Did your parents have a Velvet Underground album?

My dad had a copy of The Velvet Underground & Nico on vinyl, which I now own.

lol um, no

I don't think either of my parents would have any idea who the VU were.

No. I'm not sure my parents would have heard of the Velvet Underground either.

No, and they've probably never even heard of the VU.

My parents probably never heard of the Velvet Underground, let alone have anything by them. They know Walk On the Wild Side by that's not exactly the same thing, is it?

no but every parent who have their album blahblahblah

My parents didn't have any albums full stop.

I don't think either of my parents would have any idea who the VU were.

― ENBB, Monday, 30 January 2012 15:39 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I presume that most people will fall into that category.

my Dad is WAY cooler than ILM's parents!

but they didn't have any beatles albums

"My parents had a Velvet Underground album, thus introducing me, etc."

my mom was cool

I don't think my parents owned a Velvet Underground album. But my Dad owned a copy of Rock'n'Roll Animal and was very much a fan of the guitar playing on it. As I recall he even searched for records featuring the guitar playing of Steve Hunter because he liked the record so much. So he was familiar with the VU, but he was probably missing the point.

No. The Beatles were the only acceptable rock band in our house.

That's awesome! xp

My Parents stopped buying 'pop' music when Sgt Pepper came out. They liked it a lot, but after that they thought it all 'not worth buying' and stopped.

So, why did my dad own a copy of "London Conversations" John Martyn? Apparently, he'd popped in with some friends to a recording studio to see how a friend of a friend was getting on with their first album session.

No.

No but my dad had a velvet cumberbun

*not true

My mother played classical music (violin). She wasn't much interested in pop music as far as I know. My dad was (and still is) a really big fan of northern soul. I doubt he has heard of VU.

My parents did not have a Velvet Underground album but my dad went to see them in Cleveland and said it was the "worst concert [he] he ever seen" and he walked out and then complained about it for the next 45 years. He hasn't mentioned it recently, but I'm sure I could get him going on how terrible it was just by mentioning Lou Reed.

suggesting to my dad that VU were the american Beatles went over just about as well as when i tried to get him to listen to john lennon/plastic ono

haha that's awesome lechera

xpost OMG that is so awesome. I admire your dad even more for walking out. lol

lol um, no

I don't think either of my parents would have any idea who the VU were.

ditto.

amazing. wonder which line-up it was? xps

I don't recall my dad ever listening to music, at least of his own choosing; my mother liked mostly classical. I'd be amazed if either of them have heard of the Velvet Underground even now.

at the times my parents just about knew who the rolling stones where, they never had any clue about the existence of vu.

when he heard me listening to them as a kid, my dad claimed he had seen the VU too, but after a little questioning he was like: "oh wait, no I was thinking of Iron Butterfly."

aww, awesome

Hahah, you all have such cool parents.

my parents have definitely not heard of the velvet underground

my dad liked mostly soul/r&b and classical. and beatles, but not stones. he's not that cool, he just thought vu were way boring.

^lol (so many xposts)

No, they didn't have a VU album. My mom was quite an avid follower of the charts though, and did own Berlin (man do I remember hearing that album for the first time) so I'm pretty sure she at least knew the name. btw, I myself was introduced to the VU when they topped an all-time album chart in a dutch music magazine in 1987.

no but they had albums that UK-based young ppl who had a Velvet Underground album might also have owned maybe?

Great thread idea. My mom actually GAVE me a Velvet Underground CD once, which was a very unusual gift b/c she never displayed any strong music opinions or tastes (my dad was the one with the record collection). It was literally her only contribution to my musical education, but man, what a big one.

Yeah, I can't remember where I first heard of them.

xxp

the VU are probably my favorite band, but I'm not sure if I woulda thought they were awesome if I walked into a 1967 concert w/o knowing anything about them. they were pretty raw sounding compared to a lot of bands then.

No way, my parents had Mitch Miller and Eddy Arnold albums, with one Brahms concerto thrown in for show.

i'm actually fairly confident that no one in my family owns a velvet underground album, including me, and including the extended family as well.

No way, my parents had Mitch Miller

Yeah, I'm in this camp. Parents had no rock albums of any sort.

I think the most obscure piece of vinyl my parents owned was Beatles '65.

My dad did go through a Gap Band phase though.

I can sort of remember:

Lou Reed had "Walk on the Wild Side" knocking around for a while as a single, then eventually it became a UK hit, not least because of the "NY Street Slang" that'd have got the track banned if the powers-that-be hadn't decided that no-one listening would have understood it anyway.

As background, the story went around that Lou was in the Velvet Underground, and a 7" e.p. came out with "Waiting for the man" as lead track. For some reason I thought "Satellite of love" was also a VU track, but I was mistaken (then, anyway - it came out as an extra track on Loaded eventually)..

Some years later, I had decided that Sade and the Smooth jazz scene was definitely one limb too far off the Style Council branch, and found a copy in Harrods bookstore of the "VU - Uptight" book during a shopping expedition in London with my mother (possibly the last one I did with her). Liked the pics, style, stories etc.

I went into reading "Pop Records" second hand shop to see if they had any and they had the 2LP "coke bottle" 'best of', and decided this was definitely what was lacking.

Then "Upside Down" got played on Peel, and felt ahead of the curve again... and so on.

Oh, also: at the time of Lou's hit and backstory, our local recshop had a copy of "Squeeze" by "The Velvet Underground", but I decided this was a different band with the same name. Wasn't far off wrong...

Was this a VU album?

http://img.snowrecords.com/lp/4/39097.jpg

no and if they knew anythingabout the velvet underground I wouldn't have had any VU albums either

My folks didn't, but dad was friends with Jonathan Richman and played in the same circles years before I was born. Mom gave me her promotional copy of Can's "Ege Bamyasi", which more than makes up for a lack of VU.

whoa! that is the winner for cool parents right there.
my older brother and i got into the VU when we were teenagers and somehow the band came up with a family friend and she ended up giving us all of her Lou Reed vinyl, pretty much all of his 70s records iirc. She said: "I don't even want to *think* about these records ever again."

My Dad was into the Doors, which led me to Oliver Stone's The Doors, which exposed me to the Velvet Underground.

My mom was pretty livid when she came home and found my older brother and I watching The Doors on the Pay Per View REQUEST network.

I am pretty sure she walked in on the Nico BJ in the elevator scene, too, lol

Got into the Velvets via my older brother who read Rolling Stone. Bought VU based on RS' 5-star review (and the others soon after). My parents didn't have their records, nor had they heard of them (I don't think). My dad was mostly into Mingus, Basie, Miles, etc., but dug the Lou Reed show I dragged him to.

My parents are 78 and 80, so a little too old to have come under VU’s spell. Even if they were younger, I doubt they would have even heard about the Velvets since their album collection was full of Mantovani and the Boston Pops.

my dad is doug yule

my parents definitely did not own any Velvet Underground. despite my mom being very aware of Andy Warhol's work during the 60s, i'm certain she's never even heard of VU. my folks were not very clued-in. my mom owned some beatles records, but iirc she quit buying those when "they got weird".

OT: when Fleetwood Mac did that reunion thing back in the late-90s i distinctly remember my parents walking in the room while i was watching them do something from Rumours live on PBS. they were all like "these guys are good! who are they?". they would have been in their mid-to-late 20s when it came out. i'm pretty sure they completely disengaged from pop culture the minute they got married.

when he heard me listening to them as a kid, my dad claimed he had seen the VU too, but after a little questioning he was like: "oh wait, no I was thinking of Iron Butterfly."

my parents did not have a velvet underground album, but my mom *did* have inna-gadda-da-vida, which is not very in character -- i wonder if it was a gift

My dad (1928-2000) was just into west coast cool jazz and baroque music, but for some reason owned a copy of Lick My Decals Off, Baby. This was never adequately explained to me. It lives with me now.

parents listened to mostly only "classical", what my da insists on referring to as "serious" music.
gets no more serious to me than the velvets though. in 1979 i was 14 and befriended my music encyclopedia friend at the new local record shop. he's 15 years older than me and commenced to making us cassettes that me and my mates would listen to endlessly. first batch he gave me included a killer 90 minute mix of V.U.; and equally sublime c-90's of Ramones, Iggy and the Stooges and James Brown. i actually got a chance to play the Stooges cassette to Osterberg a long time ago (1984-ish) and he seemed to not have heard the songs in a VERY long time and i remember him saying that he wish he could re-record them again someday (!)

my parents were hardcore modern classical heads, but my neighbours parents had records by the Velvets, Beefheart, Mothers, Roxy/Eno etc so i was always around there listening to their record collection. their wedding photo was amazing, lots of beards & kaftans.

I am now trying to imagine an alternate universe where my parents were one of the 3000 people who bought the first VU album, and thus they formed their own weirdo band, and I ended up not being born.

my parents had no idea who the velvet underground were, and would have been appalled if they had found out their son was listening to a song about heroin. luckily they lacked curiousity and just told me to turn the bloody noise down

My dad was buying a lot of rock albums 1966-70 or so but I don't think I heard the VU until about 1980.

i actually got a chance to play the Stooges cassette to Osterberg a long time ago (1984-ish) and he seemed to not have heard the songs in a VERY long time and i remember him saying that he wish he could re-record them again someday (!)

My parents didn't, but their best friends did; I borrowed the first album (sticker intact and all) along with a bunch of Coltrane and Richard Thompson/Fairport in high school, but when I returned the rest of it I somehow neglected to give VU&N back...

No, but they had the old Warners "Heavy Metal" double lp comp (issued '73/'74) which had the MC5 on it, and they also had some radio albums from the 60s that had the 13th Floor Elevators.

Funny poll from my vantage point--my parents (both dead) were born in the '30s, so they're Glenn Miller/Artie Shaw vintage. Amazingly enough, though, my dad owned a variety store through the '60s that sold a few albums, so when I was younger, I retrieved all of the following from the basement stash: Love's Forever Changes, the Incredible String Band's The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, Donovan's Mellow Yellow, the Kinks' Face to Face, and Terry Knight & the Pack's first LP (pre-GFR). Guarantee they had never played any of them. They quite likely didn't know who the Grateful Dead were, much less the Velvet Underground.

I don't remember my parents listening to a lot of music when I was a kid, but I do remember the record player and stereo on cinder block shelves (atop orange/brown shag carpeting) in the front room. My mother would put on Beatles or Neil Diamond or maybe Jefferson Airplane while my dad mostly listened to Bach and other classicals on cassette. My parents sold a bunch of records when I was maybe 11 or 12 to make some room in the closets, one of which I remember only because of the banana on the front. So they had VU & Nico but I don't remember ever hearing it played in our house.

The first time I remember hearing VU was a couple years later when a cousin copied The Doors soundtrack onto a tape for me because I showed some interest in hearing the Doors (and I wanted to see the film because Kyle McLachlan was in it and I was already a Twin Peaks fan), but I was hooked on Heroin and I can clearly remember my mom asking why I liked that song so much (and the tone in her voice when asking that question--something between simple curiosity and concern--only makes sense now). I couldn't explain then but I do remember the haunted sense of space in that song making a huge impression.

I doubt my parents even knew who VU are but they had Flora Purim albums and she is way cooler and better than VU so

lou reed just sang about drugs, flora went to jail for them!

my parents still don't know who Velvet Underground are I'm pretty sure

They quite likely didn't know who the Grateful Dead were...

Somewhere along the line my mom DID know this, because I remember her telling me that was a depressing name for a band. She's never heard their music, though.

It's always interesting to me when bands like VU, Os Mutantes, Sabbath, Faust/Can seem to be appreciated far more by the children of those who actually lived through those times.

Big Star also

well that's partly because the people who lived through those times didn't even know they existed

They prolly knew Black Sabbath, but I still think they're appreciated more over the past 20 years.

I remember my parents listening to Abba, Bread and Dr Hook.

My dad has p standard dadrock tastes but VU are his favourite band and they are the music I remember most from childhood.

lou reed just sang about drugs, flora went to jail for them!

― tylerw, Monday, January 30, 2012 1:30 PM Bookmark

otm!

no VU LPs, but my Dad has remembers being at the Bath Festival in 1970, hearing Waiting for the Man come over the PA and being like DAMN!

Mom was a big V.U. fan. I now own her albums. She was pretty hip in the 1960s, in all honesty. She was a Copa Girl!

That is cool that people's parents had Velvet Underground albums. I would freak out if my parents listened to Black Sabbath or VU. My mom heard of every record ever, though.

Clemenza, your story is amusing. It happens sometimes when you go to an estate sale and someone has an Incredible String Band album or some other weird record....among a bunch of mainstream stuff.

I know sometimes kids would make fun of "old people" who listened to big band music. My dad has a TON of it. My grandparents were big fans too. I quite enjoy an evening of it once in a while...it isn't hokey at all!

my parents, no, but my uncle had some velvets stuff.
my uncle was also the first person who ever played me the flying burrito brothers & pearls before swine, which sort of explains my current taste in music.

the biggest wtf present I ever got was VU 1969 LP with the big ass on the cover on my 11th birthday from my step-dad's very conservative, prim and proper older sister.

Did you ask for it, were you already into the Velvet Underground or was it a surprise?

No, no and yes.

did you subsequently learn of anything to alter your perception of this step-aunt?

Getting a weird record for Christmas is a "cherished" childhood memory for many. At least it was a good record! But that's kind of heavy for an 11-year-old.

did you jo on the sleeve

No VU, but definitely at least one Lou Reed LP, wish I could remember which.

I still have no idea where this came from on her part. She had just moved to Schaumburg, Ill., to marry into a family that gave her two teenaged step-kids, but who knows.

It was a hard record to get into since I had never heard the originals, knew nothing about the band, it was kinda hard to hear... etc.

did not jo on the sleeve. that tora tora album cover on the other hand...

My dad had VU&Nice, White Light, self-titled, and Loaded. But I was introduced to them through the movie The Doors.

My dad plagiarized "The Gift" as a book report, and the teacher loved it so much she read it over the PA to the entire school. Shows you just how unknown they really were at the time that he never got in trouble.

and he walked out and then complained about it for the next 45 years.

haha, i love this

My parents were into Marty Robbins, Buck Owens, Jim Reeves and Loretta Lynn, no VU.

my dad is doug yule http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

no, because my parents hated the velvet underground

cool brother

My dad plagiarized "The Gift" as a book report, and the teacher loved it so much she read it over the PA to the entire school. Shows you just how unknown they really were at the time that he never got in trouble.

― Mr. Snrub, Tuesday, 31 January 2012 04:16 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Did he play bass behind her?

My parents were too old to be into any of that rock music rubbish. My mum didn't even like Elvis and rock and roll, though she was the young enough then, she preferred proper singers like Nat King Cole and Billy Eckstine (she tells me coloured people make the best singers). My dad apparently like a bit of jazz and blues but seems to have put all that childish nonsense behind him as he got older and then didn't listen to anything much apart from a Corries' album he used to whip out and play when he'd had a few... oh, he did throw the occasional curveball tho, he liked Ian Dury for instance! The person in our family who had all the pop and rock records was actually my Granny! I think this was because her house was the venue for general family parties, get-togethers and knees-ups. My older sister introduced me to the Velvet Underground, she was a punk rocker, she had the 1st album + at various times, some compilations: the one with a pop art drawing of a coke bottle on the cover and another Doug Yule era one.

...so, thank the Lord, I didn't have to grow up hearing the Beatles and Bob Dylan and whoever.

re. Sabbath, my dad saw them live during Imperial era, said it was the worst gig he ever went to, and that he fell asleep. He also saw Beefheart in the 70s, and said it was amazing, except for the clarinet solo, at which point everyone went to the bar.

what is the Imperial era?

First 6 albums with Ozzy.

They shared a label with Fats Domino, oh wait..

Where does "Imperial era" come from?

I think Neil Tennant coined it.

"The Imperial Period took place from around the time of the establishment of the Galactic Empire in 19 BBY to the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY, referring to the period in which the Galactic Empire was the greatest power within the galaxy. It was also known by such nicknames as the Imperial era, the Dark Times, or the Birth of the Rebellion."

... no mention of Geezer Butler

lol

Yeah I tried to look this up online, thinking it was a common coinage. I think Springsteen was the artist referred to as having an "Imperial Era" first, maybe? The Boss-antyne Empire!

Ok, cool. I was just wondering if it had to do with some foreign record label or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGGtU28skko

mo mother had a Nancy & Lee record, it was a nice surprise to find out..

my dad is doug yule

Sorry, Squeeze doesn't count.

Off topic a bit, but Grandma gave us some of Grandpa's records after he died. He owned a bar. I was pleasantly surprised to find "Taboo", "Exotica" and "Exotica III".

My dad plagiarized "The Gift" as a book report, and the teacher loved it so much she read it over the PA to the entire school.

Imagining this has made my morning.

that's funny, i sort of plagiarized The Gift for a high school literary mag. are you ... are you my child? omg.

i changed it a bit -- my story was set in a high school and a guy locked himself in a girls' locker. it was terrible.

my dad swore he had the first VU album, but, like many hip things of the 60s that i "discovered" in the early 90s, it was "stolen" when he was moving house one time.

and yet his manhattan transfer albums survived the move, hmmm.

I'm sure my father knew who they were but it wasn't in the stacks of vinyl I went through as a kid. My father was more of a 70s Bowie fan and my mother a 80s Bowie fan.

My dad had a bunch of stuff stolen in a burglary just before I was born. It included his reel-to-reel recorder and a bunch of reel-to-reel tape dubs of various rock groups. He is a meticulous record keeper and actually kept lists of his old collection. I found it one day when I was a teenager and the only thing that jumped out at me was a Doors album, of which we didn't have any around when I was growing up. I'd kinda like to try and find that list again and see if there's anything else he had that I missed out on.

Also stolen was a canoe, which I'm more bummed out about than the tapes.

Did he ever get another canoe?

That's the sad part. : (

That sucks. Canoeing is awesome. I wish I could do it again.

My mum had a cassette tape of Elvis Christmas songs that was played on one day a year, for twenty years. She also had one of those awful panflute cover albums of I believe Neil Diamond songs, which I imagine she bought at a shopping centre stall in a fit of white guilt.

This was the entirety of her music collection.

Hearing Blue Christmas still triggers really complicated feelings.

My parents will have probably never even heard of VU, and certainly don't own a record by them. Sabbath and Iron Butterfly, both mentioned upthread, they do own, but it seems like a one-off from their usual repertoire.

I still remember the very day I bought VU+Nico though, and coinciding with this thread, I was 15 years old and it was on the Friday afternoon of the day we as a family all left for an island to celebrate my grandparents' 40 year wedding aniversary for a weekend. I got drunk and listened to this through headphones while in bed. Remember it vividly. Good times.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

So soon, and all that...

fuck no

My dad had a Five Man Electrical Band album; my mum, Gene Pitney. But I do recall sharing a car ride back in the '80s with my dad and being mildly surprised that he knew "Walk On The Wild Side" when it came on the radio.

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

Only 11 ilxors' parents had a Velvet Underground album but all of them posted itt

No, 14 ilxors' parents had a VU album tbh

oh yeah

ilm has had 175 distinct visitors over the past 2 days

http://www.mostphotos.com/preview/320561/woman-with-a-suspicious-look.jpg

guess i mean "registered users who gave a shit"

MVB: please start the Five Man Electrical Band version of this thread, it'll be just like SCTV's Goin' Down the Road parody when they were on NBC.

http://crunchyurbanite.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/confused-person3.jpg?w=161&h=112

Damn, that's more votes than Steely Dan vs. Fleetwood Mac!

Only 161 parents didn't have a Velvet Underground album, but all 161 started their own family.

dude, you must've prepared that before the result came out

That's a lot of votes!

Someone should poll all the versions of Eno's "all that did" quote...

Yeah, yeah... "My parents didn't have a Velvet Underground album, so they couldn't but form their own fkng band":P

"The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but every parent who bought it formed a child"

dude, you must've prepared that before the result came out

C'mon, I pay my writers good money for lines like that. Anyway, after I posted, I realized Volvo Twilight beat me to the joke.

Yes, my dad had - i think - WLWH, 3rd Album, Loaded, VU, Squeeze(!), Live @ Maxs. Not +Nico though. I remember playing him Sonic Youth and him saying they were a pointless and obvious velvets ripoff.

My dad plagiarized "The Gift" as a book report, and the teacher loved it so much she read it over the PA to the entire school.
For a high school English class, a friend of mine was assigned to come up with a clever original quote. He submitted, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," and the child-of-the-sixties teacher didn't recognize it.

That VU plagiarism story is amazing! What year was this?

WHOA @ the amount of votes! I dont even remember if I voted or not...!

Not everybody voted .....

Apparently that drummer joined Two Lights cos he heard their dad's Loaded.

A+

By now we've probably got a few extra generations in there, so somebody's parents may be gotten into them in the 80's or something, as opposed to when they were still active.

It just occurred to me that one of my grandparents owned the book the band name comes from.

i just remembered, my wife's dad's cousin was the equipment manager for the VU. Dave Faison, mentioned here: http://books.google.com/books?id=C-Ne8rSuNRoC&pg=PT52&lpg=PT52&dq=dave+faison+velvet+underground&source=bl&ots=pjYFSeQDf9&sig=yktuuePchrQlo1w6zi70F0BrOIc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xdYqT8u5KsuctwegveniDw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
exciting!
my wife's parents did not have a VU album though.

My only degree of connection is that like Mo Tucker, I've also worked inside a Wal-Mart.

aargh, tylerw, I lost my copy of that book through stupidity, so thanks for posting it. It has that great Lou quote about how everybody was talking about old blues singers but forgetting doo-wop groups like the Spaniels.

Pplains, I, too, have been inside the belly of the beast.

Big pretzels and Sam's Cola were my lunch for three months.

I totally missed this poll. My dad had Loaded & the Nico album on cassette.

That VU plagiarism story is amazing! What year was this?

― Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, February 2, 2012 2:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He was a senior in high school, and he was born in '51, so it had to be at most within a year or two of the album's release.

Connections to the VU? Well, I've met two of them, but.

Doug Yule and Willie Alexander?

Nope.

I chatted to Moe on Facebook once.

One.