Sweet Beast

One of my favorite discoveries during the course of researching the Some Girls book for 33 1/3 is this medley by the Kooks, an English indie band.

The Velvet Underground meets the Rolling Stones on a French TV show (Taratata) as the Kooks perform a mash-up of “Sweet Jane” and “Beast of Burden.” Think about it for a moment, and then watch the video and listen to the intersecting chord changes.

You can find other performances by the Kooks of this medley, but this one is my favorite.

Interestingly, in the summer of 1977, a few months before the Stones would head to Paris for the sessions that would produce the music for Some Girls, Mick Jagger told journalist Nick Kent, “Lou Reed started everything about that style of music, the whole sound and the way you play it. I mean, even we’ve been influenced by The Velvet Underground. No, really. I’ll tell you exactly what we pinched from him. Y’know ‘Stray Cat Blues’? The whole sound and the way it’s paced, we pinched from the first Velvet Underground album. Y’know, the sound on ‘Heroin’. Honest to God, we did!”