The Velvet Underground And Nico.

[warrent]

I once repeated the oft-told statement - "Only 1,000 people bought the first VU record but all those people formed bands" to a buddy of mine and his response ?

"Yeah ? And all those bands were trendy and sucked !!"

Funny as hell

So true starting with David Bowie.

If your interested in actual sales, here's a royalty statement for 1969
the first line is mono the second stereo
By the way I like the mono mix better.

https://recordmecca.com/news/lou-reed-exactly-many-albums-velvet-underground-sold/

 

[jhundt]

... I can’t wait to buy my copy of Loaded!. Excellent.

I bought all their records almost the day they were released, or should I say the first day I could find them, because it wasn't easy in Oakland CA back then. My brother brought Loaded home from KALX radio where he was working - they didn't want to play it on the station... which is funny because a few years later you couldn't hear anything but punk music on that station. BTW in the same stack was Back in the USA by the MC5 - they thought that was too much for college kids, too.

Anyway - Loaded was brilliant, and you will love it!

 

[Jack S]

There are many stages for an artist to perform. Sometimes it is in a club or auditorium and sometimes it is in the media. As long as there is an audience, then there is a stage. The first Velvet Underground album was recorded for a listening audience by the band, but it was a collaboration with Andy Warhol whose stage was the media. Nico was essentially an element of Andy Warhol's art adorning the album for the media.

Warhol was a master at one thing, not painting, but playing the media. That is how a graphic artist's rendition of a Campbell's soup can could become an iconic painting and how a peel off sticker on an album cover could also become an iconic work of art.

I agree with someone above that when a well known movie personality goes out and forms a cover band and gets gigs all over the country based on name recognition it is not something I hold in high regard. However, someone who has found a way to create, even if the images are not original, but the ideas behind it are creative in finding an audience then I have a measure of respect for that.

Music is a universal expression of humanity so the level of talent attributed to a musician is not the most important thing to me. As an artistic expression there have been very creative individuals who have made music, even great music in my estimation with weak musical skills at least in traditional terms.

 

[jhundt]

So true starting with David Bowie.

If your interested in actual sales, here's a royalty statement for 1969
the first line is mono the second stereo
By the way I like the mono mix better.
View attachment 494591

https://recordmecca.com/news/lou-reed-exactly-many-albums-velvet-underground-sold/

looks like they ended up owing money on that one!

 

[OttoCorrect]

I really like their self titled third album, but never understood the hype VU got beyond that. How they got lumped in with the rest proto punk stuff is a mystery to me. Sure they sang about street stuff and drugs and whatever but the music itself is what defines a genre and compared to the Stooges, the MC5, or the NY Dolls, VU just seemed like the equivalent of a dull drive on a rainy day.

I do like some of Yo La Tengo’s music though. The concert I went to bored me to tears but some of their albums are basically what VU was doing but better, imho.

 

[slauson slim]

VU were great, far different from any other band when they came out, their LPs still hold up and they were hugely influential. Stuff they did first still shows in recordings today. Not everyone gets it - heck, I don't get Bruuuuuuce.

Here is Elizabeth Cook singing Pale Blue Eyes at the Opry.

 

[The Guy]

I really like their self titled third album, but never understood the hype VU got beyond that. How they got lumped in with the rest proto punk stuff is a mystery to me. Sure they sang about street stuff and drugs and whatever but the music itself is what defines a genre and compared to the Stooges, the MC5, or the NY Dolls, VU just seemed like the equivalent of a dull drive on a rainy day.

I do like some of Yo La Tengo’s music though. The concert I went to bored me to tears but some of their albums are basically what VU was doing but better, imho.

People say a lot of stuff... i don`t think lou considered himself as a punk rocker. Though they influenced a lot of genres that came afterwards.

Hell, even Johnny Cash is considered among the proto punks... but he sure influenced them punks.

 

[BigDaddyLH]

Well except for the love songs Lou wrote about/for her.

Here's her solo album from 67
her backing band is the Velvets plus Jackson Browne

I forgive Nico everything, for this Jackson Brown song from Chelsea. Love it in the Royal Tannenbaums, too.



I put that on whenever I'm depressed. It makes me feel "I may be depressed but I'm not 'Nico singing flat' depressed".

 

[telemnemonics]

I freely admit that I didn't hear them until way late in my musical exploration and there is some music where the impact is greatest right when the music comes out.

There wasn't a single note of their music that had as big an impact on me as hearing Joy Division's music right when it came out.

And I heard the first VU record at almost exactly the same time.

Everybody's different.

I'm from Detroit.

Stooges.

Regular lunkheads who changed the world.

Not TAF's* who are sooooooo bored with everything

But, VU did influence Bowie a lot. He used to cover their songs way early. Eno says he loved them too.

So there's that...


*Trendy Art F***s

An old guy named Tony Conrad played at my loft a few times because his son was the drummer I played with and the drums were in my loft rehearsal space.
Tony was one of those '60s art freaks, schooled in film and video, but half his work was on electric violin, which he played all over the world to small edumcated arty audiences, while gaining only very limited yet influential fame.
In NYC there is a place called Anthology Film Archives where Tony's work would be shown, and where many highly influential not-at-all-famous artists work can be seen.
Peter Kubelka was a filmmaker who might have had huge influence on art film with his "Light/ not light. sound/ not sound". A completely uninteresting piece of work that did nothing but challenge convention.

Anyhow, Tony was a friend of Warhols, and claims to have come up with the name "Velvet Underground" while hanging out with Warhol and others "in the scene".

Tony's son Ted, my drummer friend, prefers the Pixies, but is also a huge fan of The Voidoids.
When I foolishly traded a BFDR for a white '77 Strat that Ivan Julian had just sold, Ted was all excited because he felt that the Voidoids (Richard Hell, Robert Quine) were an important and pivotal band in history.
I didn't know this band, but later worked as guitar tech in a shop where Ivan was the amp tech. I also knew Quine somewhat, though I'm not sure anyone really knew the guy.

All of these artists that never really got big, somehow managed to be more influential to the state of the art than may pop stars of their time.
In later years they were only important to the few who looked for sources of change in history.

Seems people still listen to VU albums though, unlike an awful lot of the most "artistically progressive" works of their time.

 

[Minimalist518]

I really like their self titled third album, but never understood the hype VU got beyond that. How they got lumped in with the rest proto punk stuff is a mystery to me. Sure they sang about street stuff and drugs and whatever but the music itself is what defines a genre and compared to the Stooges, the MC5, or the NY Dolls, VU just seemed like the equivalent of a dull drive on a rainy day.

I do like some of Yo La Tengo’s music though. The concert I went to bored me to tears but some of their albums are basically what VU was doing but better, imho.

I get what you’re saying regarding proto-Punk, but I’ve got a couple of thoughts: First of all, Porto-Punk isn’t really a genre, it’s an exercise in revisionist history. None of those bands thought they were doing anything other than playing rock and roll their way; they certainly had no reason to think they were paving the way or blazing a trail for something they could never have foreseen.
Second, the earliest Punk bands were far from monolithic stylistically. The Ramones, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the Dictators, Blondie, Television, the Talking Heads and the Pattie Smith Group sounded nothing alike and, other than the Ramones and the Dictators, none of these sound like the more formulaic bands that followed. (Before I get pushback from younger Punks that these bands weren’t Punk or “True Punk,” let me sigh my old codger sigh and direct you to the library to take out a copy of Legs McNeil’s “Please Kill Me.” And for those across the Pond who will insist on a British provenance for Punk, I direct you to a calendar.)
Third, with the above in mind, it’s an iconoclastic and disruptive DIY spirit that defines Punk, not a specific sound. As such, the VU sits nicely in the Punk progenitor camp...if you believe such things.

 

[darkwaters]

"Theeees dazzzze....." Love it !

 

[Mike Eskimo]

let me get this straight... Nico was an anti semitic and a racist who singed for a jewish musician?

Yes.

I really like their self titled third album, but never understood the hype VU got beyond that. How they got lumped in with the rest proto punk stuff is a mystery to me. Sure they sang about street stuff and drugs and whatever but the music itself is what defines a genre and compared to the Stooges, the MC5, or the NY Dolls, VU just seemed like the equivalent of a dull drive on a rainy day.

I do like some of Yo La Tengo’s music though. The concert I went to bored me to tears but some of their albums are basically what VU was doing but better, imho.

Yo La Tengo and Luna are Lou Reed's lap dog's.

The Guy - make fun of/crack jokes about any group you're a part of.

Period.

 

[Mike Eskimo]

I like that Elizabeth Cook version BTW.

 

[The Guy]

Yes.



Yo La Tengo and Luna are Lou Reed's lap dog's.

The Guy - make fun of/crack jokes about any group you're a part of.

Period.

I liked the part where you said "Period."

 

[nojazzhere]

After all these decades, I honestly don’t know any of the VU’s music...I like Lou, but haven’t explored any of their recordings

Sweet Jane.....that's all I got.....AND, I prefer Cowboy Junkies' version.

 

[Frank'n'censed]

Sweet Jane.....that's all I got.....AND, I prefer Cowboy Junkies' version.

I honestly love the original & I’m Canadian...that song really grabs me!

 

[TeleAndSG]

..and she shared a flat with John Cooper Clarke back in the 80s.

I love that Banana album. The three tracks she sings on are sublime.

Saw her once at the Apollo back in the day. Can't remember much, except her playing a wheezing old harmonium. It was probably great though.

How did she deal with Lou Reed’s ancestry if she had such an awful dark side?.

 

[TeleAndSG]

I freely admit that I didn't hear them until way late in my musical exploration and there is some music where the impact is greatest right when the music comes out.

There wasn't a single note of their music that had as big an impact on me as hearing Joy Division's music right when it came out.

And I heard the first VU record at almost exactly the same time.

Everybody's different.

I'm from Detroit.

Stooges.

Regular lunkheads who changed the world.

Not TAF's* who are sooooooo bored with everything

But, VU did influence Bowie a lot. He used to cover their songs way early. Eno says he loved them too.

So there's that...


*Trendy Art F***s

Ooohhh I love The Stooges too. I only have their first album, and it is special because it has two tracks that are unique in their canon: the eerie We Will Fall, and Ann, where Iggy Pop shouts “How I Love You” with a fury I’ve only heard in 90’s Grunge. Brilliant.

 

[TeleAndSG]

I bought all their records almost the day they were released, or should I say the first day I could find them, because it wasn't easy in Oakland CA back then. My brother brought Loaded home from KALX radio where he was working - they didn't want to play it on the station... which is funny because a few years later you couldn't hear anything but punk music on that station. BTW in the same stack was Back in the USA by the MC5 - they thought that was too much for college kids, too.

Anyway - Loaded was brilliant, and you will love it!

I’m quite sure. I would probably miss Cale’s contribution a bit, but I’m sure I will love it.

 

[TDPRI]

We've removed half a dozen posts and banned a member in this thread. Just because members of the group being discussed did and said things as part of their career doesn't mean that we'll set aside our rules of what's appropriate here on the TDPRI so you can quote and discuss some of those things that are inappropriate for this venue.

So, if you want to discuss Velvet Underground that's great do it. But if you want to take the discussion into areas that are a violation of our rules - don't do that. First, it will land you in hot water with the mods and second you'll simply get this thread closed. Wise up!