The Velvet Underground - The End of Cole Ave., Dallas, TX, 10-19-1969

I'm thrilled to be posting this album. I recently discovered this great sounding concert recording, then I made some changes to make it sound even better. I dare say this album now is the best sounding live recording of the Velvet Underground (VU), official or bootleg. If you're a fan of the band at all, you need to hear this!

Here's a little history behind this unique recording. In October 1969, the Velvet Underground spent about two weeks in Texas. It was their only time in Texas while singer-songwriter Lou Reed was still in the band. They played from the 14th to 19th at a Dallas night club with the odd name "The End of Cole Ave." They also played at a anti-war protest in Dallas on the 15th. (That's what the cover photo is from.)

Here's some further information from Jeff Leegood, the person who taped the concert. "On October 18, 1969, when I recorded the VU at the End of Cole I was sitting in the back of the place. When they took a break, Hans the roadie asked me to come to the back room, the band wanted to hear the tape. The recorder I was using (a Wollensak by 3M) had speakers (it was a stereo no less) built in so I could play the tape. I played some of what I had. So then Lou [Reed] said to me I could move up front and record them if I was willing to send a tape copy of their performance to their manager, of course, that was fine with me. I kept my word, and off they went."

Understand that Leegood recorded two nights, the 18th and the 19th. The recording from the 18th doesn't sound so good because much or all of it was recorded from the back of the club. But the recording from the 19th - the one here - was recorded in ideal conditions, right on stage.

In 1974, the official double live album "1969: The Velvet Underground Live" was released. It was mostly made up of songs recorded at the Matrix in San Francisco. But four of the songs - "I'm Waiting for the Man," "Femme Fatale," "Pale Blue Eyes," and "I'll Be Your Mirror," come from this exact show.

I will next share a comment from the Allmusic.com website about the bootleg version of this show: "Sometimes archival material which first appeared on a bootleg album will later find authorized release with improved sound quality, but [this] is a rare example of this process working in reverse. ... By the time Mercury Records got their hands on the Dallas recordings, they were several generations removed from the original source material. ... [On the bootleg version] the absence of the blanket of hiss which has usually hovered over these performances is more than welcome."

Then, in 2013, a complete "official version" of both shows was released, under the names "Live at the End of Cole Ave: The First Night" and ""Live at the End of Cole Ave: The Second Night." But, as Leegood has noted, these appear to be "grey market" versions that he had no involvement in, and the band members certainly aren't getting royalties for. Someone simply mass produced and sold the bootleg version that was already available for free on the Internet.

Then, in 2021, a person with the nickname Captain Acid made improvements. He said he did phase, level, and speed correction, and new EQ. That's the version I found. I was stunned at how good it sounded. I had assumed the versions on the official "1969" album were as good as the recording got, but boy was that wrong. 

However, there still was a big problem: the vocals were low in the mix. I suppose in 2021, Captain Acid didn't know about the new computer programs like X-Minus becoming available that allows one to break a recording into different instruments and then drastically change the volume levels on each one, or maybe he's a purist and doesn't like to make changes like that. But I have no qualms. Using the program UVR5, I've boosted the lead vocals for all the songs. It's a huge improvement, in my opinion.

But that's not all. There were three more problems with the Captain Acid version. One was that the banter between songs was often very low. In some cases, it was so low that I wasn't even sure at first listen if someone on stage was talking or not. But when I boosted the volume of those parts drastically, the speaking came through with surprising clarity, and very little hiss. So I did that for all the banter.

The second problem was that the applause after each song was cut off after a couple of seconds in nearly all cases. This was a common problem back in the days of strictly analog recording, because tapers often only had one tape and were trying to save space so they'd be able to record the entire show. (Chances are that some banter was lost as well.) However, there were a couple of songs where all of the applause was recorded. One of those was "I'm Set Free," where the cheering was surprisingly long and loud. Probably, they were reacting positively to the female drummer, Moe Tucker, taking a rare turn in singing lead. I checked the setlist.fm database, and this may well have been only the second time she sang lead in any VU concert, with the first being the night before. (She also sang the next song, "After Hours.") Based on the amount of cheering that survived for such songs, I used those bits to fill in the cheering for all the other songs. I even pasted in extra "woo hoo" noises at random times.

So that left the third problem. You know how I said tapers often turned their tape recorders off between songs to try to save tape? Well, in this case, it seems they didn't have enough tape, because the last song, "Sister Ray," faded out after fifteen minutes. Based on the similar highs and lows of the complete version recorded the night before, which is 17 minutes long, it was close to the end. So I took the last couple minutes from the October 18th version and used it to finish off this version. That's why "Sister Ray" has "[Edit]" in its title. All of the songs here have been heavily edited, but in a consistent manner. Only "Sister Ray" has that extra and even more drastic edit.

There was some jamming after the concert that also got recorded by Leegood. However, I haven't included any of that. For one thing, it doesn't sound like the rest of the concert. For instance, there's no crowd noise. But also, I did some research on this, and it seems it was only band member Doug Yule playing with either roadies or locals, or both. So it's not fully Velvet Underground music, in my opinion.

Anyway, that's a long explanation. But the LR:DR is that this concert now sounds fantastic, at least compared to live recordings of the time, and it sounds like a complete concert without any missing pieces for the first time. 

I've spent so much time talking about the details of the recording that I haven't mentioned the actual performance. Suffice to say the band kicked ass. Note that many of the songs were unreleased at the time, and a few have different lead vocalists than the album versions. This is definitely going to be my favorite Velvet Underground live recording from now on.

This concert is an hour and 22 minutes long.

I just discovered this concert a couple of days ago. I may soon try to improve the October 18th concert. But I've listened to some of it, and at least the first half sounds much rougher than this, due to the circumstances discussed above. So I might just post the better part of it. I'm not sure yet.

01 talk (Velvet Underground)
02 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
03 talk (Velvet Underground)
04 It's Just Too Much (Velvet Underground)
05 I'll Be Your Mirror (Velvet Underground)
06 talk (Velvet Underground)
07 Some Kinda Love (Velvet Underground)
08 talk (Velvet Underground)
09 Femme Fatale (Velvet Underground)
10 Beginning to See the Light (Velvet Underground)
11 talk (Velvet Underground)
12 I'm Set Free (Velvet Underground)
13 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
14 I'm Sticking with You (Velvet Underground)
15 One of These Days (Velvet Underground)
16 talk (Velvet Underground)
17 Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground)
18 Ocean (Velvet Underground)
19 What Goes On (Velvet Underground)
20 talk (Velvet Underground)
21 Heroin (Velvet Underground)
22 Sister Ray [Edit] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15213233/TVelvtUnd_1969_ThEndColeAveDallsTX__10-19-1969_atse.zip.html

Not only am I psyched about how well the music sounds, I'm psyched about the cover photo. Good color photos of the Velvet Underground in concert back in the 1960s are rarer than hen's teeth. This one isn't from the exact concert, but it's surprisingly close. I mentioned above that the band performed for an anti-war protest in Dallas on October 15th, a mere four days before this concert. In 2019, a few minutes of color video footage of that performance appeared on YouTube. I think it's the only color footage of them in concert, period. (You can find versions still on YouTube, if you're interested in watching it.)

I took a screenshot from that video, then made a few improvements to it in Photoshop. The main improvement has to do with Moe Tucker. She's the one in the middle with sunglasses on and a white sweatshirt, sitting while playing the drums. 

(One unexpected thing I learned from putting this album together is that members of the Velvet Underground were professional football fans. Tucker was wearing a New York Jets sweatshirt in the video. And at the start of the concert included here, Lou Reed commented to the audience that he'd recently watched the Dallas Cowboys play the Philadelphia Eagles, and he was disappointed at how the game was a blowout.)

Anyway, in the screenshot, Tucker was overexposed, and she pretty much looked like a white blob. So I took another screenshot from the same video where the lighting on her was better, and pasted in that version of her instead.