Amazing if you think about it - for a band with only four studio albums they generated a lot of stuff. Warhol is in the same vicinity.

My favourite solo albums are by Nico. She is a unique artist, no one sounds like Nico. Cale had a lot to do with it but her first 4 albums are untouchable.

I wish the boots were better quality as they show the true power of the band in their prime. I also wish there was more from 1967 - probably their greatest year, yet only the Gymnasium has surfaced. Cale has more tapes but he's not that interested in sorting through them. C'mon John, show us what you got.

I just remembered - I have the Super Deluxe box sets too

It’s a 1980 Italian pressing with the sped up audience recording, plays pretty well besides a few clicks and pops. Vinyl is VG++, only a few scuffs that are barely visible. Sleeve has normal shelf wear, has some dirt on the front.

Im thinking about selling it, but I’ve looked everywhere online and I’ve found no comps or sold listings. I also think it’s something a lot of fans would want since it’s an original recording of what later became the Le Bataclan live record. If anyone has some info let me know, thanks for reading.

A must for any VU fan.

She declared her love for TVU&N while accepting Variety's Hitmaker of the Year Award:

“In March 1967, The Velvet Underground released their album ‘The Velvet Underground And Nico’. It debuted on the Billboard 200 at Number 199. And a few weeks later, it rose to its peak position of 195. But don’t worry, it dropped out, and then it re-entered the charts. And later in life, Lou Reed told Brian Eno that it had only sold around 30,000 copies over its first five years.

In my humble opinion, this record is the definition of a hit. This record is arguably one of the most influential and groundbreaking records of our time. This album is the apex of fine art and DIY culture colliding. It’s high and low, it’s poetry meets drugs, it’s earnest meets arrogance, and even if you’re never heard a single song from this album, you’ll undoubtedly recognize its cover, either from the walls of a modern art gallery or from the shop floor of an Urban Outfitters.

And let’s be real, what is a hit if you’re not conquering both of those places? My album cover has not yet appeared at the Guggenheim or the Whitney or the Tate. However, some of my merch is available to purchase right now in Urban Outfitters. So I guess that means that I’m halfway there. So thank you very much, Variety.”

https://www.nme.com/news/music/charli-xcx-on-the-velvet-underground-nico-this-album-is-the-apex-of-fine-art-3820172

​VU's influence on Charli is one example of the band's great impact on electronic music; here are many more:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EDM/s/MlI9YSY3dy

This is a wee live clip of the Glasgow based psych/garage band TheFloorDwellers opening Freakender Festival with an original cheekily named 'Spacemen 4'.

All updates on music releases and gigs in Scotland will be posted on our Instagram TheFloorDwellers with a link below

—It's shameless (I know) but when promoters turn you down based purely off of follower count—it can be disheartening. So a simple follow is genuinely VERY appreciated!

When social media now dictates the promotion of music, a new scene has been forced to emerge in Glasgow with fellow bands 'Supersun, Fatale, Lupercalia and Bogle' putting up their own independent shows within 'the cabbage is forever' movement.

With a passion for 'the old way', they'll soon be releasing a limited, polished 7-inch record, featuring original tracks 'Spacemen 4' and 'Death of Pop', ahead of their release on streaming platforms early next year.

https://www.instagram.com/thefloordwellers?mdxt=ZmduMjZ2M3VyZWZ2

I think I found this video by chance when looking for cover version of the song on YT. It was my entry to David Lang's music, which I recommend people check out! He also wrote new music for several more VU songs, among them Heroin, but this one I like best. It seems as though nobody has shared this here before, hope you like it!

I was blown away by this when it came out and that's without the 3 versions of Sister Ray on offer.

Never understood why the Booleg series didn't continue. Every life show on the deluxe editions could have easily been released under it, to say nothing of an official release for Cole Ave....

Yet it was another 10 years before the next 'new' VU release - The Matrix Tapes (which could've been under the Bootleg series) and nothing since then.

Thought I’d share it here for you’s guys.

John Cale's concert from the Armadillo World Headquarters was broadcast on the Reverend Neil X show on KUT-FM in 1979.

Good afternoon! I am currently parting with my entire record collection and I still have this Velvet Underground record available. If you’re interested please message me!

The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat (The Sound Of Vinyl exclusive blue vinyl) $19.99

Has my favorite version of Sister Ray on it. The guitar is fucking venomous and Doug's organ really shines. I would love to own this on vinyl so I can weird out all my friends by blasting this whenever they're over but the bootleg is super rare + expensive. Is there some weird rights issues that prevent this from being an official release?

hello everyone. i feel that i am going insane. maybe 3 years ago, when i listened to the green album with the butt, the version of heroin they had was much louder, more aggressive. i swear to god they changed the version, it is much chiller. i distinctly remember listening to the album one day (at this time in my life i listened to it front to back daily) and even from the first few seconds it was different. believe it went from downloaded to being the only song on the album that was not downloaded. if anyone knows what i am talking about, could you tell me where i can hear the version initially on spotify?

​

​On the Beatles sub, people say the Beatles are the greatest at everything and nobody shows up to hate on the band.

​But here on the VU sub, it's common to read things like:

​"The Beatles were and still are widely influential. VU had its admirers, but nobody really talks about them"

​"It's obviously more about the fact that anybody can write/sing 'Waiting for the Man' and 'Penny Lane' requires an orchestra"

​"Already liking the Velvet Undershittyground is just an effort to be different."

Lou reed needed to abandon the velvets because as a band they were deeply tied to the avant-garde whereas he needed a more conventional outlet (/to make money). Andy warhol was manufacturing some bullshit in "the factory", nico plain useless, john cale got a viola attached at the hip (or clavicle), and the rest of them just people who are in a band. However, there is something to be said for reed and warhol's mutual deployment of irony in their bodies of work. Or rather, meta-commentary would be a better word. And this is (mostly) not to disparage any of them as artists, I'm just speaking on the terms of lou's development as an artist, and there was something very special in their personal forms of expression converging.

Los Angeles Times: "What about the Velvet Underground drew you and R.E.M. to cover their songs?"

MICHAEL STIPE: "For all of us in R.E.M., the Velvets were one of the most significant musical moments in American history. The first album is one of the top five, top three maybe, albums ever released, in terms of how complete it is and how great it is and what a lightning-in-a-bottle moment they captured. How audacious they were in their art, the music — and how much that was out of step with the world that they were in. And R.E.M. always felt a little out of step with what was going on. We forged our own path, and they were an aspirational influence for sure."

[...]

Los Angeles Times: "How well did you know Lou Reed?"

MICHAEL STIPE: "When he died [in 2013], I realized that I had known Lou for half of my life. He was kind of curmudgeonly and not altogether pleasant when we first met — I was 25, I think — but by the end of his life, we were friends.

We were neighbors on Canal Street, and of course I had deep admiration for him and for the work that he had done and the same for Laurie [Anderson], so we would hang out from time to time. He would give me these giant hugs and hold on to me for minutes at a time. He was a wildly intelligent and very emotionally accessible — and then inaccessible — person, but a total sweetheart in the end."

.

I tried to share the link to the full interview yesterday, but Reddit automatically deleted it. So, I'll just leave the title of the article here for anyone who wants to find it on Google: "Michael Stipe, superfan, on the ‘beautiful queerness’ of the Velvet Underground" - Los Angeles Times, 2021.