took a job as a staff songwriter and studio musician at Pickwick, the budget/exploitation label in New York. His most fully realized effort from this period, though hardly a notable artistic accomplishment, was the 1964 single "The Ostrich"/"Sneaky Pete." Pretty outrageous by standards of the time, "The Ostrich" was ostensibly a dance, but delivered with out-of-tune guitar plucks and
's typically forceful sing-speak vocals. There was also a crunching rhythm section, ludicrously high-pitched backup vocals, and lyrics about laying your head on the floor to have it stepped on -- that was how you did "The Ostrich" dance. The flip was a more basic garage tune that nonetheless, like the A-side, bore the unmistakable stamp of
's cool vocals and facility for simple, grungy, yet arresting guitar chords.
Reed had a hand in writing both sides, which bore the songwriting credit
Vance-
Sims-
Reed-
Phillips. Although the original 45 is very rare, it was reissued as part of
the Velvet Underground bootleg
The Velvet Underground Etc. in 1979. For what it's worth,
Reed is credited with playing "ostrich"-styled guitar on The Velvet Underground & Nico (aka The Banana Album), presumably referring to his parts on tracks like "European Son," on which he sounds like he's trying to strangle his own guitar strings.
Although
the Primitives were a studio-only group to begin with, that changed when the single, improbably, generated interest from a TV dance show that wanted the group to appear on the program. Even more improbably, a backup band was assembled featuring
Reed's new acquaintances from the Manhattan avant-garde underground:
John Cale, sculptor
Walter DeMaria (who would play drums), and filmmaker
Tony Conrad (who like
Cale was a member of the avant-garde ensemble
La Monte Young's Theater of Eternal Music). For laughs, they played a few promotional shows around the East Coast, without getting themselves or their record much action.
John Cale, however, was struck when
Reed told them that learning "The Ostrich" would be easy, as all the strings were tuned to a single note. This was similar to what
Cale and
Conrad were doing with experimental composer
La Monte Young;
Reed was applying a similar concept to rock & roll.
The Primitives experience likely was one more factor that helped bind
Reed and
Cale together, starting a musical partnership that would flower into
the Velvet Underground and prove hugely influential on the course of rock music.
–
Richie Unterberger, Rovi