The Velvet Underground

While the Velvet Underground met with widespread commercial indifference during their lifetime, their reputation kept growing in stature as everyone from Television to R.E.M. to Orange Juice cited them as a major artistic influence. So, in 1985, the tracks from the band's final (unreleased) MGM album were dusted off and targeted to alternative rock fans. The plan worked and VU actually sold more than any of the band's original releases did the first time around. Filled with amazing songs (many of which would show up on Lou Reed's solo albums in different forms), VU is highlighted by "Foggy Notion," "I Can't Stand It Anymore" and two "[Girl] Says" cuts.

Reviled by their hippie contemporaries, barely acknowledged by their record company,
pegged by the media as a pop nightmare sprung full-blown from the pasty forehead of Andy
Warhol, the members of the Velvet Underground worked hard and paid heavily for their
place in rock history. It seems incredible now that in the band's troubled lifetime (basically
extending from late 1965 to the release of Loaded in 1970) they managed to reco... More >

Each of the Velvets' four official studio albums had a distinct personality, and so does this unofficial one, recorded mostly in mid-1969, right after The Velvet Underground appeared. It's goofy, relaxed, simultaneously conversational and obscure, an effect accentuated by the unfinished feel of takes the band never prepared for public consumption. As a result, especially given PolyGram's state-of-the-art remix, it's their most listenable record even if its friendliness is deceptive--the disarming straight-ahead rocker "Foggy Notion" has a lyric whose casual sadism beats any of The Velvet Underground & Nico's shock-horror perversities. If you ever doubt the VU's rightness, just compare the flashy compromises of the solo "Lisa Says" and "I Can't Stand It" (itself the making of Lou Reed) to the flat rush of the Tucker/Morrison-powered versions here. A Basement Tapes for the '80s. (Grade - A)