Mirrors – Something That Would Never Do (2009)

If you search for Mirrors on the internet, you will invariably come across some text that says something like ‘not everyone saw the Velvet Underground live, but everyone who saw them formed a band’. I don’t know to what extent this is true, I wasn’t there to witness this statement on the spot, but it is undeniable that no one missed the Velvets, and in the case of the band mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph this influence is as palpable as an amphetamine.

Jamie Klinek set up Mirros with Jim Crook, Craig Bell and Mike Weldon sometime in the first half of the 70’s (some say 1972, he’s already claimed it was 1973) in Cleveland after watching ALL the shows the VU played for there. Alongside the equally sensational Electric Eels, Styrenes and Rocket From The Tombs are the embryo of Ohio punk/post-punk that shortly after would give the world Dead Boys, Pagans and Pere Ubu, among others not so evident.

Anyway, each of these post-Velvet/pre-punk groups got carried away in a way by the murky waters of Lou Reed and co., and Mirros – less talked about and known than their contemporaries / countrymen, by the way – drowned less in the noise and experimentalism (at least in the records, since there are stories that they played a 40-fucking-minute version of “Sister Ray”, giving greater vent to that jangly-plus-pop vibe of the era Loaded added to the ubiquitous garage rock and psychedelic fragments inherited from the acids they swallowed.

Something that would never dowhich runs around here now, gathers recordings of the mirrors made between 74 and 75 scattered in other records (such as the collection busy Those were different times, from Scat Records) and attests to what was said at the end of the paragraph above. If in doubt, press play on “Shirley” and give me reason.

Find it out. Or rediscover. Good trip!

Or

Or nthe fucko spotifail