Months before the Velvet Underground gained New York infamy, Lou Reed was churning out ten-a-penny songs for supermarkets and convenience stores. An in-house songwriter for Pickwick, required to churn out trifles by rote, Reed started to subvert the process with his made-up band the Primitives, co-writing and singing 1964’s minor hit ‘Do The Ostrich’. A parody of novelty songs like ‘The Twist’, it arrived, typically, with a much more brutal accompanying dance (“You put your head on the floor and have somebody step on it,” Reed later revealed). Brought in to play bass was jobbing Welsh music student John Cale who, after turning down Reed’s sexual advances, slowly struck up a strong friendship, the pair composing ‘Why Don’t You Smile’ one drunken evening. Recorded by the All Night Workers, a trio of Reed’s old buddies from Syracuse University, the B-side’s sinister guitar drones and plodding rhythm suggest a sonic blueprint for the Velvets, but with a much more forthright vocal lead. A miss at the time, the A-side eventually enjoyed a second life on the northern soul circuit while ‘Why Don’t You Smile’ helped pad-out Downliners Sect’s 1966 album The Rock Sect’s In before being lovingly reimagined as Spiritualized’s third single in 1991.