Whatever Makes Life Pollable in Texas - 1969: The Velvet Underground Live

"Beginning to See the Light" sounds like a steamship in this version.

"Waiting for My Man"

really not sure what to vote, so much greatness.

Haven't listened to it for many years, but I think I used to like the extra-long "What Goes On" best.

s0 good

I'd bet money that "What Goes On" will win, but I'm going to have to listen again, this will be a tough choice for me.

I remember I bought the two discs separately cuz that's how they were sold.

but I'm going to have to listen again, this will be a tough choice for me

yah gonna put this on tonight, see what stands out

gotta say that "over you" is one of my fave "lost" VU songs. one of the few that lou never recycled for his solo career. (he didn't did he?). sterling morrison's solo on it is perfect, lou's vocal, moe's little percussion touches.

Best. Live. Album. (besides Arrow.)

otm
tho i always found the white light white heat here to be a bit of chore -- like its playing at too slow a speed or something. much better on the quine tapes.

i'll have to investigate that.

one of the only things that could improve this album is if they included the cole ave. version of sister ray...not as wild as some other versions but the end is amazing, with lou howling: "oooooeeee, what's gonna happen to me? ooh noooo, i don't care and i don't know."

splitting this album in two was so fucking annoying

I didn't even hear the first half until just a few years ago

album definitely needs some kinda reissue, weird that they made it two separate CDs and barely differentiated between the two of them. You also didn't get the full artwork on the CD
http://www.israbox.com/uploads/posts/2010-06/1277464001_cover-6.jpg

^^^^^ Doug Yule in drag iirc

what? no way!

ha, i don't think so.

Love the tightly wound rockers.
WATCH ME

this is the part of the thread where I get all worked up about how there are a bunch of perfect unreleased/unbootlegged soundboard recordings from the matrix shows (from which a lot of Live 69 was taken). only some samples have emerged. if anything there seem to be many more amazing lou monologues.

"Beginning to See the Light" sounds like a steamship in this version.

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, July 22, 2011 3:11 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

A good steamship or a bad steamship?

this is one of those sets where I just marvel at how many different arrangements they had for the same material. that they had no problem doing songs at a different tempo or key or with an extra bridge/extra verses or whatever. this seems exceedingly rare to me.

Sure, it's the obvious choice, but I went with "What Goes On." Off the top of my head, I can't think of another song that I consistently do not want to end.

this is the part of the thread where I get all worked up about how there are a bunch of perfect unreleased/unbootlegged soundboard recordings from the matrix shows (from which a lot of Live 69 was taken). only some samples have emerged. if anything there seem to be many more amazing lou monologues.

― tylerw, Friday, July 22, 2011 3:41 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

Wasn't there some pseudo-dust-up between Reed and Quine over the Bootleg Series? I seem to remember Reed saying he would block any future volumes.

no, i think Lou gave the Quine Tapes his blessing (don't think it could be released without it). He may be standing in the way of other live things being put out though.

Do you people have a curfew or anything like that? I mean does it matter what time you go home tonight? I mean do you have school tomorrow? Nobody here has school tomorrow?

New Age

New Age

― publier les (suggest) bans de (Michael White),

ha, that's what's playing right this moment, and as I clicked this thread I was thinking "I don't know if I can vote for anything else"

yeah, new age is so amazing. can't believe lou wrote such perfect lyrics for it and then trashed them! whaddaya think, did lou think the original version was too forthcoming?

I knew that song so well at one point that I knew exactly on which beat the seemingly interminable jam at the end abrubtly stopped.

This is perhaps the only version of "New Age" I can stand! (sorry MW, check the creedence friday thread btw).

I also had a roommate who mocked my love for this song (perhaps even the whole album) by singing along, "It seems to be my fancy, to make it with Ron and Nancy."

Steve, I agree, actually.

Couple other high points for me:
Moe's tidal wave drumming on "Ocean"
The bullet train blur guitar at the end of "Rock n Roll"
Lou whistling in "Femme Fatale"

LOVE Ocean, Over You, I Can't Stand It, Sweet Bonnie Brown/It's Just Too Much. no idea yet what to vote

This is one of my top five r&r albums.

Probably What Goes On, but whoa, what an album. The Wikipedia entry lists sources of tracks and compares vinyl with cd versions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969:_The_Velvet_Underground_Live#Original_LP Some dramatically different song lengths across the two formats.

A poll of the Quine set would be interesting - I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of that one.

gotta say that "over you" is one of my fave "lost" VU songs...sterling morrison's solo on it is perfect, lou's vocal, moe's little percussion touches.

― tylerw, Friday, July 22, 2011 3:18 PM (1 hour ago)

agreed, it's lovely.

no, i think Lou gave the Quine Tapes his blessing (don't think it could be released without it). He may be standing in the way of other live things being put out though.

― tylerw, Friday, July 22, 2011 3:52 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

Oh, I know Lou allowed it to be released and all, and maybe even was excited about it. But Reed being a professional contrarian dick, I seem to remember after it was released he said some nasty things about it and Quine. I may be conflating this in my memory with his bitter rant about how poorly the first disc of the box was received by critics (some 10 years after the fact).

shoutout to the bridge in "Lisa Says"

still, this version of WGO is pretty much unbeatable.

WGO has something that reminds me of Simple Minds' 'New Gold Dream'

re: quine, i guess i wouldn't put it past Lou, but he did have some surprisingly gracious things to say about him when he died iirc. also, the quine tapes were re-released last year in a big vinyl box. don't know if lou would have to approve that or what.

Oh, he can be very gracious to those he outlives (like Zappa).

Lou Plays Feedback On Your Grave

Well I love the version of Ocean on this, but I had to vote for What Goes On. Bangs album vers into cocked hat and all that.

oh yeah, and Lennon too..

The album became 2 separate CDs because of the extra track on each, one of them being a repeat track (different version)

New Age, for the sick, sick bass solo

Oh, he can be very gracious to those he outlives (like Zappa).

― Josef K-Doe (WmC), Friday, 22 July 2011 21:09 (Yesterday)

hahahaha OUCH

tempted to vote lou's opening monologue but will probably go for "real good time together"

this album was a revelation when it came out in 1974; velvets albums were hard/impossible to find and if you only knew the likes of "sweet jane" etc from lou's rock & roll animal period well these versions sounded downright sinister, endlessly fascinating

"...or whatever you have that makes life more bearable in texas"

what goes on; i think it's as danceable as anything so guitar-driven that isn't disco, it's thrilling.

did any 'new' velvets stuff come out lately? since i'm not a young man anymore. i remember tracking it around the same time that matrix tape with the great sister ray was getting incrementally previewed

Where is the love for the version of "Sweet Jane" on this, it's amazing, it's virtually a different song! Other highlights are the opening monologue, Lou sounding very NY campy/ Jewish ("It's riiiiiidiculous"), "Over You", "New Age", "Lisa Says" (best version by miles), "Ocean" (best version by light years - years ago I walked in to a record shop and the endless two chord coda of this was playing and I had to ask the guy behind the counter what it was. This is the only version in which Lou manages to SING IT IN THE RIGHT KEY and he really belts it out, as opposed to wheedling it out, and Sterling's guitar and Mo's drumming are awesome). But, when you get right down to it, how can you not pick "What Goes On"??!??!?

this album was a revelation when it came out in 1974; velvets albums were hard/impossible to find

Will vouch for this, and extend it forward a bit too; I spent a considerable amount of time in around '79 and '80 trying to get hold of all the VU albums without paying ridiculous amounts of money (spurred on, too, by a dim memory of having once held a remaindered copy of the original White Light skull pressing in my hands off the wall in Toronto's Sam the Record Man earlier in the decade).

what's the version of "Ocean" on Peel Back Slowly and See? I'll concede that memory may overstate its importance, and that as the first version I heard it looms large in my imagination.

Either way, the 1969 live version is immense -- I awoke to it this morning.

Two versions were recorded around the same period, one with John Cale(!), the Fully Loaded CD has a lot on it

Peel Back Slowly vers is "loaded outtake" according to liner notes

As I wrote above, it's been ages since I listened to this (I did check "What Goes On" off Grooveshark yesterday and it sounded as great as I'd remembered). "Lou's opening monologue"--I'm trying to rewind his Take No Prisoners rant back to a time when rock criticism was till kind of being invented: "Can you imagine working for a fucking year and you get a three-sentence paragraph from some guy in Time who doesn't even get to sign his name?"

xpost Have the Quine tapes on CD, and was just Googling to find some old reviews of it. Turns out Sundazed have a rather luscious looking 6LP version - only drawback is the splitting of Sister Ray over sides.

http://sundazed.com/shop/vu_quine.php

this band was so much better without Cale

My favourite is #3, and I could certainly see someone preferring the Cale-less VU. But "so much better"? Sweeping aside the brilliance of the first two LPs just like that?

The Loaded version of "Ocean" also has different lyrics, mysterious light string overdubs, different lyrics, and Sterling on slide guitar.

Sweet Jane is a revelation. Also love the transformation Waiting for the Man into some kind of lazy river guitar showdown.
One listen to the Gymnasium bootleg should silence anyone who thinks this band was "so much better" without Cale, imo.

Ocean! This is the version that helped me "get" latter-day VU, as in "get" why Loaded ranks so high in canon polls etc.; because the band was capable of this reach, reaching majestic liftoff in the second half on drums & organ (!). It's like they wanted to show the hippies: this is how you do it, this is how you go deep into the water, this is how you go furthur.

I've never liked this all that much, but I love (or loved--I haven't checked lately) the "White Light/White Heat" on this.

New Age, for the sick, sick bass solo

Where is this? I don't hear a bass solo somewhere.

Bass solo's on the Quine Tapes version.

"Rock and Roll" is gorgeous on this and almost as much of a jam as "What Goes On."

Turns out Sundazed have a rather luscious looking 6LP version
apparently this version sounds better than the CDs? i don't listen to vinyl enough to make a ridic priced set worth it, but i'd like to hear a rip of it.

Oh shit! That's embarrassing, sorry timellison and thanks Tarfumes....oh well, I guess I still voted for New Age! I started listening to this again but didn't get to New Age (I had already voted anyway)...If I remembered this album correctly I probably would have been on the Ocean bandwagon

both heroins here are great too -- one of 'em has lou singing in his prettiest, purest voice.

this is what got me into the velvets when i was 16, and Volume 1 remains one of my favorite records of all time. tempted to vote that version of "Heroin" because it is filthy good, but i think i'm going to have to go with "Rock and Roll," because it sounds like a revelation.

yeah the end of rock n roll on loaded is kinda "aw yeah rock n roll" but on live 69 it's more having a religious experience with rock n roll.

exactly.

it was all right

the guitars in it just shimmer.

this band was so much better without Cale

Well, let's say that the Cale version coincided with the band's interest in the Dark and Dangerous stuff, an interest which supposedly showed their maturity. Even at eighteen I thought "Venus in Furs" a dumb song (especially so after I heard "Oh Bondage Up Yours!"), but, man, the sound of that track -- the riff, the viola scratching, the drums, Lou's chuckle -- is sexy as hell.

yeah, i'd agree with that. cale's musical arrangements (i'm pretty sure he was behind the more ambitious touches in stuff like all tomorrow's parties/venus in furs etc) really sells the somewhat corny seediness of the earlier stuff.

something else that stood out while listening yesterday: reed's super bizarro 12-string soloing on "i can't stand it". so weird! i get the feeling he has eight miles high somewhere in the back of his mind during this song. and morrison is just a rhythm guitar machine behind him -- one chord/one strumming pattern for eternity.

feel like i might have to vote for what goes on though. the best sound ever.
one of my velvet holy grails is hearing Cale play on a live version of "what goes on" before he left the band. i think sterling morrison said those were the best versions. can't imagine they would top the live 69 track, but who knows.

"Sweet Bonnie Brown/It's Just Too Much" for me - as song titles alone, they really evoke classic rock 'n roll songs that SHOULD have existed, and suddenly did. And sound that way too.

but, man, the sound of that track -- the riff, the viola scratching, the drums, Lou's chuckle -- is sexy as hell.

yeah, first one is the best. And Cale added some cool sounds. But I love it for the same reason I love all the rest of the stuff -- Lou's songs.

to me, the organ on what goes on (live 69) is like everything I imagined that sister ray would be when I read about it, but that I never felt it actually delivered.

my personal ranking would be 3&1 tied, 1969, loaded, wl/wh, with the latter being the most Caleish of the bunch to my ears.

wasn't really how sure which track to vote for because while what goes on is excellent here, so is the album version, whereas lisa says on VU is just a piece of crap. So Lisa Says, over New Age.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

just another bump to remind people to vote in this IMPORTANT poll

It's impossible to underplay the importance of Cale's relationship to Reed in the early days of the VU.
Cale was performing with John Cage, Reed was a schoolboy from Syracuse.

yeah, cale's life *before* the velvets was pretty astonishing in itself. i mean, not many people made the journey from the son of a welsh coal miner to aaron copland to john cage to lamonte young.

Reed was a schoolboy from Syracuse.

― Trip Maker, Wednesday, July 27, 2011 9:58 AM (7 minutes ago)

not quite dawggy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r998weOUiM

perhaps it's best to say the band's sum was a serendipitous confluence of members' tastes/styles.

I realize that statement was an exaggeration.
I just think it's weird to say that the Velvets without Cale were better, because the Velvets wouldn't have existed without him.\
xpost that's fair

true -- one of the things i always think when reading about them is just how unlikely it is that this group of characters ever found each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0jIgAqAdHQ

^I love that song ftr

a bunch of that pre-VU material is golden. i think lou needs a big career spanning box set that covers all of that stuff. between thought & expression is 20 years old now isn't it?

Irmin Schmidt really showed what someone could do on organ in a jam like "What Goes On."

Has there ever been a legit comp of Lou's Pickwick stuff? I can't believe we're 20- something years into the cd era and it hasn't been done, unless licensing is too hard.

i don't think so. there was that norton comp with some of the pre-pickwick stuff on it. all tomorrow's dance parties or something?
weird that there is a pickwick demo of "heroin"...that hasn't emerged on bootleg or anything, but i'd like to hear it.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7Za3NoUasfI/TAlqTAj-z_I/AAAAAAAAADY/-EMxdFTUB2c/s1600/lou.jpg
this one. was it really approved by Lou though, I wonder.

It's impossible to underplay the importance of Cale's relationship to Reed in the early days of the VU.

yeah, I was just trollin mostly. I think Cale's importance to the band is way overstated most of the time though. And once Reed absorbed those influences he did way more with them than Cale ever did IMO. Look at it the other way around, would Cale have ever written pop songs without Reed? And apart from his collaboration with Terry Riley, I don't think Cale's avant garde aspirations ever amounted to anything as great as Metal Machine Music.

this board ALWAYS overstates Cale's value/importance/contributions ime

Dude, I dunno, those New York in the 1960s discs on Table of the Elements are pretty fucking great.
I can understand liking the Yule period of VU more than the Cale era, too. I mean, this live album is my favorite!
I listen to the Yule era far more than the Cale era. I just think that Cale seems like a cool guy, I guess, I dunno.

Cale won the "favorite member of VU" poll iirc...?

xp

Cale's importance to the band is there in his viola parts, bass parts, and piano parts.

and Cale won the "best solo career" poll as well

xp

I stand corrected

not about this though

Cale's importance to the band is acknowledged by anyone who loves them but his career as a whole gets overblown by rock critics who value The Rebel and The Spanner in the Works (i.e. read the liner notes to The Island Years). Despite the terrible, boring, or terrible-boring records, Reed is the better songwriter and more fascinating personality. He's a star, for better or worse.

Don't have the liner notes - are you talking about the Camus book, Alfred? The James Cowan book? If so, what are the connections to Cale?

Cale is one of my favorite songwriters. He has an extraordinary musicality.

this board ALWAYS overstates Cale's value/importance/contributions ime
dunno, i don't think his contributiosn can be overstated. but i don't think tucker/morrison/yule's contributions can be overstated either. maybe willie alexander's contributions could be overstated.

Yeah that Cale vs Reed poll is insane to me. I can't read it or I'll just get mad.

Don't have the liner notes - are you talking about the Camus book, Alfred?

The liner notes to The Island Years.

I was asking about The Rebel and The Spanner in the Works.

Dude, I dunno, those New York in the 1960s discs on Table of the Elements are pretty fucking great.

Is this John Cale stuff or the LaMonte Young bootlegs that Tony Conrad takes credit for?

Talking about the John Cale stuff.
They are just power drones, but I like them. Not for everyone, I suppose.

I was asking about The Rebel and The Spanner in the Works.

Ha – no. I capitalized archetypes.

NYC In The 60's is mostly solo Cale stuff and it is indeed pretty fucking great

also on separate CDs - Sun Blindness Music, Stainless Steel Gamelan, and another one.

it's not too complicated: cale + reed's relationship was mutually beneficial -- reed brought a deep love of pop music/rock n roll + literary ambitions, while cale brought minimalism + classical training + an impulse to fuck with that classical training.

yep

Love "Sun Blindness Music" so much.

That's my favorite, too.

Listening now. It's cool but yeah basically this seems like Lamonte Young stuff to me.

I don't think so. I think it's much more about the equipment. And Theater of Eternal Music stuff was very much about particular intervals, but SBM seems quite free in intervallic choices.

has their been any sort of definite research or anything done on Angus Maclise and any of his influence? just saying since the conversation has turned me towards this in the past day.

(i am actually curious, knowing only that Maclise was a crazy genius who left the group)

I don't know. I think Geeta recently mentioned she is doing researching Angus Maclise (among others). Unless I'm getting him mixed up with someone with a similar name (Archibald MacLeish? No, no, I don't think so).

if you hear maclise's own solo recordings, there's some obvious things that lingered on with the Velvets after he left the band. his solo recordings are cool, not as good as cale's own avant garde stuff at the time, but worth checking out.

He edited the psychedelic issue of Aspen Magazine
http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen9/index.html

He and his wife, Hetty, edited the issue, I should say.
Ubu is a good source for Angus info, actually.

in one of the VU books there's some story about maclise and loudon wainwright (!) getting busted for weed in middle america in the late 60s. kind of a weird pair.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Somehow missed this poll but probably would have voted for one of the first four finishers so no biggie.

Thought "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together" would have got at least one vote!

Yeah, might have voted for that too.

i considered it but had to go with WGO.
"real good time" is great though -- "aw now watch me!" -- leading into lou's scratchy rhythm solo. i think i've seen jonathan richman explicitly reference this moment at a show.

No dud song in this whole thing.

^^^

i'm going to retract my diss of white light white heat here -- listened to it again and loved it. i think it just starts out a little labored but picks up a lot of steam as it goes on.

here's something y'all might be interested in - the unedited show from which a lot of Live 1969 was drawn... http://ow.ly/5QsBA

Thanks Tyler! I'd heard the End of Cole Ave shows (where a few of the Live 1969 tracks and banter are from) but never the Matrix shows.

This thread has the best interpolation of the word "poll" into the title ever.

good results. yesterday i was at the gym and "Rock and Roll" came on TWICE while i was there and i got so fucking pumped.

it might've been due to the fact that i was jamming live 69 all last week, but the cass mccombs show I saw over the weekend sounded like his band had been jamming live 69 too. that and the grateful dead.

feel like this pic is relevant to this thread
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpbrw1RvQU1qac7ryo1_500.jpg

omg that's the best. I wonder what he's looking at right at that moment.

LOL, love Lou's '69/'70 jewfro phase

this probably belongs on the trainspotting thread -- here's the box score for the Dallas/Philadelphia game Lou talks about in the opening monologue.

haha! totally important

btw http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2013/04/24/the-velvet-underground-the-matrix-sampler/ if you haven't heard it

/Oh, he can be very gracious to those he outlives (like Zappa).

― Josef K-Doe (WmC), Friday, 22 July 2011 21:09 (Yesterday)/

hahahaha OUCH