Velvet Underground - I'll Keep It with Mine (1966) (MASH-UP)

Here's something that's pretty weird, and I'm curious if anyone has feedback on it.

Today, I was going to post a Velvet Underground (VU) stray tracks album, but first I went poking around the Internet to see if I'd missed anything. I came across a 1966 live recording of the VU doing the Bob Dylan song "I'll Keep It with Mine," with vocals by Nico. This really surprised me. I knew Nico recorded that song on her first solo album, 1967's "Chelsea Girls." But while about half of the songs from that album had backing by most of the VU, that song was not one of them.

So this would have been a really nice find, except that while the bootleg recording had decent sound, Nico's vocals were so low in the mix as to be nearly inaudible. No doubt that's why it hasn't appeared on any of the VU's archival releases, because hearing faint vocals is much worse than no vocals at all. But then I had a crazy idea: what if I took Nico's vocals from her performance of that song on "Chelsea Girls" and add them to the recording?

There was a big problem with this, in that VU performed the song totally differently. On the "Chelsea Girls" album, Nico does a folky version of the song, with strings and flutes as pretty much the only musical backing. But the live VU version, while lacking drums, has a slow but driving rock and roll rhythmic guitar backing. It's a really unusual version of the song in general, and some of the chord structure had to be changed to get the rhythmic pattern to work. Plus, there were differences in pitch and tempo. It turned out the two versions were in totally different keys,and I had to try to sync them up. I also had to try to isolate just the vocals from the "Chelsea Girls" version, and I'm very inexperienced in doing that.

But I gave it a go anyway just as an experiment, and much to my surprise, it kind of works! Since Nico's vocals can be faintly heard on the VU version, one can tell that it turns out she sings the song nearly exactly the same way in both versions, despite the totally different backing.

I made a lot of changes to tempo and pitch and so on, and the final result is far from perfect. Sometimes, some of the strings from the "Chelsea Girls" version can be heard, and sometimes the faint Nico vocals from the VU version can be heard, and sometimes the timing of the vocals doesn't quite match up with the musical backing. But, all in all, I'm pretty happy at how this turned out, given that it was a Hail Mary that it would even come close to working. Hopefully, this is close to how the song actually would have sounded if one had been there in person.

Like I said, I'd be really curious to see what other people think. Is this a travesty or kind of a long-lost VU and Nico song? And I just made a rough guesstimate to match the keys from the two versions - does that sound okay? I can change it if you think it's a bit flat or sharp.

I must admit that I have next to no knowledge in how to properly do this sort of thing - I'm just winging it. Perhaps someone with real musical editing skills can take the two original versions and mash them up in a better way. I'd love to hear an improvement.

I have included this edit as a bonus track for a Velvet Underground stray tracks album. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-velvet-underground-wrap-your.html