::The Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting For My Man"::

Imagine yourself living in the sixties--a time of change from a period of strange paranoia and social oppression to a era of free love, thinking and risk taking. There is no doubt that many of us, who missed the opportunity, have romantically dreamt of the time, its signifigance, and most of us have even imagined living in the middle of America's maturation. But the more I think about it, the Sixties must have been fucking scary, man. Especially if you listened to the Velvet Underground.

These days, the Velvet Underground are more readily recognized for their place in the hipster canon rather than their uncompromising, gothic blues. Which, let me remind you again, can be really fucking scary. Under these seductive, driving 12-bar blues songs lie sadistic songs of drug addiction, sexual perversion, and overall the notion of a utopia gone wrong. For a time like the Sixties, where drugs were romanticized and sex was pure, the Velvet's music was undeniably jaw-dropping. Here were four rock 'n rollers, creatures of debauchery and excess, talking about the inescapable dark side. No wonder no one wanted to hear it.

"I'm Waiting For My Man" is one of these songs that seem easy enough to get along with, but in the end find the darkness at the end of the tunnel. Surely, no one wants to romanticise the notion of drug addicition and paranoia with the "free" Sixties. Instead, the Velvet's refusal of more popular superficial rock themes like love or the depths of the mind, decidedly take a more realistic and dangerous approach that observes one's freedoms as occasionally becoming one's vices. In the end this notion is most likely what turned people off from the Velvet Underground but also made them one of the most important bands ever to exist.