The Velvet Underground & Nico

Listented to this maybe 4 times in the last two days and have a lot of thoughts. I'm spending too much time on this...

Where I've landed is this is cool as hell.

Many bands try to develop mystique and Velvet Undergound, no doubt with some intention, did it effortlessly. The world they bring you into with this album is unlike any other. Lou Reed and Nico carry the day here - coming off as cool and weird as ever. They deliver on being the seedy underbelly of all the flower power movement at the time and I'm sure was refreshing, and maybe distrurbing, to many.

Reading up on this one I did not know the Warhol was the actual Band Manager. I also had not heard of the Plastic Exploding Inevitable (a multi-media experience with Warhol movies and the Velvet Underground etc.) which sounds awesome.

I like all the tracks, or at least aspects of them, but this time I'll Be Your Mirror stood out. I've always loved Nico and I don't know why. I think its because she seems so out of place, but happy with that? Very nice sounding voice too. Listening through the first time I thought the premise was she was singing this to a dirtbag and showing them what a piece of shit they are. Second time through I realized thats not what it is, but i like that version better.

Black Angel Death Song might be my only hang up. IMO its a Dylan rip off and doesn't make sense.

Lou Reed is great. I want to know more about Warhol and this Plastic Exploding business. Gotta to back and compare to the first VU we got.

I appreciate that it has had a world of influence but I'd rather listen to those than this. Similar to Dylan in that covers are so better than the original.

Ahh, the banana album. I'd actually fairly recently revisited this prior to today's undertaking, so it has remained fresh in my mind.

Fearless, unsettling, and weird yet strangely accessible in some respects, it would have been a travesty if this hadn't been an entry of the 1001. This was years ahead of its time, and it still sounds just as vital approaching 60 years later. Nico's contributions to the album only elevate the sense of eeriness and detachment evident throughout, still provoking debate to this day, although for my money they are just as crucial a component of its makeup as any of the unorthodox-of-the-time instrumentation. My Dad was a huge proponent of this album, released during his birth year of 1967, and it was one of the first records he ever purchased alongside the likes of Pink Floyd and Kraftwerk.

This is #day323 of my #1001albumsyoumusthearbeforeyoudie challenge, and… not even sure what else there is to say about this album that hasn't already been said. It's an essential piece of art rock history. What I particularly like about it is how it sits at the crossroads of art forms at the end of the '60s: photo, film, poetry, performance. "Found music" begs the description. It also feels detached from the psychedelic rock scene of the era, because there's goth, there's punk, there's a lot of everything in between. This album was probably too avant-garde for its time. But maybe it wasn't made for its time at all. Just listen to what John Cale does to that electric viola on, say, "Heroin"... it's like he's exorcising the instrument. My favorites have to be "Venus in Furs," the aforementioned "Heroin," "All Tomorrow's Parties," and, I guess, "European Son." This is a 5 out of 5, of course. Looking forward to #day324.

This is the definite VU album. Loved every minute. Venus in Furs is incredible and it’s insane that these songs were made in 67 amongst the beatles and beach boys. I’ll always cherish the memory of hearing heroine randomly playing at a Warhol popup museum when i was in Croatia. Easily a 5 star

What an absolutely fantastic album. I've been pretty familiar with about half of the album for a long time now, but it had been ages since I listened to the whole thing start-to-finish. So glad to come back to this one, because the songs I had overlooked previously really stood out this time. What a treat!

Fun lil side story:

Back in 2005-2009 a few buddies & I had a campus radio show (called Happy Time, named after the Daniel Johnston song which was also the show's theme song). I also worked a full-time job, and one night during night shift when my buddies were manning the booth they played Heroin.

My co-workers and I were listening to the show and one particularly grumpy co-worker decided to phone in to complain about Heroin's raucus, dissonant violin ending. He expressed with great contempt over the phone to my buddy in the booth that "it just sounds like a broken violin!". The response he received?

"You're a broken violin!"

And you know what? In a metaphorical sense, he kind of was.

Pretty good but I wasn't a fan of the final track.

This one upsets me. I want to be different so bad. I want to be that guy who says “this is massively overrated”, but I just can’t. It’s really great. Even the songs featuring Nico on lead vocals don’t detract from my enjoyment. You win banana album, you win.

Tracks like ‘Venus in Furs’, ‘The Black Angel’s Death Song’ and ‘European Son’ enable The Velvet Underground’s debut album to still sound surprising and edgy 51 years later. John Cale’s strings, tremolo on the guitar and weird percussion/ sample effects are just some of the elements that elevate this from being a standard fare 1960s rock album. Oh, and the fact that Lou Reed is an amazing front man with an unmistakable voice.

‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ introduces a lovely psychedelic flavour to this record. Nico’s addition to the line up really helps break up the feel of the tracklisting. She sings in a low, haunting but relaxed way which sounds at odds with the frantic piano behind her vocals.

‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ are relaxed perfect pop songs that are real levellers. You’d be hard pushed to find someone who’d hate them. It’s strange that neat, cute little flavours like these could be sat on the same LP that delivers something as expansive, beefy and lyrically outrageous as ‘Heroin’.

Invigorating straight up rock songs ‘I’m Waiting for my Man’, ‘There She Goes Again’ and ‘Run Run Run’ are completely different again but they sound cohesive with the rest of the album. They manage to keep on varyin the way they write and perform without it all sounding like a disjointed mess.

The final track ‘European Son’ sounds like it is constantly on the edge of falling over, but they juggle that sound and just about keeping everything in place - its electrifying.

It would be easy to underestimate this record and mistake it for a good but standard rock LP, but its not. It is certainly a 5* album.

Pretty generic hippie rock. I think there may have been some novelty in the mixing of the album, but I wasn't paying quite enough attention to truly say.

3.54

The album is pretty decent, but it's not varied enough for me. I can listen to it for a while, but a whole album in that style is too much for me.

People say this album is super influential, and I don't doubt it - and maybe it's because I wasn't around when this came out - but it just doesn't hit too hard for me. I think Heroin is very cool, and I'm not too fond of the experimental bits, but I think it's supremely overrated if anything.

This one is going to take more than one listen to absorb. I tended to prefer the ones where Nico took the lead on the vocals. Which are so sweet compared to the Lou Reed songs. It’s a fairly schizophrenic album.
Sometimes the lyrics are so out there that it almost feels pretentious (The Black Angel’s Death Song, I’m looking at you). But then there’s I’m Waiting for the Man which is very immediate. And Heroin which doesn’t try to hide a thing.
Lots to think about. Not boring. But not really anything that is something that would make me happy to listen to. I can only imagine going back to this if I’m in a pretty low mood and just want to sit in a little funk.

First half is okay VU, back half is unlistenable. 1/5

didn't like the Nico songs

Would Sir care for a starter of some garlic bread perhaps?

No, thank you. I will proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs, please.

"Sunday Morning" is a light opening bop before you hit the harshness of "Venus In Furs" and "Heroin"

Epochal !

Loved it when I first heard it 35+ years ago. Still love it now. Solid 5.

Fairly simplistic school-band standard songs. Not helped by listening on headphones as the mix isn't great so there is a lot of singing in one ear and guitar in the other. My assumption is that this album is on the 1001 list because they were an influencial band. However as a standalone album, although interesting, it's something I won't be listening to again.