BCB 130 - The Velvet Underground

['skope]

After Cale left they recorded/put out:

What Goes On
Pale Blue Eyes
Beginning To See The Light
I Can't Stand It
Lisa Says
Sweet Jane
Rock and Roll
New Age

Now, you might prefer the earlier, generally noisier stuff, but to think of those songs as the products of an inferior band is just wrong.

count me in as another who loses interest after the first two. in fact nowadays, i'm only interested in the first and nico's 'chelsea girl'.

i'm not keen on 'loaded'. it's not very VU, it has more in common with solo lou reed.

good list JC, but i'd get rid of the last 4 and replace them with 'candy says', 'foggy notion', 'ocean' and 'some kinda love'.

[copehead]

Not sure why you found it hard to a copy of the first. I worked in a record shop we sold the first regularly and had no problems reordering new copies. That was 1979_1982.

Well this was Bangor North Wales in 1984

Actually I don't remember seeing it in Edinburgh either.

Perhaps it went out of print about then.

Mine is certainly second hand

Also didn't really order albums, if it wasn't in the racks there was always something equally desirable to spend your pennies on that was.

[jimboo]

Those photos just added to the appeal. They were different.

Yep

To me, they still sound like no other band. Which is remarkable

Yep

It was like everything else I'd heard before became sort of redundant

Yep.

Music, and more importantly 'rock' music, could be beautiful , left field and straight up on the same album , hell , in the same song. Age and time shall not diminish them.

[naughty boy]

Age and time shall not diminish them.

Thanks. I needed a less lukewarm response.

Sometimes you think people are talking about graphs.

[echolalia]

I’ve been coming back to them since Lou Reed died, after a very long break, after listening to them an awful lot. They sound as good as ever.

I find it very difficult to talk about Velvets albums because after the first one (easy enough to get, in my experience - not the others though) I would always listen to them on cassette, sometimes incomplete and often with other tracks tacked on at the end etc.

But the 3rd and 1969 would be my favourites.

Most underrated is clearly Loaded.

Favourite songs:

Sunday Morning
I’m Waiting for the Man
There She Goes Again
I Heard Her Call My Name
Sister Ray
Everything on the 3rd album with the possible exception of the last track
Sweet Jane (1969)
Lisa Says (1969)
New Age (1969)
Beginning to See the Light
Rock & Roll
I Can’t Stand It
I Found a Reason
Sweet Nothing
and Stephanie Says, my very favourite.

I love those [girl’s name] Says songs. Lou Reed really hit on something there: a template so strong that hanging lyrics on it looked effortless.

[WG Kaspar]

I have not listened much for years, but for a considerable amount of time they meant the world to me. I still rate the Peel Slowly box as the finest buy I've ever made, so much concentrated brilliance.
After all these years the only one I regularly come back to is the first, but it's Loaded that I buy for friends who ask an introduction. I rate the third almost as high as the debut but I agree with Copehead that there is something missing, it's not as otherworldly for want of a better word. Still utterly brilliant though and the tracks from that period that didn't make the album are some of my favourite, especially Lisa Says and I Can't Stand It.
Like JC I never liked the second much, and I have tried.
So all in all I think I'll be listening to them again at some point and enjoying them like I used to because they really are one of those bands for me.

[naughty boy]

Nice Doug Yule interview following the release of the reissued/remastered third album:

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/the-velvet- ... noiseyfbus

[bye]

I like the second more than I ever did. Not too keen on the 'novelty' track there however.

[naughty boy]

...instead of it being a ritual debasement of popular music or somesuch, it was just a raw howl, because the band was already a black-and-white outline of a band rather than a full-color band with real players and bass and drums and harmonies and everything.

The Velvets turned off the lights and locked up behind themselves when they left.

We should pay these gents to write.

Lou would have turned 75 today.

[Charlie O.]

Nice Doug Yule interview following the release of the reissued/remastered third album:

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/the-velvet- ... noiseyfbus

The Velvet Underground (known among fans as “The Grey Album”)

What fans? I never heard anybody call it that before, and never want to hear anybody call it that again.

I really enjoyed the hell out of the Yule interview, though.

I don't know how I missed this thread before. The Velvet Underground had the greatest impact on my life of anyone in music bar the you-know-whootles. I really do believe that the third album in particular saved my life on more than one occasion.

I feel like I've written more than enough about them on these boards and don't much feel like repeating myself, but reading this thread did excavate one memory: that of hearing the 1986 reissue of The Velvet Underground And Nico for the first time. Thing is, it was my second time buying the album; the first one had been an early-'80s UK pressing (on the MGM label! - how odd!), and while I don't consider myself an audiophile as such, this was a really crappy pressing. But I didn't know that - how could I? I just assumed that that was how the album sounded, take it or leave it. And I took it, of course - happily. The only reason I bought the '86 reissues was because they were one of my pet bands and I was really happy that these things were coming out in their home country again after so many years and I kinda wanted to vote with my dollars, so to speak - reward the big record company for doing the right thing (for a change). Anyway, when I put on VU&N it sounded so amazingly much better that I remember bursting into tears of joy during "Heroin" (Side 2 of that UK pressing had been even crappier sounding than Side 1). That's what I just remembered.

[Darkness_Fish]

It's all about VU & Nico for me, especially "Heroin", it's a contender for greatest song of the 1960s, in my book (the bumper book of contenders for greatest song of the 1960s).

I dig out the third record, "The Grey Album", as I like to call it, more often than WL/WH though, because it's got a lovely mellow buttery feel to it.

[Hightea]

Vu is one of those bands I've got no idea when I started liking them.
Being in the NYC radio listening area really it was the VU album and Loaded that were played along with transformer.
It was in the summer of fun 74 album collection (brother came home from college with his roommates album collection- few hundred albums) that turned me on to so many things and The Velvet Underground & Nico album was in there. It was a staple in my brothers listening in 74 on so it was oh that band again. We did like Heroin so if he put on side two we would change it after the first song.

Oddly it was the Lou Reed Berlin heard a few years later that got me sold on Lou Reed. Then after seeing him in 78 I went back to the VU stuff.
Along with my love of Eno leading me to Nico and John Cale once again.

Today it still creeps further up the list of top albums. When I think of my listening today its still there.
Favorite album is the first one these days and love all of side one,
WL/WH has its moments esp. Sister Ray
Agree with the comment about John Cale but always still have a love of Lou so the 3rd and 4th are great too.
When you think it was only four albums but the VU family of albums solo and other bands is a nice collection.

[clive gash]

https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr. ... v-upgrade/

[naughty boy]

Nice Doug Yule interview following the release of the reissued/remastered third album:

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/the-velvet- ... noiseyfbus

The Velvet Underground (known among fans as “The Grey Album”)

What fans? I never heard anybody call it that before, and never want to hear anybody call it that again.

I really enjoyed the hell out of the Yule interview, though.

I don't know how I missed this thread before. The Velvet Underground had the greatest impact on my life of anyone in music bar the you-know-whootles. I really do believe that the third album in particular saved my life on more than one occasion.

I feel like I've written more than enough about them on these boards and don't much feel like repeating myself, but reading this thread did excavate one memory: that of hearing the 1986 reissue of The Velvet Underground And Nico for the first time. Thing is, it was my second time buying the album; the first one had been an early-'80s UK pressing (on the MGM label! - how odd!), and while I don't consider myself an audiophile as such, this was a really crappy pressing. But I didn't know that - how could I? I just assumed that that was how the album sounded, take it or leave it. And I took it, of course - happily. The only reason I bought the '86 reissues was because they were one of my pet bands and I was really happy that these things were coming out in their home country again after so many years and I kinda wanted to vote with my dollars, so to speak - reward the big record company for doing the right thing (for a change). Anyway, when I put on VU&N it sounded so amazingly much better that I remember bursting into tears of joy during "Heroin" (Side 2 of that UK pressing had been even crappier sounding than Side 1). That's what I just remembered.

God bless you, Charlie...

[Charlie O.]

[Jimbly]

I was 17 in 1979, just about to leave school. I had a part time job in the Co-Op and saw an advert for a summer job in the local "hip" record shop. Got the job and started working in the Glasgow shop while still at school to learn the ropes.

As I had to pass an exam to get the job, I considered myself fairly well versed in all kinds of music. I knew who Lou Reed was because he'd had a hit single and had borrowed Transformer off a guy at school.

One day in the shop, a guy takes out this album with a banana on the cover, and sticks it on. When it came to Venus and Furs, I was going what the fuck is that and that was me, hooked.