The Velvet Underground 3rd album poll

my vote: Candy Says
what will probably win: pale blue eyes (?!)

Always liked What Goes On myself, that endless chugging riff.

you realize that we're polling the entire VU discography right now, right? Guess I'm Polling in Love: The Lou Reed Memorial Velvet Underground (and solo material) Ballot Poll Thread

i mean, no big deal, but running threads like these at the exact same time almost feels like spoilers.

ok but there's a difference between "entire discography + solo material" and a specific VU record poll

Love the WGO live 69 version.

and i don't think it will spoil the ballot poll results because of that difference and because of the different methods of voting on each poll

what goes on(anonanonanon)

I'm Set Free vs What Goes On, tho Beginning to See the Light is also awesome

My favourite, with the quirk that I'm not very big on its two most famous songs, "Candy Says" and "Pale Blue Eyes." (At least I think those are the two most famous--maybe they're just Ellen Willis's two favourite in her Stranded essay.) The rest I love. 1. "What Goes On," 2. "Beginning to See the Light," 3. "Jesus."

Can't vote for "What Goes On" because the Live 1969 version blows it (and most other music) away. I especially love "I'm Set Free" but... difficult to choose one. One of the best opening lines to an album ever!

No love for "Some Kinda Love"? It's been my most recent favorite, not decided if I'll vote for it though.

This is an album I pretty much always play in its entirety. Greatly sequenced.

"Some Kinda Love" has more good lyrics than any rock song I've heard.

lots of solid stuff, but c'mon it has to be after hours

xp except "put jelly on your shoulder".

This album is the best. I bought it yesterday for a friend's birthday. I'm of the opinion that she'll never be able to thank me enough.

Can't pick a song to save my life; they're all too good, and each is so integral to the whole record. Even "Story", which will probably (and deservedly) receive no votes, without which the arc of the thing would be ruined. I'm tempted to vote for it, just to keep things balanced.

"jesus" (which inspired my favorite spacemen 3 song)

"put jelly on your shoulder" is the best line!

almost as good as "somebody cut off her feet/now jelly rolls in the street"

"The Murder Mystery" keeps this record from being all-time for me. I usually skip it, and when I don't, I wish I had. If it was half as long, I wouldn't mind it so much.

Voted SKL, but 1-7 were all contenders really. This fucking band.

at some point i think almost all of these songs have been my favorite. i went with 'What Goes On' because the obnoxiously loud and awesome guitar solo seems like a bookend to the the Cale era (even though he's not on it).

lots of solid stuff, but c'mon it has to be after hours

otm. One of my favorite songs of all time by anyone. (Well, that's actually true of several things on this album. But it's truest of that one.)

Amazing song--always reminded me of Jim Lowe's "Green Door" (later covered by the Cramps).

... No. 1 hit in the UK for Shakin' Stevens

... in July 1981 (not 1956 or something)

Beginning to See the Light -> I'm Set Free might be my favorite Side Two one-two punch ever.

i love every song on it, voted candy

basically "What Goes On" taught me rhythm guitar. Basically "Some Kinda Love" urged me to come out (I'm gay thanks to Lou Reed). Basically "Pale Blue Eyes" taught me loneliness. Basically "The Murder Mystery" taught me about failed experiments.

Voted "What Goes On", but c'mon folks, "Murder Mystery" is the underground nested in all that velvet. Completely integral to the *idea* of the band, especially with Cale gone. And I adore the pianos during the closing, fighting to stay sweet and tonal.

That's it though – the band didn't need Cale anymore or his notions of underground. Plus, this album in its quiet way is as subversive as songs about domination or songs helmed by a flat-voiced Teutonic iceberg.

Yeah, the pianos are great, but the song overstays its welcome long after the point is made.

xp

Cmon guys stop saying cmon

lol wasn't there a poll what goes on the beatles vs the velvet underground

oh man all these riffs. some kinda love is so great, with the way the guitar just bounces around against the steady beat. just this mix of propulsive and surprising, a whole different notion of the drone at work here. "let us do what you fear most".

guitarwork is also the secret weapon in pale blue eyes. lyrics and melody almost just a bonus. all the solos on this album are heartbreaking.

As far as avant-collages go, "The Murder Mystery" is the third-Velvet-Underground-album of sound collages- jangley guitars tossing about, voices talking over each other in a conversational tone, happy little pianos. I'm surprised to find that it's longer than "Revolution 9".

I really like the murder mystery, and After Hours is sweet, but What Goes On is too mighty to ignore.

Feeling this as Jesus vs Some Kinda Love rn

Really down to "Some Kinda Love" vs. "Pale Blue Eyes" for me. Ended up voting the latter and now wishing I could take back my vote and vote for the former. I don't know.

How did ppl ultimately feel about the closet mix vs the valentin mix anyway

When Peel SLowly and See came out I didn't like the closet but I might feel differently today

What Goes On i guess, looking at the tracklisting now there are no real standouts but it's probably their most consistent album

the closet mix is vile -- they sound like demos. I want my guitars having sex like they do on the original "Some Kinda Love."

SKL.

Also, I like the closet mix just fine. Have copies of both and listen the on the reg.
Prefer the SKL take on the Valentin mix better though.

Which of the two SKLs has Lou improvising some "La de da da"s, closet mix or non-?

"i'm set free", no hesitation. followed closely by "what goes on", of course.

SOME KINDA LOVE

Closet mix is alright, marred heavily by the substandard take of SKL that was substituted in.

OK, is anyone going to vote for either "The Murder Mystery" or "That's The Story of My Life"? Because if someone will vote for one, I'll vote for the other. Just because no song left behind.

mm has one vote

"Story" it is.

NO SONG LEFT BEHIND

haha i was going to vote 'after hours' to make sure it received a vote and then you fuckers had to start talking shit about 'murder mystery'

Alfred, I have to say, I don't even like the idea of TMM as an experiment. I think they knew what they were doing well enough! And that avant-garde notions of structure had existed in music since, I don't know, the 1910s at least.

I always loved the structure of the piece - how it uses drone but not to the point that it obliterates structure. And I'm a fan of their guitar playing and the guitars are just beautiful sounding on that track. (And the pianos.)

As to whether they no longer needed Cale's notion of underground - doesn't the song's existence suggest that it wasn't just Cale's notion?

Sure, but Cale knew how to do it. With Yule in the group this kind of experiment didn't work, although you don't think so.

Yeah, I like the idea of the piece and a lot of the execution. It has a great tone - probably my favorite on the album.

xp to balls: challops landslide pending

Which of the two SKLs has Lou improvising some "La de da da"s, closet mix or non-?

― Sir Lord Baltimora (Myonga Vön Bontee)

Closet mix.

I like Murder Mystery a lot, but I do think it feels more self-consciously arty than any of the Cale stuff.

Because it's structured, maybe? That's actually a big part of what's so inspiring to me about it because it's outside of the aesthetic parameters of other genres that experimented (OK, I'm using the word) with structure in the period - psychedelic music, krautrock, and prog.

After Hours. It just falls out of the sky and sounds like it could have been recorded in just about any decade of the 20th century. I love this whole album, but that song transports me on the sly --without me even noticing.

"Beginning to see the light" for me. The whole band's performance is joyful, the vocal performance is playful, the lyrics are slightly absurd and just as you're lulled into a false sense of security, Lou throws in that classic last line and blows you away.

I think "Candy Says" is one of the VU's lesser songs, but it works perfectly as the opener on this album.

Can't vote for "What Goes On" because of the superior live version(s), as noted upthread, so it'll have to be "I'm Set Free".

'"i'm set free", no hesitation. followed closely by "what goes on", of course.'

This! Been listening to the closet mix since LR died. Moved on to the other one this morning and the difference is terrific.

Jesus

I think it took me a number of years to come around to even getting hold of the Yule era lps since I preferred the idea of VU as a more experimental band which needed Cale. May have been reading about Australian bands of the early 80s that got me to Listen to it.

Surprised the story of the ammo boxes of effects pedals etc being nicked at the NY airport hasn't come up or has it been totally debunked now? Supposed to be why the lp wasn't more noisy apparently, or so the story that went around for years went.

Wishing I could find my USB 3 cables since I currently can't access the drive with the VU stuff on. But just been thoroughly attempting to springclean my flat and various things seem to have been at least temporarily misplaced.
Subsequently can't listen to various contemporary live sets I have on them.

I think I prefer them live but need to run comparison. There was a quote from one of them years later saying they were 100x better live

Surprised the story of the ammo boxes of effects pedals etc being nicked at the NY airport hasn't come up or has it been totally debunked now?

It's bollocks according to Dougie. Plenty of effects used in the gtr(s) solo on "What Goes On".

There was a quote from one of them years later saying they were 100x better live
I read an interview with Moe in which she cites the live record as her favorite "because it's what we really sounded like" or thereabouts.

Can't vote for "What Goes On" because the Live 1969 version blows it (and most other music) away.

― Thomas K Amphong (Tom D.)

Can't vote for "What Goes On" because of the superior live version(s), as noted upthread, so it'll have to be "I'm Set Free".

― NoTimeBeforeTime

i like the live versions i've heard of What Goes On, but i feel like it's the studio version that blows the others way. the Live 1969 version features a long organ solo instead of the guitar, and it's nice enough but it feels planned and contained. the studio version is obliterate-your-ears loud. it sounds like an elemental force of nature rampaging in a box, trying to escape out the lid by any means possible. the loudness of the solo is the KEY to the song! it transforms the song from a typically awesome velvets jam to something that verges on the experimental - how much of a volume discrepancy can there be between the verse and the solo? it's kind of ridiculous, but if the verse was at 1/100 on the volume scale, and the solo was 100/100, it would be too much. the ear would hear virtually nothing at all, and then a deafening solo. so there is a point where the discrepancy is too much. What Goes On (studio version) takes the guitar solo to the point just before that threshold. it is so amazingly awesome that you even forget about lou's bonkers-good rhythm accompaniment. instead it slowly emerges as a layer beneath the solo wailing and it feels like a new room in the song. ugh, so, so good.

like, the quiet-loud pixies/nirvana thing doesn't even come CLOSE to what's happening in What Goes On

and if the overwhelming solo volume is taking place in the live versions, the recording quality isn't good enough to come across in the recording, at least in the versions i've heard.

it is so amazingly awesome that you even forget about lou's bonkers-good rhythm accompaniment

I think this hits on what it is about the live version that people (including me) love so much.
The whole band coheres into this unrelenting groove. The organ solo is just candy. That's my take, anyway.

never met a "what goes on" i didn't love. it's probably my favorite song ever. there are a few live "what goes on"s that feature the guitar solo, rather than the organ solo (as on Live 69). an especially good one is from the boston tea party where both reed and morrison take simultaneous solos, maybe trying to re-create the layered studio version. if you were there in person, i imagine it might have the same effect you're talking about.

what goes on and rock and roll have the best vu rhythm guitar imo. outstanding both.

Impossible to pick, but leaning towards PBE.

The whole band coheres into this unrelenting groove. The organ solo is just candy. That's my take, anyway.

^ this. Both rhythm guitars are awesome, Lou's sort of low blundering rhythm guitar and Sterling's high choppy rhythm guitar. I like the organ too!

Haven't played this album in so long, but this poll inspired me to throw it on - so, so great. How does a band go from making the world's loudest electric-guitar album directly to making the quietest? (Well, they traded Cale for Yule, obviously.) How do "Candy Says" or "What Goes On" or "Beginning To See The Light" not become huge hit singles, or at least show up on classic-rock stations in between the Stones and CCR? How could I have considered this my least-favourite (pre-Atlantic) Velvets album when every track's a winner (and some don't even have any competition)? I have no idea.

Out of a half-dozen contenders, I'm voting "Afterhours" - song is like a big fuzzy-sweatered hug in your eardrum

Yeah,this is the big question: how come the world didn't appreciate VU in real time? Esp. the 3rd which is so easy to swallow

I dunno what universe you live in where you would think Candy Says is a hit single

What about Sunday Morning? PBE? Sweet Nuthin? Etc..

Sunday Morning isn't too far from other 60s sunshine pop sort of stuff, except that it's a bit noisier and shambolic than, say Marianne Faithfull or the Mamas and the Papas. PBE is too long, too slow, and too minimalist to ever make it on radio. Oh Sweet Nuthin - yeah that one's pretty in line with classic rock radio fodder of the time (altho Rock n Roll and Sweet Jane are more obvious singles/should-be hits).

Only one of those songs is on this album tho

i mean, the #1 song of 1969 was "sugar sugar." a song w/ the lyrics "i've come to hate my body" is not gonna go far in the pop music world.

^^^

i can see "sunday morning" being a kinda left field "walk away renee" hit, i suppose. but even something like "what goes on" is pretty far afield from other rock hits of the time.

Agreed on Oh! Sweet Nuthin, but it's also 7.5 minutes long, which is pretty long for a radio single.

if Lou had stuck with the band and toured Loaded, sure, R&R and Sweet Jane could've been hits, I think.

I was thinking Creedence had similarly long tracks that got on the radio but turns out that wasn't until later when they were re-released. yeah 7.5 minutes is way too long

xp

tyler otm

I dunno what universe you live in where you would think Candy Says is a hit single

uh, notice I added "...or at least show up on classic rock radio" to that bit of wishful thinking there.

Their subtle weirdness even in their most normal songs doesn't seem that weird now but Candy/Sugar Sugar comparison is a perfect example.

if Lou had stuck with the band and toured Loaded, sure, R&R and Sweet Jane could've been hits, I think.

― tylerw, Friday, November 8, 2013 6:03 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Doug complained that, when Atlantic finally did release a single from Loaded, not only had the album already been out for six months, but the single wasn't "Sweet Jane" or "Rock & Roll." Dunno what it was, though.

it was Who Loves the Sun

which is a good choice imho (not as good as Sweet Jane tho)

Oh Sweet Nuthin' was the b-side so that must have been edited down

Doesn't seem far-fetched to me that "Candy Says" (or many of the VU's prettier songs...even though I don't personally find "Candy" as pretty as other people do) would have been a fluke hit. "Some Velvet Morning" was a minor hit about a year earlier; bubblegum songs only barely euphemistically about oral sex were big hits at the time; there was all sorts of weirdness on the radio. To me, the Velvet Underground's reputation would have been more of an impediment than the song itself.

oh sweet nuthin in its entirety on the b-side (at least according to http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/vu/discog/singles/singles.html). really long for a seven inch -- how long is hey jude?

Yeah, "Sun"'s definitely not a bad choice at all. But I think Atlantic did less than nothing to promote it or Loaded.

What we're all overlooking here, to get back to the third record, is that IT'S A WHOLE COMPLETE REALITY:
http://youtu.be/RycWU2AjO0U

yeah that is crazy long for a 45! that must sound like shit.

xp

"Sweet Nothin"'s an even greater candidate for classic-rock enshrinement! Epic guitar solo just like "Tuesday's Gone" or soemthing.

What we're all overlooking here, to get back to the third record, is that IT'S A WHOLE COMPLETE REALITY:

on wikipedia it says the single was Sweet Jane.

post-transformer, they released a single of sweet jane / rock and roll in the UK -- maybe that's what it's referring to?

Speaking of which have you guys heard the story of when Bowie brought Lou over to teach Ian Hunter "Sweet Jane," and Ian didn't really like the tune or what he considered Lou's unprofessional American way of performing it? Something about "spitting into the microphone" iirc.

yeah in 1973 it was released in uk and germany under the name the velvet underground and lou reed. who loves the sun was a 1971 promo only in the us. pretty lame really considering atlantic wanted an album 'loaded' with hit singles.

Actually I'm curious to hear that Lou guide vocal with the Mott the Hoople backing track.

I believe Hunter said something like "We didn't know what the song was about, 'cause we weren't into fag stuff" :/

I was just gonna say he probably hated the corset reference. but he must like it now because he played it live as recently as 2011.

I like the sugarcubes version btw. not so keen on the cowboy junkies interpretation.

OK, just listened to that radio ad, and the voice-over guy is the same one who did an ad for the Chambers Brothers' "Time Has Come" album (helpfully included on the CD reissue.

In both cases, I'd swear it's the voice of Morgan Freeman. (Who was doing commercials in NY in the late '60s so why not?)

xpost I never liked that Junkies cover either. And I only ever heard Jim Carroll's version once, when I saw the video.

He does sound like Morgan Freeman. He was William Roscoe Mercer aka Rosko, who was a freeform FM DJ on WNEW at the time. http://www.reelradio.com/aa/rosko_obit.html

Don't care for that Cowboy Junkies version either.

Very informative! Thanks for that.

Sure. That guy is great.

You can read much more about him and the first and second wave of FM jocks in the excellent FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio, by Richard Neer.

I get the feeling that the Velvets suffered under being promoted as a Warhol creation- that first impression made them seem, maybe, shallow. Factory hanger-ons, obviously trying too hard. Changing so much from record to record made it impossible to form a cohesive public image in the few years they were releasing records. If you were paying scant attention, they may have seemed like they were flailing for an identity. All that was working against them before one could even get a close listen. I can see how they could have been dismissed, especially with the self-conscious effort to avoid sounding bluesy, when everyone else was trying to add more blues in.

Pretty sure I heard "What Goes On" a few times on classic rock radio in the 80s/90s.

Yeah,this is the big question: how come the world didn't appreciate VU in real time? Esp. the 3rd which is so easy to swallow

― nostormo, Friday, November 8, 2013 5:28 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Does anyone know how many records they actually sold and stuff? There's that legend about them only selling a thousand records or something but not sure I buy that I mean it feels like just off Warhol's name alone they would sell a bunch to art collectors or something. Did they sell as much as Odyssey and Oracle? S.F. Sorrow? The United States of America?

Pretty sure I heard "What Goes On" a few times on classic rock radio in the 80s/90s.

yeah no
you may have heard on radio but not on classic rock station

Yeah,this is the big question: how come the world didn't appreciate VU in real time? Esp. the 3rd which is so easy to swallow

― nostormo, Friday, 8 November 2013 22:28 (Yesterday) Permalink

My sense is they got half-assed promotion from Verve/MGM from the get-go --exacerbated, in the case of VU&Nico (which cracked the Billboard Top 200 for a bit) by the Emerson lawsuit over his appearance on the back cover (whereupon the album was pulled from stores for several months). I don't think their subject matter helped them on the radio front, either.

Just a theory, but: the other thing that may have worked against them was their singularity. They weren't part of a recognizable movement at the time - just this one arty, noisy NYC band doing its thing. That may have been hard to notice in the late sixties when weirdness was pandemic in pop music (not to mention among garage bands). A decade later, a whole wave of noisy NY bands emerged and got plenty of notice, but that's in part because there were a whole bunch of them, and their particular brand of weirdness cut so emphatically against the grain of the mid-seventies rock zeitgeist.

There were so many major label albums that didn't sell. It's possible that MGM promoted them as much as they did the Mothers - I don't know.

OK here's something more evidence-based than the musings I offered above:

http://www.richieunterberger.com/vumyth.html

Here's an excerpt:

Myth: MGM Records, which put out the first three Velvet Underground albums, did little or nothing to promote the group, ensuring their lack of commercial success.

Reality: There is little doubt that MGM was basically inefficient in its promotion of the group – though that's something that could be said of its efforts for many of its rock artists of the late 1960s, and for the efforts granted many rock performers of the time on other major labels. It's certainly true that it's hard to find print advertising for their first album, and that one of the few such ads to get published was placed in a questionable outlet, the literary magazine the Evergreen Review.

But contrary to most historical accounts, MGM did put some promotion behind the group's second and third LPs. It took out a full-page ad for White Light/White Heat—certainly their least commercial longplayer (and one of the least commercial albums of the time by any major rock act)—in Rolling Stone, as well as in some of the nation's largest underground papers, including (of all places) the most renowned hippie publication of all, the Oracle in San Francisco. It put another full-page ad in the teen rock magazine Hullabaloo. It also gave Lou Reed and John Cale quite a bit of space to be interviewed on a rare MGM promotional-only LP serviced to radio stations around the time of White Light/White Heat's release. And it also produced at least one radio ad for the record, although everyone must have known that the album itself wasn't likely to get that much airplay.

For the third album (The Velvet Underground), MGM not only did more than it had for White Light/White Heat, but arguably gave the record more promotion than most. Full-page ads appeared in Rolling Stone, Creem, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Free Press (one of the nation's most widely read underground papers), and Fusion. The last of these also managed to insert a plug for the Velvets' upcoming May 29-31 shows in the city where Fusion was published, Boston. MGM also did a radio ad for the LP, albeit a strange one featuring New York DJ Bill "Rosko" Mercer. It even bashed out a sizable, if eccentric, press kit with individual portraits of Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker, and Doug Yule.

By most accounts, MGM dropped the ball in its distribution of the albums, and the third LP in particular, with the record not as easy to find in the stores as it should have been. That probably blew any momentum their advertising campaign, and the highly accessible (relative to the first two VU albums) music on The Velvet Underground, might have created. But it wasn't wholly neglectful of the Velvets—and, as even some members conceded, never interfered with the music or the packaging, with the exception of producer Tom Wilson asking for a more commercial song to fill out their first album and put on their second single. And since that song, "Sunday Morning," was brilliant, even that didn't hurt the group.

Selling a thousand records is quite a lot, btw.

I enjoyed this quote from Unterberger:

And in his April 1981 NME interview with Mary Harron, Morrison claimed, "I know what the problem was: it was Frank Zappa and his manager Herb Cohen. They sabotaged us in a number of ways, because they wanted to be the first with a freak release.

Freak wars!

For the third album (The Velvet Underground), MGM not only did more than it had for White Light/White Heat, but arguably gave the record more promotion than most. Full-page ads appeared in Rolling Stone, Creem, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Free Press (one of the nation's most widely read underground papers), and Fusion.

Wow. Had no idea. They also toured more than I ever knew.

Just recently been hearing about this Fusion. It was a Boston based magazine which a teenaged Jonathan Richman sometimes wrote for, putting the first two VU albums on the top of his favorite albums list and filling at least half of his favorite twenty songs list with VU material.

Some more stuff about the VU and sales:

http://souciant.com/2013/11/dont-just-print-the-legend/
http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/123-lou-reeds-chart-history/

I think there's been plenty of chat on ILM before about VU's supposed obscurity

Wow. Had no idea. They also toured more than I ever knew.

fwiw, MGM also took out a full-page ad in RS for WL/WH.

I suspect that, like with Big Star, one of the main factors contributing to the Velvets' obscurity at the time was the unavailability/spotty distribution of their records.

(although that was only part of it; with Big Star, it was arguably the entire reason they never broke through)

Big Star really were obscure though

"Yeah, the pianos are great, but the song overstays its welcome long after the point is made."

No, I think that they outstay their welcome IS the point.

Oh, definitely. I'm just saying the reason for their obscurity was entirely logistical rather than in any way musical.

xp

Of more importance, The Velvet Underground & Nico, though not exactly a hit the first time around, sold a lot more than just a few thousand copies—and more, even, than the "30,000 copies in the first five years" that Lou Reed himself told Eno the LP sold. An MGM royalty statement shows sales of 58,476 copies through February 14, 1969 (about two years after its initial release)—not at all bad for a late-'60s LP, if far less than Andy Warhol and the Velvets hoped for.

Oddly, in 1970, both Fusion and Circus reported the album had already sold nearly a quarter of a million copies, Sterling Morrison later claiming the LP eventually went "gold," the industry term for a half a million units sold. While the likelihood that the banana album sold more than 200,000 copies by 1970 seems faint, the possibility that it broke the six-figure mark by then or not long afterward doesn't seem unreasonable—and if all 100,000 of those people formed a band because of it, the Velvet Underground would certainly have been a lot more famous by the mid-1970s than they actually were.

I suspect that, like with Big Star, one of the main factors contributing to the Velvets' obscurity at the time was the unavailability/spotty distribution of their records.

MGM had the Animals, Herman's Hermits, Sam the Sham - acts that definitely had hits. Would think their distribution was fine? Unavailability would have been more of a store/ordering matter.

Sales figures/accounting for these albums (pre-CD reissue) were lost early on, as discussed on some other thread.

You'd think, but I remember reading about how when the Velvets were touring, audience members would come up to them afterwards asking how/where they could buy their records. Could be that MGM didn't want to send Velvets records to Sears and Woolworth's, like they did with their other acts, but didn't have sufficient underground connections to get them into Captain Groovy's Mosaic Factory.

xp

I dont see what's so hard to believe about them not selling that many records because people weren't interested. They were not part of a scene, they were weird and difficult (and kinda gay/creepy), and every record was radically different. They were out of step w prevailing trends, they made enemies (bill graham, NY clubs)... all this stuff adds up to low sales.

and longevity

lol at Captain Groovy's Mosaic Factory.

So are we agreed that although they didn't sell as many records as or have as a high a profile as what used to be the 60s classic rock canon, didn't have any AM hits or maybe even any FM hits or much FM airplay and although their MGM catalog was out if print in the US for a while they were not in fact obscure in the way that, say, Big Star was? No, probably not.

Too bad the VU put out records in an era where weirdness and oddness was an unwelcome thing.

The 'they had no scene' argument also kinda bunk cos the Factory sounds like as much of a scene as the Fillmore.

Maybe I was just always skeptical of the VU myths because I first heard them in The Doors movie or something.

I dunno -- the American and British music scenes of the late sixties seem so stifling and conformist to me, always did. No wonder a chunk of'em moved to Topanga Canyon: they could all fuck each other's girlfriends and live a few houses down.

and, no, the Velvets did not fit at all.

Bought this album for a friend's birthday this week. Haven't listened to it in years until last night, and spent the duration transported. I have come to the conclusion that it is MY FAVOURITE RECORD OF ALL TIME. The only thing that at all mars it IMO is that The Murder Mystery is twice as long as it needs to be. Although that never bothered 16-year-old me.

I don't wonder at all that the album wasn't a hit; in its quiet way it's as subversive and weird as WL/WH is in its loud one.

Jimi Hendrix touring w the Monkees?

VU playing the same venue as the Allman Brothers?

Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd on Top of the Pops?

Stifling and conformist, I don't know.

Generally agree, Shakey, and I do think their general out-of-stepedness was the most significant factor in their lack of sales, but I think wider availability would've made for a much different story. One independent promotion person + "Sunday Morning" would've made a huge difference.

Interesting to note that the Velvets were (barely, but still) outselling the Kinks at that point, and the MC5 were outselling both. Not sure what conclusions to draw from that, but there it is.

xxxp

No wonder a chunk of'em moved to Topanga Canyon: they could all fuck each other's girlfriends and live a few houses down.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

Well, yeah

my favorite VU album top to bottom, voted "what goes on"

Kinks were banned from playing in the U.S. from '65-'69.

Lol the Factory wasnt anything like the Fillmore

xp

There weren't thousands -- probably not even hundreds -- of people packing the Factory on a weekly basis.

are we agreed that although they didn't sell as many records as or have as a high a profile as what used to be the 60s classic rock canon, didn't have any AM hits or maybe even any FM hits or much FM airplay and although their MGM catalog was out if print in the US for a while they were not in fact obscure in the way that, say, Big Star was? No, probably not.

With the double live album, the Max's live album, comps, they had more records out. Probably quite a bit more of a legacy in the press too.

The Fillmore had multiple bands playing multiple sets a night for years. The Factory had one band that played occasionally for about 2 years.

Kinks were banned from playing in the U.S. from '65-'69.

― timellison, Saturday, November 9, 2013 1:54 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True, but other acts that rarely or never toured the US had hits (the Small Faces spring to mind, though I can't think of any other examples offhand).

The Troggs didn't make it over 'til '69 or so iirc.

Yeah, a long string of singles starting with "Dead End Street," all seemingly released in the U.S. but none that made it.

James Redd's completely anecdotal list of reasons why the VU always had a baseline of support and awareness that kept growing whilst Big Star was genuinely obscure.
*Heard Lou Reed and the Velvets and their direct offspring Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers on WPIX-FM and WNEW-FM in the late 70s/early 80s, at least the 'hits' such as "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll" and "Vicious," as well as hearing that now famous guest DJ spot on "Radio Radio" on WPIX.
*Read about Jonathan Richman sleeping on Velvets manager Steve Selznick's coach in Trouser Press and saw Lou listed as one of their "100 Greatest Guitarists." Subsequently ordered back issue with Lou interview where I first learned of his idiosyncratic combative interview style featuring asides to Reg Dwight, a "Best of Luck to the Dead Worms" and a "razor-sharp definition of paramecium"
*Borrowed the newly issued Lou compilation Rock and Roll Diary: 1967-1980 from my high school classmate, future record company executive, Michael K-er, where I was able to hear some of those out of print early VU tracks.
*Bought an in-print copy of Loaded at the Harvard Coop in 1980. This Boston outing also featured a trip to Tanglewood, although the John Cale table-axing incident was not brought up. But, now that I think of it, one of the councilors at the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Math in Amherst, MA, had a copy of Paris, 1919, gleaming brightly at the front of her record collection.
*Was walking down upper Broadway one Saturday morning after attending the Columbia SHP (Science Honors Program) probably in Fall of 80 or Spring of 81 and walked into a record store where I heard the most amazing thing which turned out to be "Lisa Says" off of the 1969 Live record.
*When I would go to the cool used record stores in the Village, the banana cover album was always prominently on display.
*When I arrived at college in 1981, would see cassettes tapes of the Velvets in the collections of the prep school roommates of my geeky friends.
*Don't think I knew a single thing about Big Star until after graduation in college in 1985, when I heard about them through muso/hipster friends and maybe through Replacements/dBs connections and when I went to see Alex Chilton it was always with said friends, whereas I went to see Lou Reed with otherwise pretty straight co-workers who, surprisingly or not, could quote at length from Lou's Take No Prisoners schtick.

So this is all anecdotal evidence about the late 70s/early 80s and says nothing about the 60s my basic point is that a geeky kid like me could know quite a lot about the Velvet at the time, and cross paths with a lot of different people in different areas who knew about them, but Big Star's sphere of influence was much more circumscribed and they didn't even end up on my radar until a good part of decade later.

Forgot
*1981 Freshman Year endearing fish-out of-water endearing blue collar wildman who roomed down the hall whose parents ran a raw bar or something on a wharf in NJ who could quote from "The Day John Kennedy Died."

Did I mention he was endearing? When dorm room hi-jinks ensued he was usually the one who went "too far," thus serving as kind of lovable scapegoat for the rest who had stayed on the near side of the otherwise invisible line of propriety.

Also forgot:
*Learned from the Book of Rock Lists that Lou's real name was Louis "Butch" Firbank.

distribution was utterly labyrinthine in the glory days of the industry and it would not surprise me to learn that Velvets records just never got shipped in large quantities to several large markets or even regions. there were a bunch of big distributors who had relationships with smaller regional distributors and with labels but not all labels, etc.

I remember that too, but none of the obits I read in the last couple of weeks mentioned it, so I assumed it was incorrect.

Also from the Book of Rock Lists: in the list of Songs Michael Jackson Wishes He Had Written (submitted by MJ himself) was "Walk on the Wild Side."

xp

lol is that right? wow.

No, it was apparently a rumor started by CREEM magazine that was often, and still is, perhaps, cited as fact.

meant the michael jackson tidbit

1.) "Respect"
2.) "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
3.) "Walk On The Wild Side"
4.) "Moon River"
5.) "For The Good Times"
6.) "Living For The City"
7.) "You Send Me"
8.) "Yesterday"
9.) "Eleanor Rigby"
10.) "The Fool On The Hill"

I was wondering. Didn't make sense that a Lou obsessive like you wouldn't know that. For all I know you have a paper copy of the very issue of CREEM in which that first appeared.

In other news, I recently learned from the Ahmet Ertegun bio The Last Sultan- highly recommended, nothing about the Velvets though - that the same lawyer who negotiated the MJ Beatles publishing purchase also had a hand in the nefarious Stax/Atlantic deal among other thingsl. He died last year: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1096745/music-attorney-paul-marshall-who-repped-emi-polygram-atlantic-more-dies

Although there is a great story about The Moby Grape in that book.

Still really hard to figure out how to pick one tune on this album to vote for, it could be each and every one on a given day.

Kind of interesting that both Kinks and Lou finally hit it big with a song about a girl who's a guy.

Some Kinda Love is one of my favorite Lou Reed songs. I think it is one of his best.

I'd love to hear some 70s female soul singer do a take on this tune, anyone know of one?

Merry Clayton did a version.

(I wish.)

Jesus

Can I just say I love the sleeve of this album too, it's so un-rock 'n' roll, dark + grey + they do look like a bunch of librarians too ... compare it to something like "Kick Out the Jams", lol

Good point!

compare it to something like "Kick Out the Jams", lol

http://makemyday.free.fr/68/68poster63.jpg

Yr all wrong abt the live versions of "What Goes On"; the best version is the Stereolab cover

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

^ lifetime ban

One day I decided I would play guitar along to the Live 1969 version of What Goes On, cranked up my amp and the stereo, it was incredibly good fun and I loved it. When I stopped I had a bruised thumbnail, a blister on the heel of my strumming hand and one of my fingers was bleeding. And every time I looked at the damage afterward I couldn't help but grin.
That is kind of what Sterling Morrison means to me.

Kind of interesting that both Kinks and Lou finally hit it big with a song about a girl who's a guy.

Great point

Lou was a massive Ray Davies fan of course

Lou and the Kinks also made shitty-selling concept records/musicals for RCA at the same time (Berlin/Preservation, Act 1), which no doubt made the higher ups at RCA sigh exasperatedly.

haha yeah - "we need more catchy songs about drag queens, guys! please!"

At least they didn't do any embarrassing duets together, that I know of. *ducks*

haha, I actually thought the Pete/Lou duo was sweet, but also sad in a "look was these former feedback monsters are reduced to" kind of way.

Pete Quaife and Lou Reed?

Lol

had no memory of all those verses in "PBE"

or of "Some Kinda Love" at all, tbh

v tempted to vote "After Hours"

won't tho

Finally voted, but not revealing until afterwards to avoid ballot-switching.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Probably my favorite LP of all-time.

was it ever released on cassette?

Yes, actually, the mid-'80s reissues were out on cassette.

I had the other three on cassette and saw vu and max's in the shops, but never saw this one, in the uk.

this poll could last ... forever

so it's gonna be What Goes On?

...biting my nails..

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

What Goes On is so boring. What is wrong w you ppl?

lol i guess i am boring, what goes on is my favorite song

Eh it's not boring i'm just playing. Love that organ part. Just hold down the chords! One time I saw Elf Power play this on Halloween and it ruled.

"Candy Says" should've won tho.

I think I voted What Goes On (not boring, are you crazy?) or Beginning to See the Light, I can't remember!

I'd like to know how anyone could think that After Hours is the best song on this album. That's crazy. I'm sorry. I know it has unleashed a magnificently adorable torrent of twee that many people have enjoyed over the years, but seriously? Best song on this album? I dunno. Doesn't seem right.

a victory for chooglin VU

i'm with you 100% LL

only difference is that i am NOT sorry

The order of the songs is exactly right except for 'Some Kinda Love' in the bottom, and as a result I'm going to kick you people in the shins.

a victory for chooglin VU

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, November 12, 2013 6:13 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'merica

i'm kinda shocked to see "Candy Says" that low. i figured it was a lock for top 3! the "doo doo waaaahs" near the end are among my favorite velvets moments

After Hours is probably the song that sounds more like any other song today. Like if Apple was around in the 60's it would definitely have been in an iPod commercial.

167 votes for this
166 for the 1st record.
Who are you, the onw who made the difference?

Maybe the people who voted for After Hours are not big fans of the record as a whole?

After Hours is probably the song that sounds more like any other song today. Like if Apple was around in the 60's it would definitely have been in an iPod commercial.

otm

where's that thread about the commercials with smiling young people making the best of it and being happy and every song sounds like the lumineers?

i'm going to buy that product because those young people like the product and they're just out there making the best of it!

also, After Hours invented the Moldy Peaches

I didn't kbow WGO has so many fans untill this thread.
Also surprised Candy isn't higher.

Moldy Peaches and Beat Happening

the only good part of After Hours is the extra reverb on Moe's "Helllloooooo?". if they could have stretched that reverb out for 2 minutes and introduced Lou singing about the bleakest of nights, hammered, can't locate your house, someone's following you, then the song might have had a chance

oh god
you're right!
see also - modcloth

So now whats the best of the best VU song:
Waiting for?
Sister ray?
WhAt Goes On?
Rock n Roll?

"What Goes On" is the perfect answer to the question "which song do you wish would never end?"

after hours invented juno
after hours invented pamplamoose
after hours is not the best song on this album!

Weird that Reed wrote a song like After Hours.
I wish there was a version of him somewhere singing it.

After Hours invented After Hours

only 10 nice people heard after hours. but then those 10 nice people had sex with each other over and over and now 45 or so years later there are literally millions of them, having a great time and listening to songs with glockenspiel solos and generally making the best of it

what's so weird about it? one of a long list of songs from the POV of an outcast/misfit

xp

The Melody.
I cant imagine him writing something like it. Or singing it.

You don't have to imagine it -- he did it.

i am also disappointed that moe had to sing that song instead of something with an awesome beat
just seems a bit "stand there and look pretty" when she could have created a monster groove and sung with that

lol zs

It has that Brecht music hall thing going for it.

He also wrote "There She Goes Again" and "That's the Story of My Life" so

She stood there and created monster grooves for three years. The greatness of "Afterhours" is how creepy Moe sounds; this is not a sweet song at all. It would have been treacly if Yule had sung it!

They are not nearly as twee and "cute"
Xpost

how do you feel about "I'm Sticking With You"?

"who's the creepy choirboy singing?"

I don't find "After Hours" particularly twee/cute - unless twee by definition encompasses the creepy/eerie morbid touches, also present in "I'm Stickin With You"

it is the only VU song worse than After Hours

alfred - good point

i dunno. maybe i'm projecting! the only thing i sort of like about after hours is that it reminds me of the popeye soundtrack, which i like. but that's not "the best song on the album" is all i'm saying. i don't understand liking it THAT MUCH. but hey people like what they like! i like to choogle, i guess.

*choogles furiously*

nah if you consider After Hours the best song on this album you definitely started some sort of special weird club

they had to stick both of them (after hours/stickin' with you) at the end of their tracklists because they just fucking KILL the vibe

ok, i'll grant that the end of stickin' with you redeems it a bit. but god, that beginning part. it's like raggedy ann haunting your dreams

Popeye soundtrack rules

Glad to see that "What Goes On" won, at certain times I am convinced it's the best thing ever.

I do like "After Hours" but voting for it as the best song on this album is a bit weird.

Let's not lose our shit. "Afterhours" is fifth in this poll.

Counterbalance

10. "After Hours" 10
5. "Jesus" 3:24 9
3. "Some Kinda Love" 4:03 9
1. "Candy Says" 4:04 9
9. "The Murder Mystery" 8:55 7
8. "That's the Story of My Life" 1:59 3

no. no. NO.

If you rewrote "After Hours" to be about meth, it would be the best VU song easily.

Calling it to win the big ballot poll though. I hear Alfred has a surprise up his sleeve. xps

well plus, i mean you realize many more lurkers read these kinds of thread than actually vote and post in them, right? in 5 years some 15-year-old wise ass is going to be looking into VU for one of the first times and come upon this thread. and she needs to know that NO, after hours is not the 5th best song on this album. mistakes were made.

I think the presence of that Eagles thread has impaired our judgements.

Thank you for your posts zs in the name of future teenage readers

lol

just remember, we were all future teenagers at one point

makes you think

Luckily there was no internet..

after hours sucks, lets poll it.

if you close the door the night could last forever!

from the opening paragraph of the wikipedia entry on after hours:

The song was re-recorded by Maureen Tucker with instrumentation by The Changelings in 2002. It was released on the single "I'm Sticking with You / After Hours".

i haven't heard it, but let's just go ahead and say that was the worst single of all time

yeah but it launched a thousand Moldy Peaches tribute bands

how about this -- one of my students was talking to me about her homework, and i asked her to clarify something. she began, "what goes on...in your mind"

reader, i married her

lol

that happened last thursday

this might be a stupid question...but what (if any) is the connection between "What Goes On" and the Beatles song of the same name? or was it just a popular youth phrase of the time

Reed offered to Ringo, who asked John and Paul for permission to sing it but was refused because they were distracted by the Exploding Plastic Inevitable show.

after hours is hella dark and not at all twee what is wrong with everybody.

its the perfect end to the album and sums up the vibe for me more than any other single track.

what goes on is good, but there are so many other better vu jams on other albums. meanwhile after hours is pretty singular.

it seems way more perverse to me to vote for the most rock track on the velvets' least rocking album. like a deliberate statement that you actually wish they made another WL/WH instead.

you can stop questioning other posters' motives about now, sterling.

see what comes of your ranking obsession, sillies.

but if u keep insulting Mo we are going to have to rassle.

nah i'm not questioning the motives. i'm saying how that reads to me, regardless.

seriously if WGO was on any other album it would be a decent track but not an obv leader of the pack. its just that here it stands out way more. pale blue eyes votes i'm 100% down with

some 15-year-old wise ass is going to be looking into VU for one of the first times and come upon this thread.

as long as she stays away from the film polls

If I'd known "Story" was gonna get two more pity votes I woulda broke that three-way tie in favour of "Some Kinda Love". THOSE GUITARS! THAT ONE DRUM!

mo tucker is quite lovable. there's a series of interview segments w/ her on youtube, they are good fun to watch.

i probably end up listening to her solo records and bootlegs of her live shows more than those of any other solo VU member.

there are some crazy awesome shows on d-a-d. you have to have a tolerance for jad fair though.

in fact, one of them opens with "after hours." so suck it, losers.

after hours voters clearly part of some kind of tea party sponsored astroturfing

"like a deliberate statement that you actually wish they made another WL/WH instead."

only that WGO sounds nothing like WL/WH

Weird that Reed wrote a song like After Hours.
I wish there was a version of him somewhere singing it.

Ummmmmmm, he sings it on "Live at Max's Kansas City"... or are you messing with us here?

they had to stick both of them (after hours/stickin' with you) at the end of their tracklists because they just fucking KILL the vibe

Kinda not really getting the Velvets here, perhaps? Their vibe is all-embracing.

Some Kinda Love kinda robbed.

so many songs. so sad. a-bloooo

"he sings it on "Live at Max's Kansas City"... or are you messing with us here?"

didn't know..will listen. the last thing i would do is to mess with you..
!

I'd like to hear a Lou version of "Who loves the sun" but hey.

I can hear it in my head

i'd like to hear a mark e smith version of who loves the sun.

after hours is hella dark and not at all twee what is wrong with everybody.

^^^

Great melody, some of Lou's best (and saddest) lyrics, and Moe's open, honest vocal. It's always been one of my favorite VU tracks. I voted for it because of the 5 or 6 songs I could make a case for being best on this record, it's the one that most obviously needed a friendly hand.

lou sang "who loves the sun" on a few recent tours -- maybe not what you had in mind though.
after hours is great, though i don't think i considered voting for it. one of the most perfect album closers though.

"like a deliberate statement that you actually wish they made another WL/WH instead."

only that WGO sounds nothing like WL/WH

― nostormo, Wednesday, November 13, 2013 7:53 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yeah, WGO would be pretty weird on WL/WH

They were big enough around that time to get an equipment endorsement deal!
http://recordmecca.com/rmsite/wp-content/uploads/mqc/767_large_1.jpg

also would be a great funeral song, but for cremation I think i'd still go with "Here Come the Warm Jets." xxxp

haven't heard Loaded in eons -- it's pulled out for imminent play -- but completely unaware that Doug Yule's vocs weren't Reed's. (Maybe I usta know.)

i'd like to hear a mark e smith version of who loves the sun.

completely unaware that Doug Yule's vocs weren't Reed's

Yeah, seems obvious now that I know but I think it took someone more perceptive than me to point it out (many years ago now)

(xp) Excellent

here's lou singing who loves the sun (with the guy from the barenaked ladies in the background)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf8BcDJa9Iw

lou sang "who loves the sun" on a few recent tours -- maybe not what you had in mind though.

Normally, no (I have a 'guitar-synth' version of "Sister Ray" off a bootleg, you wish he'd stop and do MMMusic instead, you all will) but any version, yeah.

And ta for the youtube just up there!

I'm rather touched by MES's evident cherishment of his nod-to-reed moment

yeah, talk about a guy who is not a hero worshiper.

yeah that was kind of moving, coming from MES

btw I think that both T Verlaine and MES must have got their "always punish the interviewer/journalist" thing from LR...

probably -- though I've also gotten an "i've-seen-don't-look-back-too-many-times" vibe from verlaine's interview approach

i've always got the sense that MES is just a genuine(ly talented) asshole

xpost ha you're right. And LR probably took some pages from that playbook too.

"Oh you're such a good lad, here's another dollar"
- The Velvet Undergound, "Murder Mystery", 1969

"Oh aye you're a good lad, here is a pound note"
- The Fall, "Music Scene", 1979

^ opening line too!

fuck never noticed that!

judging by the fact that none of the songs on wlwh are particularly similar I think wgo would have fitted. I would argue it would have improved the album. what the hell a wee bit more dissonance would have improved the song too.

with regards to the yule/reed thing, as pointed out in another thread, when bowie met doug after a show, he thought he was lou.

it's funny/sad no one appears to have asked Doug about Lou's passing

Fricke interviewed him in the new Rolling Stone.

oh!

good

167 votes for this
166 for the 1st record.
Who are you, the onw who made the difference?
--nostormo

Tis I.

"Velvet Nursery Rhyme" proves the importance of the "After Hours"/"I'm Sticking with You" aesthetic to the VU.

'The Murder Mystery', which is head and shoulders above the rest of the album, IMO.

haha, really? I love murder mystery in the context of the album, but don't know if I'd listen to it outside of the whole thing.

Thank God for that, I'd have been worried if you'd had anything sensible to say about this album.(xp)

x-post:

Yes, really! I love it for one of the reasons I love Cream's 'Passing The Time' in that I enjoy the contrast between the two alternating sections, and of course, I love the scratchy, post-punky guitar work and the garbled vocals. The length is not an issue for me, and it's more in keeping with previous Velvets work than the rest of the album.

Ha, and I enjoy Tom D.'s awful attempts at snark, too!

That isn't snark.

this was a very coming of age album of me, where coming of age = sitting in a friend's driveway smoking terrible weed every night for a year in high school. at that time, i would have agreed that the murder mystery was the best song. it was always a personal highlight for me, at least, and was way more psychedelic and experimental and out there than pretty much anything else i was listening to. nowadays i have trouble getting through it.

challops: this album is better if you pretend that "i'm set free' is the last song

i like 'that's the story of my life' too, just not quite as much as the first 7 songs, which are god. like, they could actually be worshiped as god and do a better job of being god than whatever god currently is or is not

murder mystery sends it off the rails a bit, and then 'after hours' features a tea partier inventing twee

why didn't i say twee partier why didn't i say twee partier

just so no one gets the wrong idea, i recognize that moe tucker is amazing and i love her drumming. but gtfo with after hours

challops: this album is better if you pretend that "i'm set free' is the last song
agree, plus it makes a great last song
i love moe too but i can live without the twee party

and i know that some people think it's not twee and that's fine too
the whole album seems to sputter rather than shine at the end
that is my feeling

After Hours rules. twee was always part of VU right from the first track on their first album.

OTM, Lou loves the twee.

haha i love after hours, not too twee imo
this "official" video otoh is some wes anderson wannabe bullshit: youtube.com/watch?v=fND_Y6OgsDs

looooool @ the "dancing" in that video

it took me a long time before i listened to this album, but when i finally did i realized that it had some of my favorite VU songs on it. i had been jamming live 1969 forever but for some reason didn't realize that a lot of the tunes were from this album

yuck, couldn't make it through that video ... after hours rules, though.

After Hours rules. twee was always part of VU right from the first track on their first album.

naah, gotta disagree with that. sunday morning is delicate and quiet, but that doesn't make it twee. twee implies a childlike faux naive quality. it's in the "1, 2, 3" introduction to after hours, the weird pause halfway through before going back to the verse, and the lyrical point of view - "All the people are dancing and they're having such fun / I wish it could happen to me" (granted, "but if you close the door / I'd never have to see the day again" is a little dark but hey, it's the VU)

the only twee trait of sunday morning is the use of bells, and even those work as a ironic counterpoint to the spirit of the lyrics, which (to me) are hangovers, coming down, facing up to the threat of emerging into the depressing 'real world' again, procrastination as a way of living, etc

'sunday morning' is the waking up at 11:30am companion to 'i'm beginning to see the light'. 'after hours' is the 3:20pm waiting for dinner companion to blue's clues

question: is anyone else afflicted with the curse where the song 'sunday morning' is stuck in their head every sunday morning?

especially while watching CBS sunday morning

Moe's vocals make it seem more twee than it is, I don't the lyrics are twee at all.

Hmm. I'd probably rank this album in last place of their first four albums. I realise that this album is meant to be a less confrontational work, but on the whole I find it relatively unexciting, which is why 'The Murder Mystery' is my favourite track. For the more conventional side of the band, I prefer Loaded as a collection of songs.

Oops, a bit of the you never hers going on there.

I don't find 'After Hours' twee at all. I'd say it registers quite low on the tweeness scale, actually.

The guitar chords are too jazzy for twee

Twee can be plenty jazzy.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/4d/73/2b/4d732b16a49a71830cfd849b8ae10a0b.jpg

appropriate, stolen from the other thread

Y'all crazy this a great album and candy says and some kind of love were robbed

i know it's only negligibly different but i like the closet mix a lot. the whispered "some kinda love" makes an already spooky album even spookier

yeah

last week on a commute this album -> new Breeders -> Liquid Swords made tons of sense, an unexpectedly focused vibe

For over a decade I only knew the closet mix thanks to going straight from VU & Nico to the PS&S box in high school.

how does it feel to be looooooooooooved

Feeling that would’ve been my vote had I been around. Like how the more rocking tracks (outside of “murder mystery” but not sure that counts) feel very peaceful in the scope of the album.

yeah, i'm pretty sure i voted for What Goes On, but these days i would have to go for Beginning to See the Light too. 'wine in the morning and breakfast at night / i'm beginning to see the light' is one of the best ever couplets

it's "some kinda love" for me, both versions are amazing, and everyone upthread who emphasized how remarkable the lyric is is correct

but honestly i could vote for any song from this album. it's my favorite

"Some Kinda Love" made me gay.

<3

one of the best ever couplets

see also "some people work very hard/but still they never get it right" and a buncha others in the same tune

Let us do what you fear most

oh yeah, it's just one unbeatable line after another

let us now kiss the culprit

fucking Lou Reed

<333333333333 this thread right now

I’ve never liked (or understood) “Jesus”... it’s the one VU album track I’ll always skip.

its bc of their deep and abiding love for our lord and savior

it's a pretty straightforward song

dylan-wannabe lou beat bob to christian gospel hymns by a decade+

Yeah I just googled and found this thread... ok, I guess... https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Velvet-Underground-start-singing-about-Jesus-on-their-third-album

If you're coming out, it makes sense to kiss the culprit, i.e. Jesus

“jesus” is so awesome and lovely

even as a certified jesus-hater i've always liked the song, it's really disarming somehow

I don't get why it's a problem to love worship music. It's like hating Aretha.

waitaminute — am I being stawmanned as someone who has a problem w/religious music, just b/c I don’t like this VU song? lol

I think it's the "don't understand" part of yr statement that's being gently ribbed here

I didn’t understand why (non-Christian) Lou Reed is singing what appears to be a straightforward and lyrically sparse plea to Jesus.

Reed goes some way to addressing the question of whether he is truly seeking redemption for himself in his 1971 interview with the Metropolitan Review, in which he notes that his songs are "supposed to be little plays. I would see myself as the lead part because I'm a ham, so I would give myself the lead singer role and I would write myself out this dialogue, then I would play different characters. You notice they all have characters which are completely different. And so people used to say, 'that must be you' or 'THAT must be you,' but they couldn't figure out how I could be the same person because the people in the songs were different, sometimes they would be opposite. For instance you'd have 'Heroin' and then you'd have the opposite with 'Jesus.'

(I also don’t dig the musical setting; it’s my least favorite VU album, just not quite my vibe. Some great songs though!)

not being snarky, genuinely curious if you have pause with leonard cohen (same 'faith' as lou) singing about jesus, "a sailor when he walked upon the water"?

Paul Simon has more songs about Jesus than most hymnals.

xp I don’t know that song, but from just that quote it sounds more interesting than “Jesus”!

https://78.media.tumblr.com/d40a5de73aed244a550c012921e76295/tumblr_mk71s6pZ7I1qedb29o1_500.gif

it's "suzanne", one of the best!

If Paul Simon gave Lou Reed a doo-wop deep cut mix tape or vice-versa, would Frank Zappa drop it in the yellow snow?

I didn’t understand why (non-Christian) Lou Reed is singing what appears to be a straightforward and lyrically sparse plea to Jesus.

It’s unfortunate other major artists of his time never took a turn toward Christianity

I’ve never liked (or understood) “Jesus”... it’s the one VU album track I’ll always skip.

;_; There's no hope for you.

The song’s just a few lines, without room for much poetry or anything beyond what they say on the surface. And you know Lou doesn’t “mean” them, so... why am I listening to him sing them?

Maybe because he's singing them? It's not a verse reading - there's melodies, chords, guitars, bass guitar, two voices singing in harmony, why not listen to them too?

Tom D. otm, 'Jesus' is just a beautiful song. If you could only listen to songs Reed 'meant', his discography - and that of every other musician - will shrink significantly.

Seems to me that when Lou really lets his guard down and sings it straight, even when it might seem like second level irony, he might really mean a lot of it after all. He might not believe, in some traditional sense, but he certainly might want to find his proper place and feel that he has fallen out of grace. This is after all the guy Donald Fagen saw bawling like a baby at a screening of Terms of Endearment.

dylan-wannabe lou beat bob to christian gospel hymns by a decade+

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i always thought people dug the "jesus" not least since spacemen 3 brian-jonestown-massacred it and lou's solo suite "street hassle" (to further threadjack, my favorite song of theirs gun to my head and a precursor to the gospel pixelations of spectrum and spiritualized)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dzxc4Wcv60

"jesus" feels like it's literally trembling in its apprehension of something metaphysical, and for that reason i think it's an amazing success, especially leading into the thematically similar "beginning to see the light" and "i'm set free." it would be a lesser record and especially a lesser sequence without it

it's also a song i think alex chilton may have listened to a ton

also the key line isn't "jesus" it's "help me find my proper place," conveying the feelings of displacement and dislocation that run through... all of reed's work

Musically it's gorgeous and it's one of those occasional Lou songs that isn't written using the three/four chord strum-a-long approach.

the Reed-Yule harmonies, my god.

Maybe because he's singing them? It's not a verse reading - there's melodies, chords, guitars, bass guitar, two voices singing in harmony, why not listen to them too?

I have, and like I said, it’s not a musical vibe I can get into (pity for me, I guess!)

If you could only listen to songs Reed 'meant', his discography - and that of every other musician - will shrink significantly.

What I wrote was that if it were poetic or interesting to me, the fact that he doesn’t “mean” it wouldn’t matter. But it’s not, and he doesn’t, so it misses on both counts I guess.

Wonder what Nico would have to say about this

Didn’t she kiss off Lou by declaring, “I’m not sleeping with Jews anymore?”

also the key line isn't "jesus" it's "help me find my proper place," conveying the feelings of displacement and dislocation that run through... all of reed's work

I can feel this... and the plea may be misdirected or hopeless? i.e., does Jesus really “do that,” for the faithful? Isn’t there more to it? The “narrator” may be reaching out desperately, for whatever source of salvation he can grasp.... (but there’s too little in the song itself for me to know whether it’s actually conveying this).

Jesus, I love "Jesus." And it makes perfect sense in the context of the album as a whole — just another kinda love.

otm

jesus is the heart of the album, if you take that away there is only a dead corpse which remains...

Er, not sure I'd go quite that far.

"Beginning to See the Light" is the heart of the album, IMO.

I'm listening to it now (Closet Mix)... I do really like the gtr/bass interplay in the middle section of "Jesus."

beginning to see the light
jesus
what goes on
i'm set free

^^ all of the above are all parts of the same play imo

first Candy hates her body, then she learns what goes on your mind is that jesus sets you free and then you begin to see the light with your pale blue eyes
it's all one big inspirational song-play
that's how i've always thought about it at least

what goes on IN your mind, i mean

that's a great take, I like it

concept album, a journey of redemption

let us now kiss the culprit

Huh, thought it was "Kiss the carpet" for 30+ years now

yo tambien

lou had a similar conceptual take on it too, judging from that quora link a bit upthread:

In the Victor Bockris book, Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story, Reed explains "Jesus" as part of a progression of songs on the third album tied together by the theme of love:

This song would follow this song because this has to do with this and this has to do with that, and this will answer that and then you've got this character who matches this character or offsets this character. The third album was really the quintessence of that idea, because it started out with "Candy Says" where this girl asks all these questions. And then the next song is "What Goes On" where this guys, 'Wow, you're asking me all these questions, you're driving me crazy, you're making me feel like I'm upsidedown'. And the third thing they've decided that they're talking about is love, so he's going to give her an example of "Some Kinds of Love" and he talks about all kinds of love being the same as long as it's love, and that's what he says to her over and over and gives different examples of it. He's trying to reach her and she's like saying, 'I don't understand,' you know, but that's stated at the beginning. Then he gets into "Pale Blue Eyes", where he talks about another kind of love which is like adultery. Then you get into "Jesus," which brings in a whole different kind of love, which is like religious love.

some kinda love = the light, jesus' love, any kind of love for poor Candy who hates her body and can't see it the way the narrator does
it's the lighthearted part of the solution to Candy's problems; Jesus is the heavy part

The whole album through I'm Set Free could be a musical. Not that I am in favor of this idea (I am not) but it could be.

otm. it’s one of the best-sequenced albums of all time for this reason

i have been exposed as the lonely sad wolf on this before, but i think this album would be 100% perfect if the last 2 songs were left off. (i have changed my mind on "that's the story of my life", and i think it would rule as an album closer, and also as a fitting closing to the conceptual arc discussed today).

the second most listened song on this album, at least on spotify, is "after hours", and that's sad

The whole album through I'm Set Free could be a musical. Not that I am in favor of this idea (I am not) but it could be.

It could be the mumblecore Mamma Mia! the world has been crying out for.

(also i love murder mystery and i'm glad it exists. in high school it was the highlight of the album for me, the one i played if i only had 10 minutes to listen to music. but it doesn't fit on the album)

i could live without the last three songs tbh

yeah, more times than not i listen to something else after the end of I'm Set Free. and i guess "love" is a little too far to go on Murder Mystery these days, but i used to like it so much i feel bad just discarding it entirely!

it's an old buddy, maybe you don't have much in common anymore but you can still enjoy shared history with "murder mystery"

exactly. we have roadtripped many times together, i can never leave it behind.

...however maybe it should be on CD2 of the deluxe edition

Without the "Murder Mystery" chord progression, I feel like we would have missed out on a good chunk of '80s/'90s alt/indie rock (including, very specifically, this section of this song: https://youtu.be/fngVDIBJVdc?t=1m22s)

“after hours” is fucking great what are y’all talking about

agreed

“that’s the story of my life” is probably the weakest track but it’s still a nice coda to the devotional love suite

by far it's the weakest track -- I haven't played it since 1997

after hours is maybe the best closing track of all time imo (and it is made even greater coming after "the murder mystery")

(xp) You're missing out on a cool, jaunty gtr solo

re: "After Hours" -- imagine how it must have sounded to hear Mo Tucker sing lead vocal, on a record, for the first time (especially to close out the album like that; it's a brilliant move).

y'all have seen this, right? I cry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-50pwpfmJfA

https://i.imgur.com/Xql4IjP.jpg

ing.
re: "After Hours" -- imagine how it must have sounded to hear Mo Tucker sing lead vocal, on a record, for the first time (especially to close out the album like that; it's a brilliant move).

― stan in the place where you work (morrisp), Friday, September 14, 2018 2:04 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

after hours is great. it's funny, with all the sentimental songs on the last two albums, that lou felt that after hours was too innocent for him to sing

I can't even conceive of Reed singing it, Cale much less.

xxxp Wow, thanks Alfred - I had never seen that clip

lou sings after hours on the max's LP (and makes a pretty good go of it)

That'll be the Hall of Fame induction which Doug Yule wasn't invited to or even mentioned in.

(xp) I mentioned that upthread, I can only assume less people have heard that album than I thought.

it's definitely the least essential VU LP (though I dig it)

I laughed way too hard at the final comment here (re: the RRHOF performance) --

https://i.imgur.com/9B3AjZJ.jpg

Yule should've been there, I love that performance. There.

It's genuinely super moving to watch/hear

wow yeah I didn't know about that performance

Moe Tucker is just....I adore her.

that's part of why i fucking hate that song. in my dream version of velvet underground, moe tucker is not the adorable accidental godmother of twee, moe tucker is the impossibly badass drummer wearing shades beating drums turned on their side in a smoky bar. i understand that it's possible to hold both visions of her at the same time, and also that all both visions are just bullshit projections on my part anyway. but i really my bullshit projection of her being a badass, and every time i accidentally hear after hours it gets punctured. also every time i accidentally hear about what she thinks about politics

typos on the left, omitted words on the right, i'm sorry

I think you have a distorted idea bout "After Hours."

what makes it perverse is this androgyne voice singing this nursery rhyme. It's got nothing to do with being an impossible badass with shades, which most people who weren't in Manhattan wouldn't have seen after 1969 anyway.

Also, it's the perfect marriage of form + content.

what makes it perverse is this androgyne voice singing this nursery rhyme

a nursery rhyme about alcoholism!

which is one of the worst kinds of love

Is it about alcoholism?

idk it's about staying in a bar forever

i understand that it's possible to hold both visions of her at the same time

Yeah I don't get why they're mutually exclusive at all(?)

xp and drinking toasts to "never"

This is one of the most devastating verses in music:

Oh, someday I know
Someone will look into my eyes
And say hello
You're my very special one

It's about a loneliness so intense, the singer wants to retreat into a permanent barroom night and "never see the day again"

it's pretty goddamn bleak, yeah

It practically negates all the songs on the album -- it's about no kinds of love; about being self-imprisoned rather than "set free"; about not wanting to see (any) light...

and it's bleak because this blank chirpy voice sings it! Dialectics, etc.

I admit it's couched/presented in this nursery rhyme way that makes it possible to interpret the bleakness as childish posturing or melodramatic playacting but idk, that seems like a very surface reading of it

like, children speaking abominable truths can still be pretty terrifying, the contrast being drawn is very deliberate

oh, but people look well in the dark

(for some reason this is making me think of the cute-children-in-horror-movies trope)

xp

like you have this cutesy thing on the outside but then it turns out it's really a horrible demon or a zombie or the kid you murdered oops

Tucker's delivery is what makes her bit in "Last Night..." so moving.

I mean, these gals could be construed as ultra-twee, right? and yet
https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/streams/2014/January/140129/2D11462485-140129-shining-twins.fit-760w.jpg

AAAAHHHHHHhhhhhh!

heh

welp

i should mention that i have a pet peeve about advertisements that feature precocious children advising adults to buy a product, like sarah michelle gellar selling burger king in the early 80s. obviously moe tucker was a grown-ass woman when she recorded it, a willing participant, i know. and that's the problem - the song infantilizes her, and so it prompts a similar feeling for me - that someone's supposed innocence is being used for someone else's ends. here's lou:

You still don’t hear that kind of purity in vocals. It has nothing to do with singing. It has everything to do with being. It’s completely honest. Guileless. And always was. I couldn’t sing that song. Maureen could sing it, and believe it, and feel much more. Because it’s about loneliness. “Someday I know someone will look into my eyes” – it can be so sappy and trite. But with Maureen doing it, especially being just a little off key, it has its own strength and beauty to it.

mo wasn't completely honest and pure and guileless, not then and not now. no one is. so the whole thing comes off as manipulative to me. i know it wasn't intended to be that way and i don't expect anyone to agree, but that's the headspace it sends me in whenever i hear it.

Lou isn't saying that Mo was those things, but that Mo could be those things more convincingly than he could.

why the hell are you quoting Lou Reed about anything

lol yeah he is the definition of an unreliable narrator

ennui at the end of a dece friday drink or four

dark party bars, shiny cadillac cars, and the people on subways and trains
looking gray in the rain, as they stand disarrayed

(xp) Ha -- I was gonna say, in relation to that quote from the Bockris book posted upthread ("This song would follow this song because this has to do with this and this has to do with that..."")... it reads like it could be total gibberish/BS!

This will always be the best Lou Reed quote, IMO (I'm happy to post it wherever it's even vaguely appropriate):

What are you, a fucking asshole? I'm here telling you the truth about music and you want to know if I have stock in the fucking radio? You fucking piece of shit. What did I do to deserve that?

Actually I'm sure there are some pretty good Lou quotes in those Lester Bangs interviews; I should re-read those sometime.

oh yeah, they are hilarious

i don't like the reduction of drumming moe into cutesy moe either (even if she is morose) because i have plenty of experience with a this cutesy thing on the outside but then it turns out it's really a horrible demon and it just has not been that great
being infantilized sucks just as bad as being objectified

"after hours" is fine but i doubt i'll ever like it much

This will always be the best Lou Reed quote

I lol'd but... *ahem*

you guys are making it sound like Lou browbeat Mo into doing this or that she was just his puppet and that she had no agency in her delivery

it was just me saying that

Lou wasn't exactly Phil Spector with Mo, from all accounts

xp

actually i didn't say that either - "obviously moe tucker was a grown-ass woman when she recorded it, a willing participant, i know"

me and lou are both unreliable narrators

Moe, not that it matters, is one of the few people whom Reed loved without reservation

ok fine

xps

http://markmaynard.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/velvetsecondfret.jpg

aw, never seen that pic

He said much the same about getting Doug Yule sing "Candy Says", playing with that innocent quality, except I think he said in a more derogatory way. He kind of implied Yule was some wide-eyed suburban cretin, which was very much not the case.

... although tbf Yule said he didn't know who "Candy Says" was about.

I voted for "After Hours" in this poll and I get the ppl who don't like it but I've just never heard it as twee or cute or naive. It's lonely and longing, which is a whole different animal than naive -- it's more of a jazz song than a rock song, it has worldliness baked in.

On Moe in general I saw her with her band at a small club somewhere around 2001, and she was just amazing. Playing guitar rather than drums, but she plays guitar the same way she plays drums. She closed with a 10-minute version of "Bo Diddley" that is one of the best things I have ever seen or heard.

yule looks kinda like barry manilow on the cover

Here's a bit from an interview I did with Moe before the show I sawShe's not sure where it comes from, this almost uncontrollable physical reaction music provokes in her—which is why she limits her exposure to it.

"I don't often listen to music," she says. "Even when I was younger this was the case, I've never just sat and listened to music. I would have to be thumping on something. It's almost painful to me. There's no way I could put on 'Be My Baby' and just go about my business.

"I can't imagine putting on 'Be My Baby' and then vacuuming, you know?"

Ooops.

She's not sure where it comes from, this almost uncontrollable physical reaction music provokes in her—which is why she limits her exposure to it.

"I don't often listen to music," she says. "Even when I was younger this was the case, I've never just sat and listened to music. I would have to be thumping on something. It's almost painful to me. There's no way I could put on 'Be My Baby' and just go about my business.

"I can't imagine putting on 'Be My Baby' and then vacuuming, you know?"

The guitars sure are beautiful on this album, dang

amen.
i dunno, Lou got called a "genius," which is a weird loaded term. but I do think this record is probably the best argument that he was a Genius. with a capital G!

also, moe tucker is a Genius too!

https://78.media.tumblr.com/644968fd86fda62162bda21d6b3243f3/tumblr_pewbk5yIYz1s4wsgso1_1280.jpg

I made this home recording instrumental a few years ago and just decided what I wanted to call it recently:

https://soundcloud.com/timellison2/ode-to-the-third-velvet-underground-album

Did anyone mention yet that Lou sings “Afterhours” on the Live at Max’s album?

yessss, i love that last pic of moe so much

xp yes it was noted upthread above the fold

I consider Max's to be barely above Squeeze in the "legitimate VU albums" category, and have never given it a fair chance due to the horrible drumming with all the annoying fills

haha yeah, billy yule is the anti-moe, really. actually i think my favorite thing on there is the long "some kinda love" (a bonus track on reissues) which barely sounds like the VU, but is kinda chooglin.

jam-band Velvets

that was one of the biggest revelations of the matrix tapes, for me, when i first heard them - they were jam-bandy as hell, at least during the doug yule days, in all the best ways

Yeah totally — I really think moe is the secret ingredient. A more standard 60s-style drummer might’ve mucked things up considerably.

o hai Billy Yule

Lol

He also should have been at that damn Hall of Fame Induction >:(

i have been exposed as the lonely sad wolf on this before, but i think this album would be 100% perfect if the last 2 songs were left off. (i have changed my mind on "that's the story of my life", and i think it would rule as an album closer, and also as a fitting closing to the conceptual arc discussed today).

the second most listened song on this album, at least on spotify, is "after hours", and that's sad

― Karl Malone, Friday, September 14, 2018 1:29 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i support karl malone, "after hours" is a boring tossaway. ("murder mystery" is cool tho.)

He also should have been at that damn Hall of Fame Induction >:(

― Zach Same (Tom D.)

yeah, and what about walter powers and willie alexander, huh?

Those two and also Henry Flynt for standing in for John Cale that time he got hepatitis.

Plus, perhaps the most egregious of all the omissions, Ian Paice for playing drums on "Squeeze" - don't tell me he didn't deserve to be there.

yeah, and what about walter powers and willie alexander, huh?

― milkshake duck george bernard shaw (rushomancy

Walter Powers had reached his limit!

Lol

It was now mid-August which meant that he had been playing with the VU for over two months

Two months, and all he had to show was three gig receipts and two very expensive parking tickets

kinda love the notes Yule gave Willie Loco Alexander for his first VU gig. "Fuck it / Fake it."

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYrw0SEVwAEtD3G.jpg

Plus, perhaps the most egregious of all the omissions, Ian Paice for playing drums on "Squeeze" - don't tell me he didn't deserve to be there.

I recall reading a (recentish?) interview with Paice where he said that he doesn't remember playing on it at all.

If you remember playing drums on a mediocre post-Lou Reed Velvet Underground album, you weren't there.

Taste the (matched) grip
Now Squeeze for me

Has anyone actually heard Squeeze? Is there anything good about it?

yes; no

Its not terrible but it is wholly unremarkable

OTM, it's perfectly listenable, just bland, inoffensive, unmemorable - Doug doesn't sound enough like Lou.

I’ve never understood why they were able to use the VU name for it. Did Steve Sesnick control the name?

No doubt

Is there a misplaced cowbell on that album?

Some discussion here: Doug Yule - Classic or Doug?:

He played the solo on “O Sweet Nothin”? That’s pretty cool

A not bad cover version of “Candy Says” can be found here:
http://onlygrantlee.blogspot.com/2017/
Kind of a pain to watch though

There was a nice version by Grant Lee Buffalo featuring Jon Brion but it has gone off the Internet because of Lou

applause

the song "friends" from "squeeze" is excellent xpost

also i came across this obnoxious article / interview and read this:

On the 45th anniversary of its release, The Velvet Underground (known among fans as “The Grey Album”)

has any ever heard anyone call it that ever? that's not really a thing right?

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/rq4d8m/the-velvet-underground-reissue-doug-yule-lou-reed-photos-live-footage

No

i believe it's universally referred to as "you know, the third one"

haha yeah totally

I have head "the couch album"

*heard*

“The third album,” always

the doug yule album

not really but it would be kinda cool

the Great Album

as they all are

Y'know I've often thought I really, really can't rank them. I just don't know. They're all 4 as fucking great as each other. With number 5 being that compilation with Ocean, and even that isn't that far off.

i downloaded all the velvets records without really looking into the band and it was years before i realized "VU" was a compilation record of studio outtakes released in the '80s! which blew my mind because i definitely listened to that one most, it's so good.

anyway just read the whole thread and i'm surprised by how many people think "the murder mystery" is a bad or boring or not particularly good song. that track is a tour de force imo, nothing sound like it, everybody gets to sing, the frantic, climbing guitar line, then the woozy B part with the cool organ sound. i love how the vocals wrap around each other so that each time you hear the song your ears pick out different bits and it's like a different story.

OBVERSE AND INVERSE AND PERVERSE AND REVERSE

lol this song rules !!!!

Yeah it’s hard for me to “grok” VU fans not liking “Murder Mystery”...

Yeah, not sure how that album is supposed to end without those last two songs. Do the haters just stop listening before they start?

Isn’t it sweet
Being unique?

budo jeru otm

I also think the transition from Murder Mystery to After Hours is part of what makes the latter song particularly effective... after 8:55 of madness, a simple, straightforward song cuts through to end the album with almost startling clarity and simplicity.

otm

totally

It's a match for "Revolution 9" into "Good Night"

I'd never thought of that before, but yes. "Good Night" is rubbish though.

wrong, "good night" is the best beatles song

how does it feel to be looooooved

A Margarita Tom Tom

Brad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvGs-d_oC3M

as much as I love Bryan Ferry, I'm not sure what the point of that cover is

A visual excuse to show off the beard.

Any excuse to get the Velvets in the charts - didn't work though, only got to #67. He obviously wasn't too bothered about how his backing band looked in those post-Roxy days.

Waddy Watchtel!

A better Velvets cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6XLNwF_QNI&feature=share

What about Waddy Watchel, he’s on that video?

I don't think that"s Waddy Wachtel, not that I know what he looks like, it's just that the guy in the video looks totally Real England, ca. 1975, to me.

... actually, I thought Waddy Wachtel was a bass player, I think the guitarist is him.

What about Waddy Watchel, he’s on that video?

― Spirit of the Voice of the Beehive (James Redd and the Blecchs)

No, the song

I’m just listening to this record closely now for the first time. Some thoughts:

1) Candy Says sounds like it inspired the entirety of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s How I Long record. And a bunch of others.

2) The dueling guitar solos on What Goes On inspired Phil Manzanera’s solos on (VU fan) Eno’s first two records like you wouldn’t believe.

3) I’ve always loved the cover of this.

4) There is a def. relationship between the cascading guitar part on Pale Blue Eyes and Spector/Nino Tempo’s arrangement for Dion’s Born To Be With You that I’ve never noticed before and am not sure was intentional. But it’s there.

<3

i would love to listen to this closely for the first time again

the guitar solo(s) on what goes on is an all-time favorite musical passage for me. the louder you play it, the better it gets. the only appropriate volume of that solo is as loud as possible.

2) The dueling guitar solos on What Goes On inspired Phil Manzanera’s solos on (VU fan) Eno’s first two records like you wouldn’t believe.

"Third Uncle"!

the tone manzarek gets there is so awful, tho, yuck

manzanera!

i would love to listen to this closely for the first time again

^^^

/2) The dueling guitar solos on What Goes On inspired Phil Manzanera’s solos on (VU fan) Eno’s first two records like you wouldn’t believe./

"Third Uncle"!

the tone manzarek gets there is so awful, tho, yuck

Pretty sure it's Eno playing guitar on those and elsewhere, if I'm right about the exact sound you're talking about.

this is probably the best album ever made

Not going to argue with you there.

i will, but it's def the best VU album ever made

Thank you Naive Teen Idol. I’m playing this during dinner.

"Some Kinda Love" made me gay.

I adore this album. Watched an episode of Sex Education and Pale Blue Eyes played over the end credits. I usually focus on the singing on that song but this time I was struck bu the liquid guitars washing back and forth. If the song was instrumental it would still be a great track.

1) Candy Says sounds like it inspired the entirety of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s How I Long record. And a bunch of others.

Definitely. It's really easy to imagine this song at an unsteady, slightly faster tempo with Euros singing "i'm gonna watch the bluebirds fly" over Megan's violin. The guitar part is exactly the same.

Thank god VU wrote this song and not GZM.

Reminding me of this I posted on the Fassbinder thread about his 1972 movie, "Acht Stunden sind kein Tag".

Lots of music - highlight being the Velvets' "Candy Says" playing in the background as a group of workers try to work out whether to split a performance bonus equally or by pay grade(!)

Always worth remembering that some discerning sould were listening.

...souls, that is.

This record always sounds so incredibly fresh to me. The songs never age.

By the way, never knew Sterling M was a tugboat captain in Houston and that Galaxie 500’s Tugboat is ostensibly about him

xp I wish I could say the same... I just can’t hear certain songs (such as “Pale Blue Eyes”) with fresh ears. Too many spins as a teenager, I guess.

Yeah, I don’t really know why it never gets old for me. Jumps out of the speakers like nothing else. It’s not necessarily the quality of the songs as such (although it is my fav VU-album), it just has a way of seducing me again and again and again. Maybe it’s all those sexy subtle guitars, idk

Watched an episode of Sex Education and Pale Blue Eyes played over the end credits.

It's used twice in Adventureland--once off a jukebox, no less.

^yeah, I rolled my eyes at that when I saw the movie; it felt like such an “obvious” music cue (I know, I’m soooo cool)

(that movie’s use of the INXS song was excellent, otoh)

This is my fave VU album and maybe the best album ever? Maybe its sacrilege but 'Pale Blue Eyes' never quite clicked with me and I was always surprised to see it considered up in the pantheon of Lou's great lyrical works - the lyrics were always a little too moon-June-spoon for me. But at the same time its one of the best instrumental performances on the album, just outrageously beautiful. I'm assuming instrumental mixes of this have never surfaced? I'd kill for an instrumental version of this record.

Have a funny relationship with this album too bc I bought a cheap LP of it off ebay in like 1999 and unbeknownst to me it was the closet mix, which I listened to for years & thought was the real album. Then I got the peel slowly box and before I figured it out I was like "damn, the differences between the album and these rare alternate 'closet' mixes are pretty fuckin subtle, i cant even tell the difference, what a ripoff!"

how available were Velvet albums in England during the 1970s and '80s?

If by England, you mean the UK, probably more available than in the US. I don't know for sure but 90% of the population of Glasgow seemed to be Velvet Underground fans (slight exaggeration).

This rather stylish compilation was often to be seen:

https://img.discogs.com/Z1NAB2S6GcnsaYtmFfbJMq_QqoE=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-632738-1480437881-5932.jpeg.jpg

... possibly a British compilation?

in the 80s when i bought mine (Glasgow, probably the massive Virgin) they were readily available, my Banana & White Light came with enormous Nice Price stickers on them which were near impossible to get off. my copy of the 3rd was also the closet mix, I only heard the other version a few years ago!

That's what I assumed given the influence on those late '70s acts. In America, fans depended on the banana album's availability and Live 1969 from what I undersatnd.

Like Tom says it seemed like everyone's big brother or sister in Glasgow had at least one VU album alongside Bowie & Iggy. No one seemed to listen to the Beatles or the Kinks, but the Stones were massive.

My big sister had the banana album, I sneaked it into school once and played "Heroin" on the record player in school common room.

The VU thing definitely came via Bowie.

I think "Live 1969" wasn't released in the UK until the late 70s and then Peel played it a lot and Orange Juice and all the Postcard people went apeshit over it.

I remember the frustration of being in high school c. 1984 trying to get into this mysterious group and ALL of their stuff was out of print, despite the countless indie bands wearing a VU influence on their sleeves. iirc the VU comp of unreleased material was the first thing to finally appear, then the banana album in 1986 and (again iirc) White Light not till '88 or so.

yeah, on my FB wall a few months ago a nice conversation started about the ripple effect of the 1985 VU comp: it was for many college students their first exposure, and it became a quiet hit (#85!).

I had that compilation above for a couple of years...long story as to why I had it and why I ended up trading it to a friend.

unbeknownst to me it was the closet mix, which I listened to for years & thought was the real album.

Which version do you prefer now?

"pale blue eyes" has fucking amazing lyrics, cf. the "down for you is up" verse

also for me the closet mix is superior

Josefa: I wrote a long thing many few years ago about exactly what you say, the frustration of trying to piece together a collection in the mid-'80s. (Back that up about five years for me.)

http://phildellio.tripod.com/records-v2-w1.html

It was indeed VU that changed all that: suddenly you could buy the first two albums (I don't think they r-ereleased the third, I can't quite remember) at mid-line prices, usually $4.99.

morrisp, mostly I like em about equal, I like the closet mix of 'what goes on' a tiny bit more, but the Valentin version of 'Some Kinda Love' is 100x better imo.

The closet mix has the "Some Kinda" love with prominent cow bell, right? I dislike that one.

lol "Some Kinda Love"

yeah cowbell and only one guitar

love with prominent cow bell

Song title alert.

Weird, I never knew there were two mixes of this but just now listening to the "Some Kinda Love" closet mix I actually think I prefer that to the Valentin mix that I've been familiar with for many years. It's more intimate and I don't miss the second guitar. Don't know about the rest of the songs.

i think some kinda love is the only one that is a 100% alternate take iirc

Reed "fixes" one of the awkward lines on it, which is another plus

xp that's correct, different takes on that one

i prefer the closet mix version of some kinda love, sounds like lou sang and played it while laying on the floor

i think you can hear him wetting his lips between lines, haha

haha he also wets his lips in "Satellite of Love."

Lou ASMReed

i’ve got one of those ’80s UK vu reissues, the s/t actually. bright red polydor labels and an inner sleeve with a skull n crossbones over a cassette that says HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC

Home taping was the best thing that ever happened to the VU

Not Many People Home-Taped Velvet Underground Albums, But Everyone Who Did Started A Band With The People They Made The Tapes For.

Grew up with the Valentin mix & when the closet mix was made available on “Peel Slowly” I didn’t fuck with it. Bought an OG vinyl copy & it’s charms became super-apparent. Love that both versions exist. I give the edge to Valentin but that might just be the nostalgia talking.

We all 'grew up' with the closet mix, to the extent that when I heard there was another mix, I had to get the pricey Japanese edition to hear it, as that was the only 'on catalogue' version of it.

Should have waited one year...

Yes, I'd never heard the Valentin mix until recently, I was just listening to it on YouTube and it's completely unfamiliar to me.

my copy of 3rd album came via that peel slowly and see box so i always listened to the closet mix until i started recently playing VU on spotify A LOT (i've 'rediscovered' a lot of my favourite classic albums from when I was a teen 'horses', 'transformer' and I like them more now than i did then). I had never liked some kinda love and suddenly its like my favourite, it took a relisten to the closet mix before I realised why. that fn cowbell, the missing guitar. Its wrong.

It's fuckin' great is what it is.

nah

More intimate, it's like Lou is actually pouring jelly on your shoulder.

for me the correct version of any VU song will always be "the one with the highest # of guitars"