Black Lips have shared a David Black (Daft Punk, Cat Power, Charli XCX) directed video for “Get It On Time” from their recent album Sing In a World That’s Falling Apart. The song is a cover of an unfinished song by The Velvet Underground that Black Lips’ drummer Oakley Munson discovered and helped craft into a finished song. Sung by the band’s Zumi Rosow and shot on a mix of 16mm film and repurposed television equipment (from a formerly Tammy Faye Bakker-owned television studio), the song’s haunting melody and steady buildup marks some of the most cathartic work in the band’s storied discography.
ROLLING STONE: “Get It on Time” appears on the Black Lips’ latest album, Sing in a World That’s Falling Apart, which was released in January. The song, however, has been jumping around in drummer Oakley Munson’s head for nearly 20 years, ever since he first heard it at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh on a bootleg recording of the Velvet Underground practicing at the Factory. As Munson tells Rolling Stone, just as the song gets underway in the recording, Reed can be heard telling the band to stop.
“I’m certain if they had finished this it would be on the first album and cited by critics as a classic song by the band,” Munson says. “But it was thrown away and that made it mysterious to me. One night I decided to finish the song, with Lou Reed’s help. I went into an empty room, lit some candles, and wrote the first words down. Almost effortlessly these words that didn’t have anything to do with me came out. It only took a few minutes and I had the song. Even though I still don’t know what it’s about, it has the same mesmerizing sadness and Zumi’s singing is really iconic. I’m glad it’s done. It only took one pass in the studio and we had it.” MORE
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