The Velvet Underground Self Titled Third Album Song by Song Thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Rose River Bear, Jun 22, 2018.

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  1. Bruso

    Bruso Designated survivor

    Location:
    Big Muddy
    This album has some exceptionally beautiful performances and I love this lineup with Sterling gaining a more prominent role. That said, Cale’s ouster appears to be a boneheaded move. There aren’t many John Cales in the world and his contributions were irreplaceable. I realize Lou wanted to focus more on his songs but I think the songs they recorded between WL/WH and this album showed there was plenty of room for both in the VU.
     
  2. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member Thread Starter

    I loved Cale in the band as well but IIRC, he started to push some pretty strange suggestions...strange even for Reed.
    I do wish Cale had worked with Reed on the album and they could have found common ground.
     
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  3. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member Thread Starter

  4. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member Thread Starter

    The Velvet Underground Self Titled Third Album Song by Song Thread

    1. Candy Says
     
  5. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member Thread Starter

    I always thought that this song with the doo wop type ending may have been a spark for Bowie to write The Prettiest Star with its doo wop style vocals and chords.
     
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  6. Bruso

    Bruso Designated survivor

    Location:
    Big Muddy
    At the time I was really getting into VU and trying to find their records, their 3rd one was out of print. It was kind of a holy grail for a time because I didn’t have much info about it other than it was or had been out there. The first time I heard some of the songs was on an MGM compilation which may have been the earliest VU comp in the US. It was a goldmine. I loved the 3rd album songs. The album actually sounded pretty good as a stand-alone release. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the positions of the 3rd album songs were similar to their positions on the 3rd album itself.

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    The credits for the 3rd album songs are interesting.

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    [​IMG]

    This album was always a treasure. After I got a copy of the 3rd album, I gave this one to a friend who was starting to listen to the VU.
     
  7. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member Thread Starter

    Cool stuff. I have never seen this album.
     
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  8. asdf35

    asdf35 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin TX
    I was always on Team Cale until recently as the nicely balanced tonality of the 1969 Matrix Tapes clicked for me. Cale would have been pebbles all over that smooth road. Plus we got "Vintage Violence" and everything else he went on to do.
     
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  9. dammitjanet

    dammitjanet Fun, natural fun

    Location:
    Montreal
    This is my favourite album, ever. I love how it is the flip side of the velvets coin from WL/WH. Instead of loud and aggressive it is soft, dreamy, and has tremendous honesty and heart, and it shows how powerful those characteristics can be. This is what I listen to if I'm anxious or depressed and it always helps. Being my favourite I think it's perfect the way it is, so I don't mind that Cale isn't on it, although I would have liked him to eventually return to the band (say in 1970, after the 1969 live shows). I think the more delicate music and stark production fit the lyrical themes of queerness (it is pride month which means it is literally illegal to ignore how gay this band is), vulnerability, heartbreak, questioning and redemption well.

    Candy Says is one of my all time favourites. It is stunningly beautiful and dreamlike and the doo-doo-wahs at the end are so lovely and heartbreaking. I remember when I first got into the Velvets the "Candy/Stephanie/Lisa Says" device was really novel and intriguing to me and they are still among my favourite songs. I think Lou was particularly close to this one as well because he said he let Doug sing it to get some distance from it and take the pressure off him. There is a real nice version with Lou singing lead somewhere on the Professor Tapes bootleg.
     
  10. Safeway 1

    Safeway 1 "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"

    Location:
    Manzanillo, Mexico
    Depends on the day of the week. Love all four of 'em!
     
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  11. dammitjanet

    dammitjanet Fun, natural fun

    Location:
    Montreal
    The head says Cale is the cool avant-garde one, but the heart just wants to hear Doug Yule's vocal harmonies
     
  12. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member Thread Starter

    Excellent comments.
    I always thought the line "What do you think I'd see, if I could walk away from Me" was one of his best.
     
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  13. lightbulb

    lightbulb Not the Brightest of the Bunch

    Location:
    Smogville CA USA
    As I heard The Velvet Underground’s album’s in sequence, about a dozen years after the fact, I tried to imagine the context of their release.

    One could easy assume that by the VU’s third release, most of the few music listeners and music critics would just dismiss them as an avant-garde New York noise band backed by the pop-artist Andy Warhol.

    As a result, I’d imagine this album was initially ignored not only by the general music audience, but also fans of “complex” music that also pigeonholed them as abrasive rockers.

    It was a very wise and astute decision by Lou Reed and the band to reduce the sonic assault on their 3rd release, veering towards folky singer-songwriter territory. The different creative approach no doubt confounded some of their initial hardcore fanbase, but at the same time displayed the band’s musical flexibility and versatility.

    After five decades past, it’s easy how The Velvet Underground’s albums later influenced various segments of the Rock and Pop Music world.
     
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  14. bvb1123

    bvb1123 Rock and Roll Martian

    Location:
    Cincinnati Ohio
    Their first album, to me at 17, was mind-blowing. WL/WH just annoyed me. I've since grown to like it but it was this, the 3rd album that cemented my love of VU. One of those rare albums that I love every track on it. One of my most played albums.
     
  15. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member Thread Starter

    This article lists Candy Says at #2 of the top ten VU tracks of all time.
    The 10 Best Velvet Underground Songs

    2. “Candy Says” from The Velvet Underground (1969):
    Doug Yule’s wondrous and strangely androgynous vocals on the self-titled album’s opener “Candy Says” represents one of the most intense moments in rock history, evincing a vulnerability reminiscent of nothing so much as the great Chet Baker. The song relays the tragic tale Warhol Factory fixture Candy Darling, a beloved but tortured transsexual who later died at the age of 29. Yule brings a deep subtlety to his reading that wrings an almost unbearable amount of emotion from one of Reed’s greatest-ever sets of lyrics. From the opening lines “Candy Says / I’ve come to hate my body / and all that it requires / in this world,” the level of grief and resignation are nearly excruciating. The Velvets at their most moving and elegiac.
     
  16. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member Thread Starter

    Back in 1969 I used to skip tracks on White Light White Heat. I usually play the entire album at this point....most of the time. :D
     
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  17. samthesham

    samthesham Forum Resident

    Location:
    Moorhead MN
    Without a doubt 4 of the Velvets greatest songs are on TVU they happen to be 4 of my VU favs as well...

    Those are;

    What Goes On

    Beggining To See The Light

    Pale Blue Eyes

    Candy Says

    TVU was a real shock to those of us who bought WLWH a few months earlier in 1968....

    Of course as history has proved VU were nothing if not unpredictable
     
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  18. bvb1123

    bvb1123 Rock and Roll Martian

    Location:
    Cincinnati Ohio
    Those are 3 of my top VU songs too. You have great taste in music.
     
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  19. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member Thread Starter

    Wow....you heard WLWH upon release.
    I did not hear the first three albums until 1969 when I discovered them in my brother's record collection.
    I have to say I was still a little too young to fully understand the music and lyrics in 1969. My brain and life experiences had to catch up.
     
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  20. samthesham

    samthesham Forum Resident

    Location:
    Moorhead MN
    Ditto

    Thank you
     
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  21. the pope ondine

    the pope ondine Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia

    great write up ( but leaving Heroin out of the top ten is questionable move by that list....I mean, come on)

    and just for the hell of it heres Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis *before he thought he was james dean for a day* rehearsing a play in 1971 (maybe not everyones cup of tea but Id love to have been able to hang out and watch one of their crazy plays, I think lou supposedly wrote the music for one but that might've been a gimmick (I know deniro did soe early work with Jackie)

     
  22. Bruso

    Bruso Designated survivor

    Location:
    Big Muddy
  23. SJR

    SJR Big Boss Man

    I love this album, after White Light/White Heat, which blew my mind wide open, this was a welcome come down. Even my wife enjoys this one (apart from the last tracks).

    Candy Says is sublime. Absolutely beautiful track. The version with Antony gives me goosebumps.
     
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  24. samthesham

    samthesham Forum Resident

    Location:
    Moorhead MN
    Yes &I actually was at the fabled End of Cole Ave show in Dallas fall of 69 and briefly spoke to Reed in between sets....

    I have a very long detailed post about the show & my meeting Reed in the Lou Reed Appreciation thread here on SHF if you care to read it....

    But yes I had 2 favorite albums in 1968 that spent more time on the TT than anything else...

    As far apart musically as they were from each other they are my 2 fav of 1968....

    #1.Van Morrison Astral Weeks

    #2.Velvets WLWH
     
  25. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    I'm not sure why. This has been the VU album of choice for a lot of people for a long time.
     
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