What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.

Which Velvet Underground Album Is Your Favorite? New Poll Choice (1 Viewer)

Which One?

  • Velvet Underground and Nico

    Votes: 11 34.4%

  • White Light/White Heat

    Votes: 4 12.5%

  • Velvet Underground

    Votes: 5 15.6%

  • Loaded

    Votes: 10 31.3%

  • VU - 1969

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Velvet Underground (Live in San Francisco)

    Votes: 2 6.3%
  • Total voters
    32
rockaction

rockaction

Footballguy
I'm what could be called a very casual fan of the band even though I own all of their albums and several shirts emblazoned with something regarding their existence. 

It's strange, though, I'm not an expert on them by any means. Any aficionados out there? Detractors? What is your favorite Velvet album?

eta* No longer a casual fan -- realizing I never was that casual. And also loving the links provided and edited the title to get rid of options. There are no options.  

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I know Tim is a big fan, and I like them a lot too. Probably my favorite "band". 

I like all of their albums. The first one with Nico is probably my least favorite, although it has a lot of songs I like when done live (waiting for my man, venus in furs, etc). I love, love, love "The Gift" from White Light/White Heat (there's a music-only version on the 40th anniversary release), and really like The Murder Mystery / After Hours from their third album. Loaded speaks for itself - everyone likes that. My favorite song there is Cool It Down. I enjoyed VU as well. 

But my all-time favorite Velvet Underground set is the 4-CD "Live at the Matrix". John Cale is gone by this time, but Doug Yule filled his shoes nicely, and the recordings are really, really good (a lot of live VU is poor quality - this one isn't.) They play around with a lot of the songs, adding verses, telling stories, changing the tempo, etc. Several excellent versions of Waiting for my man, sweet jane, venus, etc. Lou's voice is in peak form (unlike the much later 90's reunion release), and the band is sloppy but tight, if that makes any sense (it will to a Velvet fan). If you like them at all, pick this up - it's money well spent.   

 
jwb said:
I know Tim is a big fan, and I like them a lot too. Probably my favorite "band". 

I like all of their albums. The first one with Nico is probably my least favorite, although it has a lot of songs I like when done live (waiting for my man, venus in furs, etc). I love, love, love "The Gift" from White Light/White Heat (there's a music-only version on the 40th anniversary release), and really like The Murder Mystery / After Hours from their third album. Loaded speaks for itself - everyone likes that. My favorite song there is Cool It Down. I enjoyed VU as well. 

But my all-time favorite Velvet Underground set is the 4-CD "Live at the Matrix". John Cale is gone by this time, but Doug Yule filled his shoes nicely, and the recordings are really, really good (a lot of live VU is poor quality - this one isn't.) They play around with a lot of the songs, adding verses, telling stories, changing the tempo, etc. Several excellent versions of Waiting for my man, sweet jane, venus, etc. Lou's voice is in peak form (unlike the much later 90's reunion release), and the band is sloppy but tight, if that makes any sense (it will to a Velvet fan). If you like them at all, pick this up - it's money well spent.   
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's what I was going for, I think, with the Velvet Underground Live selection. I think it was a double LP recorded in '69 and released in '74 or something like that. I think it's the Matrix recordings. That's what actually inspired me to start this thread: Youtube sort of recommended the double LP to me. 

As for VU, that was a bit of an oversight on my part. Like I said; I'm an imperfect fan with only a workman-like knowledge of the band. Due to my age and proclivities, by the time I was 22 or 23 and getting into them, they already had re-released most of their important stuff and I spent my time with the first four, really.  

 
Last edited by a moderator:
loooooove their first. but I'm also a Nico fan. I still listen to it fairly regularly- probably the only album from that era I can say that about. still feels contemporary and vital, even with Nico's drone.

big fan of both VU and WL/WH, but tbh don't know loaded or squeeze well enough to comment.

 
VU with Nico could of been so much better without Nico IMO. Hard to argue with the songs though. White Light/White Heat and VU are close for me depending on mood. The second side of VU is kind of weak. White Light/White Heat is probably my favorite if I had to pick one; droning squalls of sound that was like nothing I'd ever heard before. 

Loaded is also great. I don't really consider it a true VU album without Mo, Cale and the noise that defined them in the Warhol years, but it is a great collection of songs. More like a solo Lou album, and some of his best songs. 

John Cale is playing VU and Nico in NYC this fall. Would love to check that out.

 
^ big ups on the VU w/Nico

i can recall a time when being a huge devotee of this group was an open call for mockery as a "pretentious, artsy fartsy ####" - but, wow, nothing could be further from the truth. 

nobody was so gloriously tackling that kinda taboo subject matter back in '67  - "Summer of Love"?  ok, hippies - GO LISTEN TO "VENUS IN FURS" "HEROIN" "WAITING FOR MY MAN" "BLACK ANGEL'S DEATH SONG"

ya dig? none of that peace/love crap here. 

(not to mention the proto Goth warblings of "All Tomorrow's Parties", the haunting "I'll Be Your Mirror")...

it had a distinct NYC edge. Times Square in that era was quite a hellish planet, and all of the seedy trappings were so brilliantly captured by the VU. 

this album could only have come from here - and, imo, is as distinct a '60s artifact s the Miracle Mets or the World's Fair or Kruschev at the U.N.

not to see this as the groundbreaking platter it was is foolish.  

revolutionary. 

ETA: and in the time it took to type and post that, Eephus threw up a post that kinda drives home the point I made in the first paragraph. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just figured I'd bump this as the music threads have sunk to the second page. Listening to "Heroin" on Spotify right now. 

My first real introduction to this band was the song Rock n' Roll by Jane's Addiction as a teenager.  Jane's, as reviled as they were and are, were quite the L.A. band back in the day. They were from another world seemingly (at least if you were in ninth grade).  

 
rockaction said:
Grab 'em. You won't regret it. I'd grab 'em and offer to go with you, but I no longer live in CT.  
Click to expand...
I'm a ####/dark mood today over lots and lots of things big and small.

I saw the tickets available, prices not so bad, got excited for a split second and remembered that my wife would hate it and hate my going without her. so back to ####/dark mood.

 
Speaking of Cale, I've always liked his 1980 live album "Sabotage/Live".  It's a recording of a CBGB's show from the previous year that rocks harder than anything else Cale ever recorded.  It's sort of like his version of "Rock n Roll Animal".  The late, great George Scott III is the bass player.

 
Eephus said:
Speaking of Cale, I've always liked his 1980 live album "Sabotage/Live".  It's a recording of a CBGB's show from the previous year that rocks harder than anything else Cale ever recorded.  It's sort of like his version of "Rock n Roll Animal".  The late, great George Scott III is the bass player.
Click to expand...
Interesting beginning. "Which is just enough to make 'em wanna kill for you...but not enough to make 'em wanna die for you."

Sounds like Red Angel Dragnet.  

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Everything I've ever heard by them always sounded okay, but nothing that made me want to listen to more by them.  I own nothing by them and have zero songs in my 12,000-song itunes collection. 

 
Ghost Rider said:
Everything I've ever heard by them always sounded okay, but nothing that made me want to listen to more by them.  I own nothing by them and have zero songs in my 12,000-song itunes collection. 
Click to expand...
More or less in the same boat, except I copied a few of their albums about a decade ago

 
Listening to "Satellite Of Love" by Lou Reed and saw how much like a balloon of lead this went over like so figured I'd bump it. 

 
Mister CIA said:
I could die happy if I never heard European Son again.
Click to expand...
Heh. Picked that for a draft we did. Love that song, actually. Freaked out, fuzzed out, jam.

People don't realize that the Velvets could be the jammiest, most dissonant, feedbackin-est, distorted version of the Dead the Dead never dreamed of.

Both were light years ahead of their sonic times.

 
rockaction said:
Heh. Picked that for a draft we did. Love that song, actually. Freaked out, fuzzed out, jam.

People don't realize that the Velvets could be the jammiest, most dissonant, feedbackin-est, distorted version of the Dead the Dead never dreamed of.

Both were light years ahead of their sonic times.
Click to expand...
Don't know about all that, but I do like European Son and a lot of the noisy-leaning VU stuff.

 
Apple Jack said:
Don't know about all that, but I do like European Son and a lot of the noisy-leaning VU stuff.
Click to expand...
I was overstating it a bit and thinking of Christgau's comparison of NYC noise punk to the Dead, but I messed up -- he was talking about Television's jamming. My bad. Noise is a better way to put it, though some other critic referred to European Son as a jammy freak out, just can't remember who. Bangs?

 
I'm watching CIA's I'm Gonna Move Right In again. So jammy and rockin'. I want Lou's shades.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZ SHADES, BABY!

 
otb_lifer said:
MR. HORSE!!1!  F.T.W

:pickle:

:deadhorse:
Click to expand...
Dude, I had a dream last night they were holding me in a sort of moving prison that was claustrophobic. They stuck my head in this box where I couldn't move it too far to the left or right. It was like 1984 prison.

I picked a race at Pimlico while inside the contraption for some reason, and was freed when the dream shifted. I awoke.  

That was a real dream. You can read into that what you wilt.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
rockaction said:
Dude, I had a dream last night they were holding me in a sort of moving prison that was claustrophobic. They stuck my head in this box where I couldn't move it too far to the left or right. It was like 1984 prison.

I picked a race at Pimlico while inside the contraption for some reason, and was freed when the dream shifted. I awoke.  

That was a real dream. You can read into that what you wilt.
Click to expand...
the most disturbing aspect of that entire post is ... PIMLICO  :X

what, What, WHat, WHAt, WHAT the #### did you do in this (or previous) life to warrant such a ghastly experience?

 
otb_lifer said:
the most disturbing aspect of that entire post is ... PIMLICO  :X

what, What, WHat, WHAt, WHAT the #### did you do in this (or previous) life to warrant such a ghastly experience?
Click to expand...
I not only have been around plenty of casinos and -- ahem -- OTBs in my life and have paid attention, I lived twenty or so minutes outside of B'More for five years when I finally finished college. I worked in D.C., natch. As far as :X , the area was indeed a proverbial swamp (it is a swamp in the summer -- that's not a politically-loaded anything) and a rough go. The Preakness was a huge social event where I was. It was all about the infield. Things got pretty nasty, so I hear.  

 
Last edited by a moderator:
rockaction said:
I not only have been around plenty of casinos and -- ahem -- OTBs in my life and have paid attention, I lived twenty or so minutes outside of B'More for five years when I finally finished college. I worked in D.C., natch. As far as :X , the area was indeed a proverbial swamp (it is a swamp in the summer -- that's not a politically-loaded anything) and a rough go. The Preakness was a huge social event where I was. It was all about the infield. Things got pretty nasty, so I hear.  
Click to expand...
ya know who had a great story (or 100) about Pimlico?  ol' gb EG, that's who ... then again, he could tell of just putting his shoes on in the morning and it would morph into a 38 pg thread filled with hilarity ...

but, i digress ... he gone  :kicksrock:

me? i've never been, and, the way life is shaking out, prolly never will - i've heard it described as the Aqueduct of the South (yes, the SOUTH ... to us native NYers anything below Jersey is the South, and, hell, most of Jersey, for that matter).

Aqueduct never gets debauched - it's a dump which is only open during the winter/spring, so, yeah ... unless you consider the patrons that spill outta 22 buses from Chinatown as debauchery  :shrug:

btw, as per the thread ... Nico ruled, #### the naysayers ... the Banana album is quantum, some of Lou's most inspired lyrics (Venus, Black Angel, Heroin, Waiting) - you get my driftage  :coffee:

 
otb_lifer said:
ya know who had a great story (or 100) about Pimlico?  ol' gb EG, that's who ... then again, he could tell of just putting his shoes on in the morning and it would morph into a 38 pg thread filled with hilarity ...

but, i digress ... he gone  :kicksrock:

me? i've never been, and, the way life is shaking out, prolly never will - i've heard it described as the Aqueduct of the South (yes, the SOUTH ... to us native NYers anything below Jersey is the South, and, hell, most of Jersey, for that matter).

Aqueduct never gets debauched - it's a dump which is only open during the winter/spring, so, yeah ... unless you consider the patrons that spill outta 22 buses from Chinatown as debauchery  :shrug:

btw, as per the thread ... Nico ruled, #### the naysayers ... the Banana album is quantum, some of Lou's most inspired lyrics (Venus, Black Angel, Heroin, Waiting) - you get my driftage  :coffee:
Click to expand...
I hear ya on the racetrack and on anything south of Jersey being the South...that's so true. My friend from SF was uncomfortable south of the Mason-Dixon line, in his words. He's a North dude all the way. North Cali, Northeast, etc. Does not mix well with SoCal or the Southeast. Digs the Midwest, though. But I digress. As for me, I never went to Pimlico. I never had that kind of love that you guys do for the horses. I remember EG's story. He is gone, which is too bad.

As per the thread, yeah, I do get your driftage. We're going to part ways here. It takes a lot for me to get on board with Nico, and I kind of like the Velvet Underground after Cale left in '69-'70 its apex now. But that -- and I stress this -- is only because I played the Vu & Nico album out when I was twenty-six or so. Just abused that thing, over and over. So that's about it, my friend.

 
rockaction said:
I hear ya on the racetrack and on anything south of Jersey being the South...that's so true. My friend from SF was uncomfortable south of the Mason-Dixon line, in his words. He's a North dude all the way. North Cali, Northeast, etc. Does not mix well with SoCal or the Southeast. Digs the Midwest, though. But I digress. As for me, I never went to Pimlico. I never had that kind of love that you guys do for the horses. I remember EG's story. He is gone, which is too bad.

As per the thread, yeah, I do get your driftage. We're going to part ways here. It takes a lot for me to get on board with Nico, and I kind of like the Velvet Underground after Cale left in '69-'70 its apex now. But that -- and I stress this -- is only because I played the Vu & Nico album out when I was twenty-six or so. Just abused that thing, over and over. So that's about it, my friend.
Click to expand...
see, the thing wif the Souf is ... the further South you go, the warmer the climate - folks in the warmer environs are much more laid back than us miserable bastids who have to deal with #### like snow, shoveling snow, scraping ice, shoveling snow, frozen ballsacks, -10 wind/chill, shoveling snow, slush, frozen car batteries, shoveling snow, chicks too bundled up, shoveling snow .... and shoveling snow. 

the South also is bereft of any world class public transportation ... so the folk up North get more misery index tacked on with that variable - i defy anyone to do the RR for a year and NOT wanna throat punch a mother ####er at least 55 times (sometimes in one day).

oh, did i mention our ridiculous taxes?  and shoveling snow?

 
otb_lifer said:
see, the thing wif the Souf is ... the further South you go, the warmer the climate - folks in the warmer environs are much more laid back than us miserable bastids who have to deal with #### like snow, shoveling snow, scraping ice, shoveling snow, frozen ballsacks, -10 wind/chill, shoveling snow, slush, frozen car batteries, shoveling snow, chicks too bundled up, shoveling snow .... and shoveling snow.
Click to expand...
As my ex-girlfriend said about D.C.: "All the speed of the South mixed with the rudeness of the North. Great city!"

 
El Floppo said:
loooooove their first. but I'm also a Nico fan. I still listen to it fairly regularly- probably the only album from that era I can say that about. still feels contemporary and vital, even with Nico's drone.

big fan of both VU and WL/WH, but tbh don't know loaded or squeeze well enough to comment.
Click to expand...
:hifive:

 
Apple Jack said:
That's fair, though it's changing. And the rudeness is primarily from the Hill-oriented transplants, not the locals.
Click to expand...
We lived there for years. It changed a ton when I left so consider that to be around '99 or so. Decades ago. It's an unfair knock today.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Loaded is the best but I also really like the self titled one.

Velvet Underground and Nico has been more of a struggle for me to really get into.  I rank that one towards the bottom.

 
Velvet Underground is one of my all time favorite bands. The past few years I have been listening to Lou Reeds solo albums more and I’ve really been wondering if Transformer and Coney Island Baby are better than anything the Velvet Underground did. Does that sounds crazy?

 
trogg78 said:
Velvet Underground is one of my all time favorite bands. The past few years I have been listening to Lou Reeds solo albums more and I’ve really been wondering if Transformer and Coney Island Baby are better than anything the Velvet Underground did. Does that sounds crazy?
Click to expand...
I have Transformer and think you might have played out your VU records. But that's my own personal preference. I like Lou's really early songwriting, but not so much post-Velvet solo. 

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Top