt Sales Memorial version of the song, Tom Hodges seemed to let rip more on this one, even if I'm uncertain if he was on guitar or 6 string bass. Sunday Morning was pretty with some glockenspiel in a similar vein to the Captain Pepper & The Legendary Hearts version with Katharine Blake getting close to Nico's downbeat majesty. Natalia stepped forwards to darkly intone Femme Fatale in a very Fiction style they had loads of tambourine going for this.
I'll Be Your Mirror was the cue for special guest Erica to join the fun with the dark beauty similar to Alice Terrell's version, certainly better than Courtney Barnett's take on it. Jim then led us all in singing along to I Can't Stand It that had that sort of Cleveland mania of Mirrors at its core. Venus In Furs was sung by Natalia I think, with similar gloom to Paul Gardiners version, Katharine's violin really got to kinky heart of the song.
Jim then complained that none of the songs have normal ending, before they launched into Rock & Roll that was a lot dirtier and Rocking than Mitch Easter's classic take on this monument. They then closed the show with What Goes On with Jim singing and having bags more energy than the Screaming Trees version, but when they got that groove going rather than leaning into just what a dancefloor classic the song is, they seemed to cut it a bit short, either way this was a great Velvets tribute show and well worth going too.
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