Re-visiting Velvet Underground's "1969: The Velvet Underground Live"

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Tree-bot, Sep 11, 2015.

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  1. Tree-bot

    Tree-bot Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Australia
    A super-cool album released in 1974. Raw, relaxed atmosphere, great songs, a band that is enjoying what they do. It's all there and very infectious.
    An album I don't hear often, but love it every time I do.

    [​IMG]

    Opinions anyone?
     
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  2. belushipower

    belushipower Forum Resident

    First Velvets album I heard (as a pre-teen in 1975). Still my favourite.
     
  3. malco49

    malco49 Forum Resident

    i like it
     
  4. drumzNspace

    drumzNspace Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Yuck City
    Great music. Awful album cover.
     
  5. C6H12O6

    C6H12O6 Senior Member

    Location:
    My lab
    Once considered an essential VU release when bootleg shows (particularly those in good quality) weren't so well known, but it's taken a significant hit now that people have access to much more, especially with the Matrix tapes being released.

    It's still a very good live album, but the inferior sources used for mastering have really aged it, and I actually prefer their live shows from the tail end of Cale's tenure and the earliest days of Yule's, they had much more fire to them.

    And yes, the cover sucks. After their self-titled third, the art on their albums became terrible, partly because they were made by artists who didn't know this band at all. (See "Loaded")
     
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  6. Fastnbulbous

    Fastnbulbous Doubleplus Ungood

    Location:
    Washington DC USA
    Best version of "White Light/White Heat" -- totally gonzo guitar solo. Not great sound quality but excellent performances on the whole.
     
  7. Mylene

    Mylene Senior Member

    The local public radio station used to play What Goes on from this album during the breakfast show like it was a current single. I got sucked in and bought the thing at the local suburban record shop. There's lots of greatness on it.
     
  8. Tree-bot

    Tree-bot Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Australia
    Yeah, luckily album covers are often misleading to the music held within.
     
  9. TeddyB

    TeddyB Senior Member

    Location:
    Hollywoodland
    Actually, no. The cover art for 1969 Live was created by Lou's tour manager Ernie Thormahlen, who was also the back cover model for Transformer. So he definitely knew the band. I don't know who did the cover for Loaded.
     
    notesfrom likes this.
  10. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dixie
    I prefer "What Goes On" here, with its great organ solo, to the studio version. Same with "Sweet Jane" and "Heavenly wine and roses".

    "Ocean" and "New Age" are also highlights
     
    HappyFingers and trumpet sounds like this.
  11. dino77

    dino77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    Stanislaw Zagorski did the cover art for Loaded, and he didn't know or was even familiar with the band...
     
  12. belushipower

    belushipower Forum Resident

    I've always liked the cover. Remember, this was the mid 70s. A bit glam, a bit Transformer, a bit NYC, a bit inappropriate! In another thread, someone mentioned that it was a painting of a man. Even better!

    Would the banana on the front on the first album "suck" if it wasn't so iconic. Does the album sound like a pop art screenprint? Not really.
     
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  13. egebamyasi

    egebamyasi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Worcester, MA
    I loved this when it was a two-record set. This was an essential album to have when discovering the Velvet Underground in the early 80's before everything was back in print. So different from their studio albums. I like the cover too.
     
    mds, MagneticSouth1966 and Pancat like this.
  14. mr.datsun

    mr.datsun Incompletist

    Location:
    London
    As a rare and early release of the VU live (in the 70's), I still have an affection for this album. The treatment of late period material like SJ and NA is good - and those two songs are my favourite versions

    What I don't like is the treatment of the Cale material. What Goes On and White Light / White Heat with their extended rock and roll work-outs feel like they have forsaken the incisive out-there tough vision of the originals. And this goes double for all Yule versions of Sister Ray!

    I don't enjoy the way that Yule embellishes everything he plays with trite-sounding good time rock and roll cliches. This tendency really comes to the fore when he plays organ.

    I think WGO is superior in La Cave 1968 which still sounds like the Cale era song it was, complete with Reed's gone-nuts guitar solo. On the 3rd LP where Yule sensibly plays the Cale-written low-key mono-tone organ solo and this is, for me, the best sounding version we have.

    Frankly, I think this band were better with Yule on bass and then his sensibilities work out much better and more sympathetic to the material of the 1969 songs.

    One of the highlights of these concerts is the version of I'm Set Free which is actually on the Matrix Tapes and not Live 1969.

    I know this will not go down well with Doug Yule fans, but I do somtimes get fed up with all the apologias written on behalf of his musical contributions. But I do think Live 1969 has a special place in the VU history as separate to the complete Matrix Tapes.
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2015
  15. cc--

    cc-- Forum Resident

    Location:
    brooklyn
    are there Doug Yule fans?... what cliches do you have in mind besides his organ playing on "WGO"? Does he play cliches on bass? It's hard to hear the bass on this album.
     
    dino77 likes this.
  16. ralphb

    ralphb "First they came for..."

    Location:
    Brooklyn, New York
    Yule was an important part of the Velvets at this juncture. His bass, singing and keyboards brought a hell of a lot of color and, yes, a sense of rock'n'roll that maybe you could dance to. This was a different band from the Cale era, so to expect the same aggression is a bit unrealistic. That version of "What Goes On" is my favorite and the keyboard solo just soars.
    It's my favorite live album by a very wide margin, have been loving it since 1974.
     
  17. Maggie

    Maggie like a walking, talking art show

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Anybody who has a problem with Doug Yule isn't a VU fan. To suggest that Lou Reed wasn't 100% amenable to "good time rock and roll" suggests a total ignorance of his aesthetic and even a willful ignorance of his own lyrics. Lou's musical interests were expansive. He wasn't being ironic when he said that "sweet, sweet rock and roll ... saved [his] soul."

    If anything, it's the more rebarbative experiments with Cale that flirt with contrivance and test Lou's credibility as a performer. I still love them, though.

    To return to the original topic, Live '69 is a great double set, lovely companionable atmosphere not unlike the 3rd album, and lots of rocking. Pity about the sound quality, of course.

    The outtake version of "I Can't Stand It" on one of the CDs is amazing, one of their best ever performances IMO.

    By the way, I like the cover of Loaded just fine. It captures the *pop* aesthetic and buoyant mood of the thing perfectly. Doesn't matter that the artist was unfamiliar with their music: he captured what they were doing exactly.
     
  18. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, PA
    Tacky album cover and the wrong photo used on the gatefold (and who was the genius that scrambled the faces Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison?) but what wonders within.

    Off topic but how long did the Verve/MGM albums (& Nico, White Light/White Heat and S/T) stay in print on vinyl? I'm assuming this was most people's introduction to the Velvet Underground as it was more commonly available.
     
  19. Uncle Meat

    Uncle Meat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, Tx, US
    Love it, especially this...
     
  20. cc--

    cc-- Forum Resident

    Location:
    brooklyn
    the album cover has grown on me. I think I see what they were going for -- something campy, a little trashy, yet also antique-seeming (think corset and Stutz Bearcat era) -- but the execution is off.
     
  21. Ben L

    Ben L Forum Resident

    Location:
    Frankfurt, Germany
    That version of What goes on is just amazing
     
  22. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    My original vinyl version of this is the 2-Lp with NO gatefold. The 2-Lps just lived in the same slightly more accommodating jacket.

    The cover is a little gaudy, but, hey, what isn't?... Surprised the artwork didn't include some kind of gatefold revelation that the 'chick' was packing frontside. That would have been funny.

    Sterling Morrison was of the mind that Live 1969 only represented what they sounded like in small clubs, and that the album does not exhibit the sonic wallop they were still operating with at louder volumes in louder, larger halls. But he always seemed to have reservations about preconceptions/misconceptions regarding the story/history of the band.

    'One person who isn’t a fan of the record, however, is Sterling Morrison, who will later tell Ignacio Julia: “I didn’t like 1969 Live because all the tracks are from small clubs. That gives you a very good idea of what we sounded like in a small club, but it’s very subdued, there’s no rough edges because the volumes are turned way down … On the 1969 Live album at least you get to hear a lot of songs clearly, but I wish some of the stuff had been recorded at the bigger clubs we played on that tour. The 1969 Live album at least indicates what [Reed] could do – vocally it’s better than anything on Loaded.” ...'

    http://www.richieunterberger.com/vuexc13.html
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2015
    jay.dee likes this.
  23. mr.datsun

    mr.datsun Incompletist

    Location:
    London
    >Anybody who has a problem with Doug Yule isn't a VU fan

    I don't really understand these statements. Aside from the fact that Yule was not in the band during their most creative musical years, I can still enjoy most of the 1969 studio material because the song-writing is good. Reed and Morrison are good, Tucker is good. Yule's bass is OK on it, but I can also ignore elements of music I do not like if they are not to the fore. I'm not saying that Reed did not have a sense of fun. I enjoy his off the wall throw-away lyrics - they are still intelligent. I do not think any of the good time rock and roll stuff I'm talking about ever surfaced again in Reed's work after he parted ways with the band and Doug Yule.

    There are two kinds of VU fan - those who liked them for they had in common with 'rock n roll' and those who liked them for what they didn't have in common with 'rock and roll'. I'm in the latter camp.

    There are a lot of stodgy work-out songs on 1969 Live that go on and on without really going anywhere. Am I only one who has noticed?
     
  24. jimjim

    jimjim Forum Resident

    Check out my blog link below in the signature - latest posting is on this album. I love it!
     
  25. mr.datsun

    mr.datsun Incompletist

    Location:
    London
    Agree about his bass on Live 1969 and most of the time it does not get in the way.

    > Does he play cliches on bass?

    There's a cliché bass run, almost exactly 2 minutes into the studio version of Foggy Notion. There's a version of that studio track where mastering has really the bass has really been bought to the fore.

    With regards organ playing I'd have to go though quite a few of the live tracks to identify them. And, I'm pretty sure doing it would not be that popular.

    To make my point, I'm pretty sure there were no 'standard' or well-worn musical motifs in the earlier version of the band.
     
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