'Sister Ray' - The Velvet Underground (Moe Tucker Drumming Mix) (1968)

Recorded: September 1967

Maureen Tucker's drumming was buried within the chaos of the original 'White Light/White Heat' album mix of this song, but now you can hear it a little better - I've used a directional mixer in Apple Logic, to zone-in on her area of the stereo image, and spread it out across both channels - this lowers Sterling, John and Lou's parts considerably and moves them out of the way, highlighting her playing. Proto-Punk indeed!

In her own words - "The second album was recorded in not an eight hour scene [as with the first], but no two months [either].
Tom Wilson was more interested in the blondes running around the studio [than] the forte song, "Sister Ray," where he forgot to turn on the damn mikes...that part in there drives me crazy.
The articles said, "Maureen beats the drums so hard, who cares if she missed a beat," or something like that...but, what happened in there - and I still want to hear it done right; I get so mad I could scream - is that, Lou says, "Who is that knocking?" [and] I was gonna tap on the drum rim.
Wilson produced this, and put a microphone into the drumhole, got it all set up, and of course they didn't have it on, so all of the sudden there's no drums. There's four beats, and then there's two, and then there's four, I think is what happens."

℗ A Republic Records Release ℗ 1968 Verve Records/UMG Recordings, Inc.

Released on: 1968-01-30

Mix Edited by: Cam Forrester
Written By: Lou Reed
Composed By: Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morisson, Maureen Tucker
Produced by: Tom Wilson
Studio Engineer: Gary Kellgren