The Velvet Underground & Nico - Best Track Poll & General Discussion Thread

Maybe I am

 

I love that guitar solo. It reminds me of Pick Up Thy Stethoscope by Pink Floyd

 

Difficult to choose one track. I could have gone with any of the eleven, but went with Venus In Furs.

 

Listened again this AM and revised my vote to Parties instead of Fatale.

 

Such a tough choice..... Went with "Waiting for the man", but the album is great from start to finish. A true classic.

 

Tough choice, but I have to go with "I'll Be Your Mirror". In a truck full of empathetic, heartfelt embraces of the disenfranchised and hopeless, you find this gem that stands above the others. It's an embrace full of understanding, commitment and love, one of the most giving of Lou's songs.

 

Thanks for voting for this one, it's super underrated. Such a gentle melody.

 

Cool that you met him - must have been a bit nerve-wracking! Going by Laurie and others he had a Lou Reed/tough guy persona (a blue mask?) he usually put on at "work", while being a darling with friends and the inner circle. Sounds fair to me; I believe his true nature comes across in his songs. Never meet your idols is a pretty good rule though.

The best Lou interview ever was in Mojo in the 90s, where the journo managed to unlock the nice and candid Lou due to his genuine interest and intelligent/informed questions. . . don't know if it's online.
If the journalist showed signs of ignorance and laziness it was always a bumpy ride.

 

This is one of my all time favorite albums. I voted "All Tomorrow's Parties"......for Nico's voice and the hypnotic piano line. Everything is great.......including "European Son."

 

I'll be the voter who votes for I'll Be Your Mirror.

 

This lp is like Revolver, totally impossible to pick out a favorite, they're all killers. Although the mixes on this lp are not necessarily my favorites. I prefer the Dolph acetate mix of 'European Son' and the alternate mix of Sunday Morning from the recent Deluxe edition

 

Beautiful track. It's my a close second for me, and I'm surprised it's so underrated. It's Nico's best track on the album for me

 

I"ll Be Your Mirror.

I love the 3 Nico songs the most. Don't care for the last two songs. This isn't a personal favorite album but I'm very glad it exists.

 

Hard choice for me between "Heroin," "Venus in Furs" and "All Tomorrow's Parties" -- three songs and arrangements that I think encapsulate the best, most important elements of the Velvet Underground's output. While "All Tomorrow's Parties" may be my favorite: perhaps my favorite ever Reed lyric and that amazing minimalist Cale piano riff is just the heart and soul of the VU's brand of art-rock, I think "Heroin" in the end may be the best song and arrangement on the album so I'm voting for it. "Sunday Morning," "I'll Be Your Mirro" and "Femme Fatale" are beautiful pieces of pop/rock songwriting too, but of a much more conventional sort. What an album though, to my ears as good an album as rock ever produced and one that even as I've grown less and less interested in rock music has remained in rotation in my life for almost 40 years!

 

I went with "Heroin", but "I'll Be Your Mirror" and "Black Angel's Death Song" are close runner-ups. But I love every track on this album (except for "European Son" - I never got that one.)

It blows my mind to think it was recorded in 1967 (summer of love). Talk about ahead of it's time.

 

"Heroin". No glorifying or scaremongering. Only descriptive and credible. It's a great composition.

 

Agreed - I've never tried heroine (and don't plan to), but it at least sounds like the most realistic song about it that I've heard. Harrowing and absolutely compelling.

 

The only place that houses this album is in my five-disc Peel Slowly and See box set; I bought it because I wanted to see what all the hubbub was about. I'm glad I did.
There's a Rolling Stone review out there which states (here, I paraphrase): "If you said you were a follower of VU from the start you were either really cool or a total liar".
"All Tomorrow's Parties", which gets my vote, ends Disc 1 (the "rehearsal disc"), then begins Disc Two (The Velvet Underground & Nico album).
It's amazing what just a little bit of studio production can do to a pretty simple song to make it great.

 

Beautifully put .

 

And they didn't have a producer either (Warhol was the benefactor of course), Cale was responsible for many of the arrangements.

 

-I picked I'll Be Your Mirror. One of Lou's best attempts at a pop song that
could have been a contender if mainstream artists had covered it at the time.
-There She Goes Again is the best rocker, and the same analysis applies here.
-Heroin, Venus In Furs, Femme Fatale and the more dissonant tracks were more
innovative lyrically, musically or both...but not quite as well crafted as songs.
-All Tomorrow's Parties has always been a personal favourite...even when I
finally realized that musically it's a Euro-trash take on The Byrds' arrangement
of The Bells Of Rhymney.

 

It's tough to choose. I went with Venus in Furs - I think shiny might be my favorite word.

 

European son is a WICKED jam. Needs more votes for sure.

 

Femme fatale is my favorite but i voted for heroin... Always disliked the SQ of Femme fatale and how some Nico sentences end distorted with the instruments...

 

All Tomorrow's Parties.