The Velvet Underground - The End of Cole Ave., Dallas, TX, 10-18-1969

I've gotten a good reaction to the Velvet Underground (VU) bootleg concert I posted a few days ago, so I'm posting another one, recorded by the same taper the night before. 

There's good news and bad news. The bad news is there were more problems with this recording than the other one, and I decided that only about half of it is worthy of posting here. But the good news is the band played a few songs they rarely did, and the sound quality for this portion is nearly as good as the concert I recently posted. So if you like that one, I suggest you get this one too. This still has to be one of a handful of the best sounding VU bootlegs out there.

I gave a detailed explanation about how the recording of the next night (October 19, 1969) came to be. I'll quickly sum that up, because most of it applies here too. The VU were playing at the oddly named "The End of Cole Ave." club in Dallas for about a week. On this night, band member Lou Reed noticed an audience member was taping the show from the back of the club. During a break between sets in the middle of the show, Reed found the person and asked to hear a playback. After hearing a sample, he let the taper record in the open, close to the stage, if that person promised to send him a copy of the tape. Then the whole of the next night's show was recorded by that taper in similarly ideal conditions. The taper did send the recordings of both nights to the band, and four of the songs from the next night were released on the live album "1969: The Velvet Underground Live."

That all explains why I'm only posting the second half of this concert, because it was recorded in a much better manner than the first half. I tried to salvage the first half, but the sound quality was too poor for my tastes. Even what I think is the first song of the second set ("I'll Be Your Mirror") didn't sound good enough. Perhaps the taper was still getting into a better position or something like that. But luckily, virtually every song in the first set would be played by the band the next night, and recorded with great sound quality. Whereas a big portion of the songs included here not only weren't done the next night, they were relatively rarely done by the band at all. 

It seems the band was in a mellow mood for the second set, and played a bunch of songs from their relatively mellow 1969 album "The Velvet Underground." Even the usual closing song, "Sister Ray," was done in a relatively mellow manner. Songs like "Jesus" and "The Story of My Life" were only played a handful of times by the band. "I Found a Reason" may only have been played live one other time (according to the setlist.fm database). So, for some songs, these are the best or even the only live recordings that have survived.

By the way, the version of "I Found a Reason" played here is particularly interesting, because it was done in a country style very different from any studio version. This album is worth hearing for that version alone.

This recording has the same history as that of the next night's recording. In short, I found a version modified by a person nicknamed Captain Acid, who significantly improved the sound quality. Then I made further changes using the UVR5 audio editing program, especially boosting the lead vocals in relation to the instruments. 

This bootleg has the same problem as the other one in that the taper stopped the recording between songs, usually only getting a few seconds of applause, and probably losing most of the banter. There was only one song where all of the applause was recorded, "After Hours." Probably that was because the song got an especially big reaction due to being sung by the female drummer, Moe Tucker. (According to the setlist.fm database, this was the first time she sang lead in any VU concert! Maybe that's why she messed up a bit.) So you can listen to that to hear a complete audience response, to get an idea of how big the audience was. For all the other songs, I patched in extra cheering from the next night's recording to fill in the missing bits.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Femme Fatale (Velvet Underground)
02 talk (Velvet Underground)
03 Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground)
04 Candy Says (Velvet Underground)
05 Jesus (Velvet Underground)
06 The Story of My Life (Velvet Underground)
07 I Found a Reason (Velvet Underground)
08 Sunday Morning (Velvet Underground)
09 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
10 Sister Ray (Velvet Underground)

NOTE: The download link has been removed due to a copyright issue, sorry. However, check the comments below.

As I mentioned for the October 19th concert, VU played an anti-war protest in Dallas that took place a few days earlier. The cover for the 19th is a screenshot from that concert, due to there being some surviving video footage of it. This cover uses another screenshot from that concert too. Unfortunately, there weren't many good shots of the full band, so I had to resort to a screenshot that doesn't include the drummer, Moe Tucker. Sorry, Moe!