This is what I wrote about the Velvets in "Totally Shuffled".
RIP Lou.
December 15th
The Velvet Underground-Jesus-The Velvet
Underground
I remember that
the first Velvet Underground record I bought was a double LP compilation called
“Andy Warhol’s Velvet Underground Featuring Nico”. Not the most inspiring album
title ever, but I suppose that it did what it was supposed to. The Nico bit was
a bit of a misnomer, as out of the 17 tracks on the two records, there were
only two with Nico’s warbling on there-“Femme Fatale”and “All Tomorrow’s
Parties”-so in that sense it was a pretty much a good buy. Nico is a bit of a
Zen artist to me; less is more. Overall, the compilation was a fairly wide, but
shallow representation of The Velvet Underground’s work-it had tracks from all
of their studio albums that had been issued at the time of its release in 1970.
It must have been quite a popular album because it was still in print when I
got it in 1980 or so. But it just contained what you could call the “obvious”
tracks-“Sister Ray”, “Heroin”, “Pale Blue Eyes”, “Venus in Furs”, “Sunday
Morning” etc. It also had a terrible sleeve-Warhol’s Coke bottle paintings in a
3 x 3 grid and all the gatefold had was one massive copy of part of the Coke
painting. The whole thing smacked of MGM slapping something out in 1970 as The
Velvet’s broke up and cashing in on whatever Warhol was up to at the time. But
as I said, it was a start.
For a long time
this was the only Velvet Underground record I had and it seemed to do it for
me. I liked the noise of “Heroin” and “Sister Ray” and the wistfulness of
“Sunday Morning” and “Pale Blue Eyes”, but overall it wasn’t anything special.
I’d play it every so often, but ended up skipping most of the tracks. It all
felt a bit disjointed and incoherent, and I couldn’t see what all the fuss was
about them.
However, on one
crisp and clear autumn morning-and this would have been about 1986 or so-I woke up with a bit of a cold and generally
felt a bit crap. Instead of doing the sensible thing of having a Lemsip and
staying in bed, I decided to try to shake it off by going into town and having
a wander around. (Man flu? I laughed in the face of man flu back then). It was
a day off work as well and I didn’t want to spend it moping around the house.
This was in the day well before the advent of the internet, so the thought of
spending a day coughing, sneezing and spluttering while wasting the time
browsing away was unimaginable. So, I jumped the bus into town, got a cup of
tea and wandered around the record shops for the want of anything better to do.
It was on a bit of a whim therefore that I picked up the third Velvet
Underground album and headed back home with it, a box of Kleenex, a jar of
Vick’s Vaporub and a packet of Lemsip. Lou Reed would have been proud.
I collapsed on the bed when I got in, but not
before brewing up a Lemsip and sticking the album on. Now maybe it was because
I felt so knackered and full of cold or maybe because there was something about
the weather-although it was cold, it was one of those autumn days when it was
bright and the sun streamed through the window casting a warming light on the
room-but something happened as that album spun away on the turntable. I didn’t
move from the bed and just lay on my back as the tracks played. My head was
swimming and I was falling in and out of sleep, yet it all made sense. This was
the Velvet Underground album that I should have bought in the first place.
Totally Shuffled UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA
Totally Shuffled US:http://www.amazon.com/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
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