Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

haha I was wondering which thread to revive to discuss the "Nuns Are On The Seawall" blog...

i.e Velvets bootlegs S/D

the 'Ultimate Mono and Acetates Album' has some of those singles but not all. it does have the mono WL/WH which is really different at least on Lady Godiva's Operation, I guess I should listen to it. that may be the version of "Call My Name" you refer to.

also loving:

the Pre-VU Preview, all the demos of early 60's Reed/Cale pop music
Problems In Urban Living (Cleveland 68)
CDs from a certain minimalist composr who shall remain anonymous

Yeah, I've got that Ultimate Mono Acetates thing -- from what I understand, this mix of "Heard" is unheard until now? Less of Lou's guitar, more of the band. Or something ... But anyway -- yeah! Pre-VU is crazy, really incredible. Drop in some references to methamphetamine and "Do The Ostrich" could be on White Light/White Heat, easy. Crazy that, according to the Unterberger VU Day By Day book, there's a solo version of "Heroin" recorded during the Pickwick era. Probably sounds similar to the versions on the 1st disc of "Peel Slowly" but I'd still love to hear it.

I've got it on order, will let you know...

Cool!
Someone over on the Velvet Forum sez: "the mix of I Heard Her Call My Name is insane. At first I thought that there was a mistake in the pressing as Lou's opening vocals ("here comes count down...' ) are way down in the mix and actually sound muffled. Then they pick up a little with 'Ever since...'. Sterling's guitar is up and so it Cale's bass. For the first 30 seconds or so it sounds like a kind of lo-fi garage sound and then later the sound gets bigger with more of the impact we know. But overall the balance is restored so that you can hear Sterling's lovely rhythm guitar work and Cale's bass, which is really great. Cale's bass sound is amazing on this mix and then also makes you realised how low the bass is in the mix on most of the White Light LP."

Hmm
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0847833550/ref=pe_5050_13305760_snp_dp
$189
Little bit annoying that they're putting out all of this collector-bait stuff these days and not putting out unreleased stuff. Or barely any unreleased stuff.

A while ago, I did my own mix of "Heard Her Call My Name" with less Lou and more of the band just for fun, anyone can do it

ysi?

From that Velvet Forum, here's a list of uncirculated VU stuff that seems to actually exist.

-The demo tape Cale took to England
-Summit High School tape
-Bizarre footage
-Delmonico´s tape
-Boston Tea Party footage(any news on this, by the way?)
-La Cave 68 tape
-Hippodrome 68 tape
-Nelson Video tape 70
-Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island
-May 11, 1965 Pickwick Studios, near Long Island City, New York
-Donald Jackson VU footage
-Danny Williams VU footage
-The Primitives tape
-Ronald Nameth Vu footage
-Matrix Tapes
-Seattle 69 tape

I don't know how to do that! (xp)

-The demo tape Cale took to England

I'd be surprised if this still existed! Very! The Matrix Tapes is what we want!!!!!

xpost

what the hell is that? a 304-page hardback book, yeah, but what about the single with it?

hate it when Amazon has no info about the product.

and hey that Seattle 69 show is on the Nuns Are On The Seawall blog, it's listed as Retinal Circus. first new show (to me) to surface since the Gymnasium.

!!! Had no idea ... Thanks! Is it good?

more from that Velvet Forum:
-the full Gymnasium tape
-the cale/sterling/reed rehearsals from cale loft 1966
-uncut recent Factory 66 tape

here's a list of uncirculated VU stuff that seems to actually exist.

i'm still hoping that footage of them on Upbeat! shows up somewhere. Lots of clips from that show are in circulation, but considering they made a handful of appearances i'm surprised nothing's around. About one of the shows: "The Velvets performed live on the Upbeat TV show in June 1968 (not June 1967). Moreover, contrary to Sterling Morrison's recollection, they performed a blistering, buzzsaw version of Run Run Run. Their rendition of Run Run Run went beyond their alloted time: thus, Upbeat cut away to a commercial while the Velvets were engaged in feedback frenzy with Lou's back to the camera."

that would be awesome. There was some comment (I think from Moe Tucker) that she couldn't believe, with all the cameras the Warhol crew had going all the time, no one just filmed a straight ahead version of one of the EPI shows.

Is it good?

here's wl/wh:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8j4j7c

it's a soundboard!!! the only one I know of besides those Matrix tapes. as a result the vox are too loud and the guitars a bit subdued, but the overall recording is much clearer. I still think Problems In Urban Living (Cleveland Oct. 68) is my favorite live boot, love the guitar sound on that.

that's a flac btw

Already downloading from The Nuns site ... So weird that this stuff just keeps showing up. One thing I'm super interested in (that hasn't seen the light of day afaik) is a studio version of "Beginning to See the Light" with Cale.

WHAT????!??!

those Velvets Forum trainspotters mean business man.

http://www.paulvates.com/images/gatwickshuttle.jpg

But yeah, the "Beginning" with Cale is mentioned in the Unterberger book - recorded at the "Mr. Rain" session apparently? With "fuzz bass"? There was talk of it appearing on a projected WL/WH "deluxe edition, I think. Which never came out obv.

LOL, yeah, obv.

But ... maybe now that this singles set has come out, there's a chance of more VU material coming out officially? I think I read that Lou wasn't into having any more live stuff come out.

Hmmm, so I'm listening to this "Retinal Circus" VU show -- and I'm pretty sure some of these takes are the same as appear on Live 1969. Haven't a/b'd them or anything. It's an uncut tape of the show, though, which hasn't circulate as far as I know ... I think that those songs were thought to be from the Matrix, wonder what the deal is! MYSTERY. Sounds great, anyway.

yeh, the wh/wh posted above is the same as the version on the live 69 album

er wl/wh

Yeah, same w/ "heroin", "what goes on", "new age" so far. it's funny to hear these songs w/ audience applause -- on 1969 they cut off almost immediately, sort of giving the impression that the VU was playing to barely anyone. But here they've got a totally enthusiastic crowd. And why not, considering the godlike awesomeness of this "What Goes On."

so I'm fairly certain that these are ALL tracks from Live 1969, albeit in unedited form ... Maybe "Some Kinda Love" is different? Not sure.

interesting... now that u mention it the track times look very similar.

going to John Cale talk at MoMA monday!

What? Nobody told me about it.

Oh, I see.

OK, I'm there.

John Cale talk is being postponed. Very sad.

What was he supposed to talk about? Something specific, or just the Art of Being John Cale?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou0NJ_9IA4g

Sweet Jesus "Venus in Furs" sounds amazing here!

check the moma website under "Looking at Music 2". I think it as mostly about some art instillation/film he's got in the Venice Biennual now or something?

I was hoping he was going to talk in Welsh, about being Welsh.

I think he was going to interview Joe Walsh, about eating Welsh Rarebit.

Cale and Walsh need to restart their long-dormant collab Walsh Rarebit ... shit was off the hook.

ahem ILX user tylerw please report to the "five jazz album runs" voting thread

Damn, gotta check out that Unterberger book. Boring writer but his subject matter's always interesting.

Yeha, often when Unterberger inserts an opinion into his Velvets book, I find myself disagreeing with him. But as a reference, and as a history of the band, I think it's unparalleled. Also, tons of great photos/posters/ephemera, stuff I'd never seen before. And I appreciate that he has in fact listened to the bootlegs, which a lot of writers before him don't seem to have done. In general he doesn't seem too down with the experimental side of the group, even though he does give plenty of space to Cale's pre-VU work, as well as Angus MacLise, which is nice.

There's no way I am gonna be able to finish reading it, tbh.

OK, so I'm familiar with the differences between the original "closet mix" of the 3rd LP and the Valentin (sp?) mix that was put out in the 80's reissue series. I know that "Some Kinda Love" is a different take altogether on the Valentin one. My trainspotter question is: which mix does the recent 4 Men With Beards reissue have? "Cause I already have an original closet one and am kicking myself for not picking the alternate mix up a few years ago when it was cheap.

4M reissue has the Valentin mix.

awesome, thanks.

Think I prefer the Valentin mix, tbh. At least, the take of "Some Kinda Love" is superior.

preordered Kugelberg has arrived

is it mainly photos/posters and stuff? not sure if I need to shell out the $$$ ... Does it come with a CD or something?

Yeah, press sheet for this Pickwick collection has Terry P. saying that he hired Lou for his writing, but also foresaw singing and playing getting sharper; "I thought he could be all that he became."

There was a very full article in a recent "Strange Things" which went into full detail about the pickwick years. Terry P pretty much freed Lou from his contract as soon as he started to make inroads with the Velvet Underground, so on the whole a good guy. I believe Nilsson had a similar pre-fame career, and told his guys it was fine for them to make the "Early Years" comps as he had already been paid for them.

I thought I'd heard the La Cave '68 bootleg before now, but I'm starting to think maybe I hadn't. This is really great!

The Houston Chronicle has a six-part series of articles about Sterling Morrison running. They’re all up except for the last.

The first two don’t really add anything though

Some interesting stuff later on though

for my fellow "sweet sister ray" fanatics: https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/782080727952113664/sweet-rock-and-roll

i saw it pop up on my subs a couple days ago! really exciting. i was kind of holding out to see if there's a FLAC version around... got any leads?

^^^ my thoughts exactly, YSI plz

ha, sorry, this is the only way I've got it ...

no worries, i checked my usual sources but didn't see anything, figured it wouldn't hurt to check with you as well :)

anyway sounds _damn good_

The comments section on the linked YouTube made my eyes bulge a little:

@Jonassssss6
Thank you so much. What an incredible gift. But please, please, please upload the source material to the internet archive. The raw, lossless audio files. Photos of the tape. Everything you can. This is an artifact of cultural significance. It doesn't matter that it's just a copy. The audio bitrate of this 360p YouTube video is 134.8kbits/s. That is less than half of the quality of an MP3 (320kbits/s). Please consider talking to J.C. and Mr. Charlie. I can help with any technical stuff. Thanks again!

@PalmerEldritch23
@Jonassssss6 Thank you for your input but it needs to wait. If Jamie's brother is now in charge of the recordings, then he may be looking to cut a deal to get them finally released. Believe me, he needs the money and there's no way I would interfere with that. If in fact this got an official release, this post would come down.

@PalmerEldritch23
I don't know who J.C. actually is. It was merely a notation made by Jamie. Mr. Charlie is me, and thank you for the technical offer but I did audio editing and restoration work in collaboration with The Happy One (nickname) for an archival label which is sadly out of business.
Anyhow, Jamie's actual masters sound incredible. He played me a clear, uncirculated set from March 1969 at La Cave of which you can find the track listing here: http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/vu/live/1969/perf69.html

@PalmerEldritch23
Jamie also played me his master of Cleveland Music Hall 1968.12.01 and it sounded unbelievable, especially "I'm Set Free" in which Moe's drums resonated like dancing gods. The clarity of Jamie's recordings using a simple Norelco cassette deck is simply astounding, but then again cassette compression as we know is not always a bad thing. If I hear anything about a potential sale, I will post it here.

gahhhh

yeahhhhh it's a little painful that there's stuff just sitting there unheard by almost everybody! not sure if an official release is something that will happen, seems like the record company is just happy to repackage the same old stuff over and over. maybe I'm wrong. but a Klimek Tapes release a la the Quine Tapes would be great.

that's wild. what's the deal with those those tapes listed in phil milstein's "what goes on" zine? that zine is kinda legendary but it doesn't ever seem to have been scanned and seems rare as hens' teeth. most i could find was this:

https://fanzinehemorrhage.com/2022/12/21/what-goes-on-1/

i'm inclined to think the listings are spurious, but who the hell knows?

i also gotta wonder if there's anything that could be done to make the boston tea party august '67 tape remotely listenable... i'm impressed that anybody was even able to make out the sound titles on that one!

The wgo tapes do exist, I own at least one, bought back then from source.

I saw a later list, and most are 'present' on Discogs, but I think the more, um, esoteric were produced in limited numbers.

I had a copy of what goes on from 1991, lost it in a move sometime. Never bought any tapes from them but wish I did

yep I still have that one, with the blue flexi and Mo on the cover

I bought it at the time cause Rolling stone magazine of all things touted it and the VU appreciation society

I think I got the subscription after buying issue 4 which was nice in one way but it took something like twelve years to get my full quota of issues.

I do still have them all obviously, the last one was a slog: everyone who saw the VU on the reunion tour wrote an overlong review including how they failed to get backstage and/or spoke to Sterling who pretended to know them or something...

The old Velvet Underground Companion (from the "Companion" series of Rock books) was mostly a 'Best of' from WGO.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/511WPJX678L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

The wgo tapes do exist, I own at least one, bought back then from source.

I saw a later list, and most are 'present' on Discogs, but I think the more, um, esoteric were produced in limited numbers.

― Mark G

i think this is a separate list of tapes, you're talking about what are known as the "afterhours" tapes, right? as described here?

http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/vu/bootlegs/afterhours/afterhours.html

i'm talking about tapes like:

"June 1, 1968
Jerry & Lorraine (?), Los Angeles, California

Tape: listed in What Goes On - The Best of 1&2, 55 minutes (incomplete), C+.

from this page:

http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/vu/live/1968/perf68.html

god I love that obsessive dude, what a hero.

amazing excerpt from that link

"This extremely rare poster advertises one of a series of events attended by Andy Warhol in early 1968. In 1967, Warhol agreed to undertake a cross-country college lecture tour organised by the American Program Bureau. After 'appearances' at the University Of Oregon, Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon and at the University of Montana, he was scheduled to appear at the University of Utah on 2 October, 1967 where attendees and college officials became suspicious that this was not in fact the real Warhol. It later became clear that it was not Warhol speaking but instead, one of his superstars, Allen Midgette, was speaking in his place. As a consolation for this deceit, Warhol was later obligated to appear himself at 18 different college venues from 16 January to 2 April, 1968. Although The Velvet Underground were billed at this event, they apparently never actually appeared although they did appear two days later at Harvard University, Massachusetts. An account of this event in the Denver University student newspaper reported that the event consisted of the showing of two reels of Warhol's films over each other followed by a Q & A session where Paul Morrissey and Viva did most of the talking whilst Warhol remained silent. The performance was apparently ill-received, with the newspaper reporting Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. Ask a straight question, get a stupid answer."

and yeah those listed recordings might be apocryphal but damn I wanna hear them if they exist

GAHHHHH

Klimek taped every single Cleveland Velvets show from the Plastic Exploding Inevitable on out but most of those tapes unfortunately haven't surfaced. People who had chance to hear them all say that there is still some excellent stuff that hasn't surfaced, like the long, winding Sweet Sister Ray intro to Sister Ray that goes on for some 15 minutes of trippy, dreamy VU, and a superb Waitin' For My Man with Cale.

Xpost to Kate

Yes, the afterhours tapes. Will look at those other tapes, cheers.