The Velvet Underground - The Playhouse, Edinburgh, Britain, 6-2-1993

The Velvet Underground is one of the most legendary and revered rock bands of all time. But it seems like their 1993 reunion tour has been mostly forgotten. Maybe that's because the only way most people have of judging it, the official live album that documents it, "Live MCMXCIII," was curiously lackluster. Perhaps this concert bootleg will change some minds. I like it a lot, and I much prefer it to the official album.

Velvet Underground member John Cale considered the official album a disappointment, mainly due to the way it was mixed. He later commented:

The trouble is that we had an opportunity here with the live album to really show what the band sounded like and it really doesn't give it to you. Some of the bootlegs that came out of the tour are almost a truer vision of what the band sounded like than the well recorded one, because the well recorded one really didn't take advantage of the ambiance of the room in the mix of the music. And that's what we were always pushing at. We wanted to fill the room up with this noise. Unfortunately it wasn't quite as present in the mix as I would have liked it to be or others would have liked it to be either.

I wonder what Cale would think about this particular bootleg. I didn't post anything from this reunion tour prior to this, because I thought there was nothing but rough audience bootlegs. But I recently discovered this. It's either a soundboard or an FM radio broadcast. Either way, I think the sound quality is as good or better than the official live album.

Now, let me say a little bit about the reunion tour in general. The two main singers and songwriters in the band, Lou Reed and John Cale, put out an album together in 1990, "Songs for Drella." While they toured together to support that album, they were joined on stage for a single song at a concert in France by the other two original members of the Velvet Underground, Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison. That set the stage for a reunion tour with all four of them.

The tour began in Edinburgh on June 1, 1993. This was the second night of the tour, also in Edinburgh. Creative juices must have been flowing, because the last song played here, "Coyote," was apparently written jointly by Reed and Cale mere hours before the concert began. That's according to some banter in the concert by Reed. But that also matches the information at setlist.fm, because it wasn't performed on the first night, and this was the first time it was played in public. 

The tour was a relatively short one, hitting different countries in Europe over six weeks. There was a plan to follow it up with a North American tour, a studio album, and more. But relations between band members quickly deteriorated, and all further reunion plans were canceled at the end of the six weeks. So we're very lucky to have this excellent recording from the second night of the tour, before the troubles began. By the way, the "Live MCMXCIII" was recorded over a couple of nights in Paris, France, about two weeks later. So maybe the band was already in decline by then compared to this night, who knows.

John Cale was only in the Velvet Underground for their first two albums, "Velvet Underground and Nico" and "White Light/White Heat." So, not surprisingly, many of the songs in this concert came from those early albums. But it's interesting to see Cale take part in the songs that were recorded after he left, such as "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll." This reunion tour was probably the only time he ever did that. 

Also, Cale didn't sing lead vocals much at all while he was a member of the Velvet Underground, but he did have a long, successful solo career as a lead vocalist afterwards. So I liked how he sang lead on a few of the songs here, taking vocals that had been done by Nico or even by Reed.

Although the bootleg was excellent in most respects, it did have some problems. The biggest problem was that all but the first minute and a half of the song "I Can't Stand It" was missing. So I used the "Live MCMXCIII" version to patch in the rest. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title. Also, in some cases (but not most cases), the applause at the ends of songs was cut off. So I patched in applause from the ends of other songs to give every song a normal sounding ending.

Sterling Morrison died of a degenerative disease (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) just two years after this tour, so we're lucky it happened when it did. 

This album is an hour and 55 minutes long.

01 Real Good Time Together (Velvet Underground)
02 talk (Velvet Underground)
03 Venus in Furs (Velvet Underground)
04 talk (Velvet Underground)
05 Guess I'm Falling in Love (Velvet Underground)
06 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
07 All Tomorrow's Parties (Velvet Underground)
08 Some Kinda Love (Velvet Underground)
09 I'll Be Your Mirror (Velvet Underground)
10 Beginning to See the Light (Velvet Underground)
11 The Gift (Velvet Underground)
12 I Heard Her Call My Name (Velvet Underground)
13 Femme Fatale (Velvet Underground)
14 talk (Velvet Underground)
15 Hey Mr. Rain (Velvet Underground)
16 talk (Velvet Underground)
17 Sweet Jane (Velvet Underground)
18 Velvet Nursery Rhyme (Velvet Underground)
19 talk (Velvet Underground)
20 White Light-White Heat (Velvet Underground)
21 I'm Sticking with You (Velvet Underground)
22 The Black Angel's Death Song (Velvet Underground)
23 Rock and Roll (Velvet Underground)
24 talk (Velvet Underground)
25 I Can't Stand It [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
26 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
27 Heroin (Velvet Underground)
28 talk (Velvet Underground)
29 Coyote (Velvet Underground)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/f2j62dqb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WKgJXJR7BeX4jH2/file

The cover photo isn't from this concert, but it's close. It was taken three days later at the Forum in London. From left to right, that's Cale, Reed, Tucker, and Morrison. For the band name at the top, I used the art from the official live album.

The Velvet Underground - The Gymnasium, New York City, 4-30-1967

I recently wrote that I plan on posting what I consider all the live Velvet Underground (VU) recordings with really good sound quality. This one definitely counts, since it's a pristine soundboard. It was originally released as part of the super deluxe edition of the "White Light/White Heat" album in 2013. But I'm posting it here because I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the lead vocals, making this sound even better than the official release.

The band's years together led by Lou Reed can be divided into two phases: 1965 to 1968, when John Cale was in the band, and 1968 to 1970, when Cale was replaced by Doug Yule. The Cale years are more celebrated, helped by the fact that Cale went on to have a long and critically acclaimed solo career. But unfortunately, this is the sole live recording from the Cale years that doesn't sound like crap. (If anyone knows of any other good ones, please let me know.)

This is such a pristine recording that it makes me wonder if it really is a concert recording at all. What I mean is, no audience can be heard whatsoever, not even a single clap. Additionally, there's not a single word spoken between songs. If I hadn't been told otherwise by official sources, I would have assumed these are studio outtakes. But apparently there was a concert on this date, as the cover art shows, and this is what was played. If anyone knows the story behind this recording, and how it sounds like it does, please let us know.

Anyway, regardless of that, these are unique versions, and the sound quality is excellent, so what's not to like? Additionally, some of the songs are quite rare. This is the only known recording of the original "I'm Not a Young Man Anymore," and the best recording of the instrumental "Booker T." Additionally, this version of "Guess I'm Falling in Love" has lyrics that are sung, while the studio version is an instrumental. On the flip side, the studio version of "The Gift" has lyrics while this version is an instrumental.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 Booker T [Instrumental] (Velvet Underground)
02 I'm Not a Young Man Anymore (Velvet Underground)
03 Guess I'm Falling in Love (Velvet Underground)
04 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
05 Run, Run, Run (Velvet Underground)
06 Sister Ray (Velvet Underground)
07 The Gift [Instrumental Version] (Velvet Underground)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kKdGyf67

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/eMlW0As4s3Pi87B/file

I couldn't find any good, fitting color photos of the band for the cover. However, I did find a playbill for this exact show. I made some edits to it, mainly cropping out some of it to get it to fit into a square shape, and adding the background color. But the text you see is largely unchanged. And by the way, although Nico was touted on the playbill, she didn't actually appear in the concert.

The Velvet Underground - Max's Kansas City, New York City, 8-23-1970

I recently posted a couple of Velvet Underground (VU) concerts here, both from the End of Cole Ave. club in Dallas, and those have gotten a lot of downloads. (Although, oddly, way more people have downloaded the one from October 19, 1969 than the one from October 18, 1969. Their sound quality is similar, so if you like one you should like the other.) Just as a reminder, here are the download links to both:

October 18, 1969:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-velvet-underground-end-of-cole-ave_11.html

October 19, 1969:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-velvet-underground-end-of-cole-ave.html

Anyway, putting those together has put me in a Velvet Underground mood lately, so I've decided to do my best to try to improve some of their other live recordings. The next one I tackled in this Max's Kansas City show, so here it is. In my opinion, this version sounds significantly better than other versions.

The official album "Live at Max's Kansas City" is based on this concert. It was the very first official live VU album, being released in 1972. That's a bit odd in my opinion, because the sound quality was not great. But perhaps it was all that was at hand at the time. The concert was recorded by Brigid Polk (a.k.a. Brigid Berlin) who was a well known New York City high society socialite and associate of Andy Warhol. She recorded it on a mono portable cassette player, but perhaps it was an unusually good and expensive one, because the sound quality is very good for an audience recording. 

However, there were problems, and I've tried to fix them here. I've based this off the 2004 version, which is the only complete one. But actually it wasn't entirely complete, because the first minute or so of the song "Who Loves the Sun" was missing. But I got a lucky break with that. There's a bootleg of some band rehearsals from a couple of months earlier. The sound quality sucks for nearly all of the songs on that boot, except for two songs which sound much better, and one of those is a version of "Who Loves the Sun." So I used that version to patch in the missing first verse. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

I also used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the lead vocals of all the songs. I think that helped a lot. And I used that program to do a lot of work on all the talking tracks. The concert was recorded in the middle of a crowd, so there was a lot of ambient noise, and especially talking nearby. I managed to cut out some, but not all, of that noise, and boost the voice of Reed doing the talking from stage. Now, you can pretty easily hear nearly all of his comments, which often had been buried in muck on all the official versions. 

I also edited out some comments by people next to the recorder that were unusually loud. I believe the microphone was being held by none other than Johnathan Richman, who would later have success as the leader of the band the Modern Lovers. For instance, on the official live album version, his voice could be heard ordering a glass of wine at one point. But I cut all that out, because my goal was to try to make this sound more like a soundboard quality recording.

A more difficult problem was that, occasionally, some loud talking by crowd members occurred during the songs. I cleaned that up whenever I could. But this was particularly bad for the song "Candy Says." In the middle of the song, some guy began talking to someone else, possibly his date, about the movie "Patton," which was in the movie theaters at the time. One could clearly hear the two of them discuss their opinions about the movie, which ruined much of the song. I was able to wipe out most of that discussion using UVR5, whenever it happened during instrumental sections. But there were some points when that talking overlapped with the singing. For that, I patched in bits from other parts of the song, or, failing that, from the version of "Candy Says" on the October 18, 1969 End of Cole Ave. concert I posted recently. I also wiped out some crowd noise on the song "Femme Fatale" using some patch work, though the problem wasn't nearly as bad. So that's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

This happens to be the very last VU concert with Lou Reed (not counting much later reunions). The band continued on the next night and beyond, with band member Doug Yule on lead vocals. The last album with Reed, "Loaded," would be released a couple of months after this concert. But the band slowly lost more key members and then fizzled out altogether in 1973. However, you'd never know this was Reed's last concert from listening to this recording, as there were no public good-byes or final dramatic gestures. But perhaps we missed those, because I have my doubts that the last song here was the actual last song of the night. "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" seems like an odd choice for the last song, especially since "Sister Ray" was the band's usual closer. It's very possible that the recorder's cassette tape ran out, which was a common problem for tapers in that era.

This also was a concert without drummer Moe Tucker. She'd temporarily left the band in early 1970 for the duration of her first pregnancy. She was replaced on drums by Billy Yule, the younger brother of Doug Yule. Some VU fans knock this recording because of the lack of Tucker's unique drumming style, while also claiming that Reed lost his enthusiasm and thus didn't sound as good. But I disagree. I think the band kicked ass right until Reed left, at which point it ceased being the VU in my opinion, since he wrote and sang nearly all of the songs. Decide for yourself by listening to this.

This concert consisted of an early show and a late show. You can hear the band announce they were taking a break at the end of the song "Beginning to See the Light." There are two songs in the late show that were also played in the early show: "Sweet Jane" and "Lonesome Cowboy Bill."

This album is an hour and 26 minutes long.

01 talk (Velvet Underground)
02 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
03 talk (Velvet Underground)
04 White Light-White Heat (Velvet Underground)
05 talk (Velvet Underground)
06 I'm Set Free (Velvet Underground)
07 talk (Velvet Underground)
08 Sweet Jane (Velvet Underground)
09 talk (Velvet Underground)
10 Lonesome Cowboy Bill (Velvet Underground)
11 talk (Velvet Underground)
12 New Age (Velvet Underground)
13 talk (Velvet Underground)
14 Beginning to See the Light (Velvet Underground)
15 Who Loves the Sun [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
16 Sweet Jane [Version 2] (Velvet Underground)
17 talk (Velvet Underground)
18 I'll Be Your Mirror (Velvet Underground)
19 talk (Velvet Underground)
20 Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground)
21 talk (Velvet Underground)
22 Candy Says [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
23 talk (Velvet Underground)
24 Sunday Morning (Velvet Underground)
25 talk (Velvet Underground)
26 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
27 talk (Velvet Underground)
28 Femme Fatale [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
29 talk (Velvet Underground)
30 Some Kinda Love (Velvet Underground)
31 Lonesome Cowboy Bill [Version 2] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264157/TVelvtUnd_1970a_MaxsKnsasCityNYC__8-23-1970_atse.zip.html

It's very hard to find any good photos of the band in concert, especially color ones. However, there was an ad for this series of shows, so I used that, cropped but otherwise unchanged. I cleaned it up some, and added the yellow background.

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)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JdWhvxpq 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/vqNDSmnAWnNIuFZ/file

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!

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.

Lou Reed - Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, 9-25-1984

I think Lou Reed's music from the early 1980s is underrated. He'd had a lot of drug addiction problems in the mid to late 1970s, and I think that negatively affected his musical output. But he cleaned up in the early 1980s, and I suspect that had a positive impact. I especially like his 1984 album "New Sensations." Maybe it's not so popular with some fans because it's rather upbeat and poppy compared to most of his other stuff, and his music isn't known for being upbeat and poppy. But new wave music was a big trend at the time, and he definitely joined that movement for a while.

This is a great concert from the 1984 tour to support "New Sensations." I count six songs from that album, which isn't that many, given that this is a fairly long concert. But he also did songs from earlier in his career, going all the way back to his Velvet Underground days, and generally did them in more of the new wave style he was favoring at the time. For instance, "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "There She Goes Again" sound different from their Velvet Underground versions.

This is unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent, like an official live album. There's no official live album of his 1984 tour. However, there is a very good one of his 1983 tour, called "Live in Italy." Personally, I like this much better. For one, it has the "New Sensations" songs. It's also a lot longer. And both of them feature the lead guitarist Robert Quine. Quine played with Reed in the early 1980s, and was Reed's favorite lead guitarist. By the time of "New Sensations," they were butting heads a lot, and Quine's playing wasn't featured on that album at all. However, Quine still did play on this tour, before permanently parting ways with Reed after it ended.

Another nice bonus about this concert is that musician Jim Carroll joined the concert near the end and basically briefly took over to sing his one minor hit, "People Who Died." He also sang backing vocals on the one song played after that one, "Rock and Roll." But you can hardly tell. I only know that for sure because there's a video of this concert on YouTube, and I saw him singing on that song.

This album is two hours and four minutes long.

01 talk (Lou Reed)
02 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed)
03 talk (Lou Reed)
04 I'm Waiting for the Man (Lou Reed)
05 talk (Lou Reed)
06 Martial Law (Lou Reed)
07 ta;l (Lou Reed)
08 Down at the Arcade (Lou Reed)
09 talk (Lou Reed)
10 Legendary Hearts (Lou Reed)
11 talk (Lou Reed)
12 There She Goes Again (Lou Reed)
13 Turn Out the Light (Lou Reed)
14 talk (Lou Reed)
15 My Red Joystick (Lou Reed)
16 talk (Lou Reed)
17 Average Guy (Lou Reed)
18 talk (Lou Reed)
19 Street Hassle (Lou Reed)
20 talk (Lou Reed)
21 Sally Can't Dance (Lou Reed)
22 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
23 talk (Lou Reed)
24 Satellite of Love (Lou Reed)
25 talk (Lou Reed)
26 New Sensations (Lou Reed)
27 A Gift (Lou Reed)
28 Doin' the Things that We Want To (Lou Reed)
29 talk (Lou Reed)
30 Waves of Fear (Lou Reed)
31 I Love You, Suzanne (Lou Reed)
32 talk (Lou Reed)
33 White Light-White Heat (Lou Reed)
34 Turn to Me (Lou Reed)
35 talk (Lou Reed)
36 Kill Your Sons (Lou Reed)
37 Coney Island Baby (Lou Reed)
38 talk (Jim Carroll & Lou Reed)
39 People Who Died (Jim Carroll & Lou Reed)
40 talk (Lou Reed with Jim Carroll)
41 Rock and Roll (Lou Reed with Jim Carroll) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KAJDNgnP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/DqYDrpP6aTQBPMI/file

The cover photo was taken in Chicago in September 1984, just three days after this concert.

The Velvet Underground - Ride in the Sun - Non-Album Tracks (1969-1970)

Okay, here's the last of my four stray tracks albums for the Velvet Underground. Once again, if you're a fan of the band at all, I strongly encourage you to get all four.

This one is probably the most interesting of all for those just have their studio albums, including "VU" and "Another View," because the songs here come from a wide variety of sources. Most have been officially released, but two have not.

The songs on the first half of the album were recorded in late 1969. The first two were recorded in September and October, then the next four were all recorded at the Matrix Club in November. The first two of those, "Sweet Bonnie Brown" and "It's Just Too Much," are unreleased soundcheck versions from that club.

I made a drastic edit to "Follow the Leader," to say the least. I cut a 17-minute-long song down to just three minutes! The reason is because the 17-minute version is pretty much a jam with the only vocals being in the three minute section I kept. I would be perfectly fine with the jamming except that the sound quality is poor. But since it's an original song by the band, I figured I should keep at least the vocal section for it. By the way, when Lou Reed finally recorded a version of this song for one of his solo albums, in 1976, he only did a two-minute-long version.

The last seven songs here (not counting the bonus track) were recorded in 1970. Most of them were recorded in April 1970, but "Love Makes You Feel Ten Feet Fall" is from July. This takes us right to when Lou Reed left the band, as he played the last concert with them in August. The group did soldier on for a while without him, but I'm not interested in that version of the band.

Although this comes from a variety of sources, when you put it together, I think it makes for another very solid album. Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that most of the songs on it eventually came out in different versions on Lou Reed's solo albums. In fact, eight of the ten songs on his first solo album in 1972 (cleverly titled "Lou Reed") were originally recorded by the Velvet Underground, and still more dribbled out on his solo albums through the rest of the 1970s. (Note that he changed the title of "Love Makes You Feel Ten Feet Tall" to just "Love Makes You Feel.")

The bonus track "Wild Child" is another song that he later put on a solo album. Unfortunately, the version here is just an acoustic version that's less than a minute long, as he was teaching the song to the other band members in the last month he was with the band. It is known the band played the song in concert, but no bootleg of that is known to exist. This recording also has rough sound quality, so between that and the very short length, it only makes it as a bonus track.

01 We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together (Velvet Underground)
02 Lisa Says (Velvet Underground)
03 Sweet Bonnie Brown (Velvet Underground)
04 It's Just Too Much (Velvet Underground)
05 Over You (Velvet Underground)
06 Follow the Leader [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
07 Ride into the Sun (Velvet Underground)
08 Oh Gin (Velvet Underground)
09 Walk and Talk It (Velvet Underground)
10 Sad Song (Velvet Underground)
11 Love Makes You Feel Ten Feet Tall (Velvet Underground)
12 Satellite of Love (Velvet Underground)
13 I Love You (Velvet Underground)

Wild Child [Acoustic Rehearsal] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701100/TVELVTUNDRGRND1969e-1970_RdeintSun_atse.zip.html

Most of the album cover art comes from a Velvet Underground concert poster for a concert at the Hippodrome in San Diego in 1968. The art style is a bit out of fashion for 1970, but not that far off. I removed the central part of the poster (which named the supporting bands) and replaced it with a photo of the band from 1970, and check out the "groovy" clothes they're wearing. I resized the rectangular poster to make it squish into a square space, and I added a background color, plus the album title at the bottom.

The Velvet Underground - Found in All the Nicest Homes - Non-Album Tracks (1969)

So far, I've posted two stray tracks albums for the Velvet Underground. I have two more to go, and I'm going to post them now. If you like the band at all, I strongly suggest you get all four.

This album deals with songs the Velvet Underground recorded in 1969 that weren't released at the time. But they were so prolific that year, that in addition to the album they did release in March, cleverly titled "The Velvet Underground," the composed and recorded all the songs here, as well as half of the songs on the next stray tracks album.

Most of these songs were officially released in the 1980s on the albums "VU" and "Another View." But I'm not a fan of those albums because they're a hodge-podge chronologically (including some 1968 songs from the John Cale era), and there's no real logic as to what got on "VU" compared to "Another View." Instead, I've carefully organized all the songs here by the month they were recorded. I've also added one song, "I'm Sticking with You," that isn't on either of those official albums.

Pretty much all the songs here were recorded in May or June of 1969. The exceptions are "I'm Gonna Move Right In" and "One of These Days," which were recorded in September 1969. Plus, I'm not sure what month that year "Countess from Hong Kong" was recorded. I've put "I'm Sticking with You" at the end of the album even though that messes with the chronological order a bit, because it's a Maureen Tucker-sung song that's ideal to close the album, in the exact same way her vocals on "After Hours" closes the 1969 "Velvet Underground" album.

These are a strong bunch of songs, and every VU fan should have them. It's a real puzzler why they weren't released at the time. They had signed a two-record deal with a record company, and "The Velvet Underground" released in early 1969 was the first album for that deal. As the months passed, the record company soured on them due to low sales, and dropped them from the label. The bummer is that instead of simply recording these songs for their new record company, they gave up on all but two of them. Only "I'm Sticking with You" and "Ocean" were rerecorded in 1970 for possible included on the "Loaded" album, and neither of them made the final cut.

This album is 43 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

UPDATE: On May 24, 2023, I added the bonus track, "I'm Gonna Move Right In." This is a very obscure original. It was probably only played a handful of times in concert, and apparently was never recorded in the studio. This unreleased version, from a concert in Boston in January 1969, is the only half-decent sounding version of it. I cleaned it up a lot, boosting the lead vocals especially, but it still sounds rough.

01 Foggy Notion (Velvet Underground)
02 Andy's Chest (Velvet Underground)
03 Coney Island Steeplechase (Velvet Underground)
04 I Can't Stand It (Velvet Underground)
05 She's My Best Friend (Velvet Underground)
06 Ocean [Early Version] (Velvet Underground)
07 Ferryboat Bill (Velvet Underground)
08 I'm Gonna Move Right In (Velvet Underground)
09 One of These Days (Velvet Underground)
10 Countess from Hong Kong (Velvet Underground)
11 I'm Sticking with You (Velvet Underground)

I'm Gonna Move Right In (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264651/TVelvtUnd_1969b_FoundinAllNicstHomes_atse.zip.html

The album title I've chosen needs some explanation, since it has nothing to do with any of the song titles or even the song lyrics in general. I was looking for something good for the cover art, and didn't find anything. Then I luckily stumbled across an ad the band's record company made to sell their records in Australia in 1970. It's basically exactly the cover as presented here. I did a little touching up and cropped out some text below the band name that described and promoted their albums. I don't know who came up with this artwork and if any band members were involved, but it seems perfect for an album cover. I'm also happy because I was struggling to come up with a good name for the album, and the artwork made that a no-brainer.

The Velvet Underground - Temptation Inside Your Heart - Non-Album Tracks (1967-1968)

Here's the second of my stray tracks collections for the Velvet Underground. This deals with the tail end of Nico's involvement in the band, as well as the remaining time for John Cale.

Nico is only on the first two songs. They're from her 1967 solo album "Chelsea Girls." About half of the songs on that album were actually performed with all of the Velvet Underground: these two songs, plus a few more that I put at the end of the previous stray tracks album.

A couple of songs here - "Stephanie Says" and "Temptation Inside Your Heart" - appeared on the acclaimed collection "VU." That collection is generally seen as the band's "lost 1969 album." But in fact, these two songs are from February 1968, before the "White Light/White Heat" album was released, so they belong here.

There are two officially released versions of the song "Hey Mr. Rain." But personally I don't see a big difference between the two songs, and I don't think it's a stellar song in the first place, so I've only included one version.

01 Chelsea Girls (Nico & the Velvet Underground)
02 It Was a Pleasure Then (Nico & the Velvet Underground)
03 Guess I'm Falling in Love [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
04 Booker T. [Instrumental] (Velvet Underground)
05 I'm Not a Young Man Anymore (Velvet Underground)
06 Stephanie Says (Velvet Underground)
07 Temptation Inside Your Heart (Velvet Underground)
08 Hey Mr. Rain [Version One] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701105/TVELVTUNDRGRND1967-1968_TmptatonInsdeYourHrt_atse.zip.html

The album cover art comes from a 1968 concert poster. Or at least it might be. I'm not sure if it's a "real" poster from that year, or if it's something made years later. It has Andy Warhol in the photo, and of course he was only "producing" the band, not actually in it. And the photo also has Nico in it, and she was long gone by 1968. But in any case, I think it's really nice artwork. I changed the color of the band name to make it stick out.

The Velvet Underground - Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1967)

Here's the first of stray tracks collections for the Velvet Underground (VU).

I'm starting this with some songs from Lou Reed before the VU even formed. Reed started his musical career by working as a professional songwriter in the "Brill Building" factory assembly line style. Most of these songs weren't good, and most of them were sung by others. But even now and then, he'd come up with something that almost could have passed for a future VU song.

The first and foremost example of this is "The Ostrich." This is a great place to start, because it's where the VU begin. That song was a minor hit, the only one from Reed's time hired as a songwriter. The record company wanted Reed to tour to support the song, and he met and began working with John Cale when bringing that band together. The rest is history. "You're Driving Me Insane" and "Cycle Annie" are the other Reed songs from this early era.

I follow that with two songs from Nico, "I'm Not Sayin'" and "The Last Mile." I generally consider Nico's music career separate from the VU's, since she went in a different direction after her brief time as part of the band. But I have a few exceptions, such as these songs. They're the A- and B-sides of her only official release before she joined the VU.

The rest of the songs on this album actually are performed by the VU, during the time Nico was a member. Of course, "There She Goes Again" was on VU's classic first album, but this version has Nico singing lead vocals instead of Reed, and that's such a big difference that I figured it merited inclusion here.

The last two songs come from Nico's 1967 album "Chelsea Girl." Five of the songs from that album were performed by Nico backed by all the members of the VU, and they were written by Cale and/or Reed as well. So those five songs have made it on some VU collections, with good reason. I've included three here. I would have put all five on, but I want this album to have a reasonable length, so the other two will go on the next VU stray tracks album I post here.

I have "I'll It with Mine" as a bonus track. Nico did this song for her "Chelsea Girls" album. But this actually is a live version performed by Nico with the VU. The problem is, Nico's vocals were almost inaudible on the audience bootleg recording. So I took her vocal from her album and added them in, creating a mash-up of sorts. I posted that single song here a while back, and the reaction was mixed, so I'm only including it as a bonus track as a result. But I feel pretty strongly that the issue people have isn't with my mash-up, but with the way the VU played the song in concert. They didn't do it the normal way Nico did it, Dylan did it, and everyone else who covered the song did it. Instead, they added a totally different rock and roll rhythm that doesn't fit the song well. But it is interesting, so I figure it's worthy to have at least as a bonus track.

01 The Ostrich (Lou Reed & the Primitives)
02 You're Driving Me Insane (Lou Reed & the Roughnecks)
03 Cycle Annie (Lou Reed & the Beachnuts)
04 I'm Not Sayin' (Nico)
05 The Last Mile (Nico)
06 Miss Joanie Lee [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
08 There She Goes Again [Nico Vocals] (Velvet Underground)
09 Melody Laughter [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
10 Little Sister (Nico & the Velvet Underground)
11 Winter Song (Nico & the Velvet Underground)
12 Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (Nico & the Velvet Underground)

I'll Keep It with Mine [Edit] (Velvet Underground)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sJHwjL92

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/EOhiQ3JLw0tNkck/file

The cover art photo is a publicity photo of Nico and the VU around 1966 or 1967. The VU were named after a book by Michael Leigh of the same title. I used the text from that book cover for that band name up top.

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

The Velvet Underground - Prominent Men - Early Demos (1965)

I've got some really good Velvet Underground albums to post. It makes sense to start at the beginning, with their 1965 acoustic demo recordings.

Most of these songs were included on the "Peel Slowly and See" box set. However, I thought they were presented in a really dumb way. For the first six songs here (all acoustic demos recorded in July 1965), multiple takes were included, but in each case they were lumped together as one track. So, for instance, you couldn't just hear a demo of "All Tomorrow's Parties," you had to hear five versions of the song, each version almost exactly the same as the last. I grow very tired of bootlegs that have the same song repeated over and over. So I picked the best version of each song and only included that.

The next five songs are more acoustic demos, from a December 1965 session. These also are from the box set, but they were put on another disc. I think it's better having all these demos together. Finally, there's an unreleased instrumental from very early January 1966 as the last song. It fits the acoustic sound of the rest of the album, because it's just a guitar and bass playing.

This makes up a nice 44 minute long album. Seven of the 12 songs would never be done by the Velvet Underground again (with the partial exception of "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams" - Nico did it for her 1967 solo album, and the rest of the Velvet Underground backed her on that recording.)

01 Venus in Furs (Velvet Underground)
02 Prominent Men (Velvet Underground)
03 Heroin (Velvet Underground)
04 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
05 Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (Velvet Underground)
06 All Tomorrow's Parties (Velvet Underground)
07 There Is No Reason (Velvet Underground)
08 Sheltered Life (Velvet Underground)
09 It's All Right [The Way that You Live] (Velvet Underground)
10 I'm Not Too Sorry [Now that You're Gone] (Velvet Underground)
11 Here She Comes Now (Velvet Underground)
12 Green Onions [Instrumental] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701104/TVELVTUNDRGRND1965_PrminntMnErlyDmos_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover of the recording tape box for some of the demos on this album. It comes from the "Peel Slowly and See" box set.