New single out from Chris Connelly, the Scottish-born, Chicago-based alternative music veteran – Bye Bye Johnny Viola, which imagines the fallout the day John Cale was fired from The Velvet Underground in 1968, with Andy Warhol having just been shot and White Light/White Heat freshly out. It's the third single from his new album Doo Wop In The Dark: A Portrait of Lou Reed, out this Friday (16 October) on Shipwrecked Industries. There's something gloriously scrappy about the way it throws itself forward – but underneath all the rough edges there's a really smart bit of songwriting going on.
It's a big undertaking – 21 tracks mixing Lou Reed songs from across his career with new ones written by Connelly himself, tracing Reed's life from his teenage years through to his death in 2013. The album is dedicated to Reed and also to Connelly's friend Zak Boerger (1973-2025), and comes with sleeve notes from Lou Reed biographer Aidan Levy. It follows on from Connelly's 2022 Nico tribute, Eulogy to Christa.
Connelly's been at this a long time – over four decades, with stints in Ministry, The Revolting Cocks, Pigface and Fini Tribe, more than 20 solo releases and four books along the way. He tells a story about seeing a photo of Reed as a nine year old in a department store in Edinburgh in 1974, "a nightmarish yet beautiful photo of a strange yellow ghost," and says he's been obsessed with it ever since.
Doo Wop In The Dark is out everywhere digitally from Friday, with a two-CD set and some vinyl too.