The Lives of Alex McAulay

Or, Vegetarian Meat continued.

“If you play the albums chronologically they cover the growth of us as people from here to there, and in there is a tale for everybody in case they want to know what they can do to survive the scenes.... you should be able to relate and not feel alone. I think it’s important that people don’t feel alone.”

Lou Reed on the Velvet Underground

The main dude in Vegetarian Meat was named Alex McAulay, and sometime after Let’s Pet came out he reportedly had some kind of crackup & was briefly institutionalized. After that, he made a handful of solo records under the name Charles Douglas. My favourite of them is The Lives of Charles Douglas (1999, I think); I especially love the mood of these two songs.

• Charles Douglas, “Ganapathee”
• Charles Douglas, “Under the Command”

It’s hard to capture loneliness without fetishizing or kitschifying it – something that old anthem “How Soon Is Now” always struggled with, I think, just as a lot of Morrissey/the Smiths’ other work did – but these songs do it. I’ll admit that ostensibly they’re not even necessarily or solely about feeling lonesome, but to my ears that’s the central, inescapable feeling that breathes the songs in & out. And they also capture the strangely comforting peace & pleasure that real loneliness carries, the sweet taste within the cold green medicine.

I would dearly like to think that the “track” in question in “Under the Command” is one by the Velvet Underground, and that McAulay is singing to Velvets drummer Moe Tucker. This is not completely insane conjecture; the influence in the music is clear, and Tucker produced The Lives of Charles Douglas. But who knows.

McAulay had his likably goofy moments too.

• Charles Douglas, “Monkey Island”

(“Monkey Island” is from The Burden of Genius, reissued on 31 Flavours. Buy it here, and buy The Lives of Charles Douglas here.)

And wait: courtesy of Dave, there’s an update. McAulay is apparently now a grad student and a novelist! He’s published two mass-market thrillers with the MTV Books imprint, and he has a website here and a blog here.