Loaded: best VU album, rite guys?

I remember reading a big writeup in rolling stone by fricke? when they got reissued

Yep, VU and VU & Nico got 5 stars ("the great lost Velvet Underground album is no longer lost; it is simply great"), and WL/WH and the 3rd record each got 4 stars. I bought VU the week it came out on the basis of that review, not having heard them at all. Completely loved it from the first listen.

I would probably like CCR better if I didn't hate the way Fogerty sings, it's just such a drag to me. Can't front on how good their records sound or the vibe they get instrumentally but then Foges starts to croon and it's like yo dude get you some prune juice, it'll be cool

he's a soul shouter

yeah normally I'd be with you on the prune juice but fogerty pulls it off imo, the deep reverb on his voice on some of the CCR recordings sounds so great

but hating the way a lead singer sounds can irreversibly sour a band for me too so I feel ya (o hai the doors)

anyway those VU reishs hit the US around 84/85, before then they were like hen's teeth, at least I never saw a copy in my obsessive trawling of local record stores

an older friend of mine told me at the time how he once found a used copy of the 1st alb, he and his friends excitedly gathered around the record player to check out this much rumored holy grail, they dropped the needle on this completely beat-to-shit copy and that first listen through basically changed his life

nowadays kids are like I'll never forget were I was the first time I streamed "gucci gucci"

</morbz>

it's not the best but it's the one i listen to the most.

Kind of agree with this. "Loaded" is the easiest to listen to straight through of the VU albums. It's a little silly at times, but that's part of the fun.

Oh, information scarcity. Now that I think about it, when I finally heard a lot of protopunk, and it didn't sound like Ramones/Clash/Sex Pistols, I was very confused.

Richard Hell plays blues rock?!?

Funhouse is all seven minutes songs?!??

Television don't ever use distortion?!??!?

lol otm

Loaded is a roots move not unlike Workingman's Dead or American Beauty.

never thought abt that, but it makes sense. "cool it down" has always reminded me very strongly of the dead, w the relaxed, shuffling swing, lazy guitar lines. love that song. loaded's whole first side is great, though side two stumbles occasionally (too boisterous on "head held high" and "train round the bend", "lonesome cowboy bill" kind of a throwaway).

Another lol otm at information scarcity post.

i heard all that stuff while i was first discovering punk, so i wasn't bothered by the discontinuities. television was pretty easy to adjust to if you were already used to the idea that talking heads 77 was punk.

I got the cds shortly after I heard the covers on REM's Dead Letter Office in the late 80s. VU was pretty common currency at my hs, at least amongst a pretty big core of people.

I bought Loaded last even though the red Rolling Stone guide, my bible at the turn of the 90s, rated it five stars (I think, can't check).

3rd > 1st > WL/WH > Loaded fwiw

I got all their original studio LPs in the early 70s, starting w Loaded, soon after it was released. They sounded like bootlegs. Reed told an interviewer they had one day each to master their first three (Loaded sounded about the same). And of course Live At Max's Kansas City sounded like it was recorded on a dictophone or something, which it was, and Live in '69 was pretty bootleggy audio-wise, though compare w the actual bootleg source and seems like Paul Nelson did some pretty astute editing. Of course this was part of their mystique, as the underground Beatles or Beatles upside down, as some said of Big Star (Beatles seek hitmaking vinyl perfection in Fortress of Solitude, VU slap it down and go make $ in clubs)

Paul Nelson's "editing"= song selection, not excising solos etc, best I recall.

Have you read that Paul Nelson bio, don?

xp there's a thing in the paul nelson bio/anthology where nelson talks about the hell he had to go through to get mercury to issue Live 69 -- the president was always like "Why did I let you release this Deep Purple album!?"

And wasn't there something about him finally getting shitcanned from Mercury after the two Dolls records stiffed?

yeah. sounds like he kept his job for as long as he did simply because rod stewart liked him.

"I am an orange don't juice me lucifer"

is this a line from something I have somehow missed my entire life?

Idk if it is or isn't but I thought it was an allusion to a pervasive 'urban legend' I heard about in high school about a drug dealing teenager who fell into a swimming pool with a hundred hits of acid in his pocket and lived his life thinking he was an orange

Loaded is such an easy album to like. How can you not like it? It's so warm and genial.

not a big fan of Yule's vocals throughout the LP, but once that screaming guitar comes in on "Train Comin' Round The Bend" all is forgiven. still their weakest imo.

just as long as you realize that their "weakest" is better than most people will ever make. their weak beats your career.

Scott, have you ever heard American Flyer's LP? Only one, as far as I know--with Doug Yule, Eric Justin Kaz, and others, was kind of intended as, not a supergroup, but pros of proven ability nobody know what else to do with--Like KGB, or Triumvirate, In this case, kind of refined singer-songwriter-country-rock hoping for a hit ballad, I think; haven't heard it. James, have not yet read the Nelson bio. Did you? What did you think? What did it say about his working on the Velvets live stuff?

I have a copy but I haven't really looked at it yet. Seems like Tyler has read it

not a whole lot about the velvets, really. worth a read. depressing, though, dude was a pretty sad sack.
american flyer album is....not very good. i wanted to like it! produced by george martin even.

So not as good as any of those h____ albums he produced for America?

Yeah, American Flyer is seriously bland. IIRC, they did two albums.

just as long as you realize that their "weakest" is better than most people will ever make. their weak beats your career.

― scott seward, Friday, 30 March 2012 00:54 (1 hour ago)

oh yeah this is a given

yeah, i couldn't get into american flyer at all

I listen to Loaded the most if I listen to VU, but I'll take the Dead over the first three VU records, now those bootleg Sister Ray 20 minute jams might be better than any of their records.

ANd Nico sounds half dead most of the time, main reason I haven't listened to their first record since I was 20.

she totally works on those songs. i've always thought. the half dead thing totally works. i mean astrud gilberto was really big back then.

But Astrud makes it sounds sexy!

i dunno i'm a fan of hammer horror vampire living desd girls.

"dead" girls. living dead girl one of my alltime fave movies.

plus, i just love the delivery. damn, if YOU'RE my mirror, i'm fucked!

Lol

"dead" girls. living dead girl one of my alltime fave movies.

oh hell yeah, me too. has there been much jean rollin discussion on ilx?

their weak beats your career.

Ha! Loaded reignited my VU love a couple of years ago following a long stretch where I stopped listening to them (though I was delving into the solo careers a fair bit). I'd rank it below the 1st and 3rd albums but yeah all four are such great records. I've had that a lot recently, getting back into things I thought I'd completely played out, it's great.

My VU 'in obtain order' was:

Double LP "Andy Warhol's VU featuring Nico" http://eil.com/images/gallery_50x50/361886.jpg"

Which has all the first album apart from "I'll be your mirror", and all the second apart from "Lady Godiva's op", about half of the third album, and none of "Loaded" onwards.

I got a cheap http://991.com/images/thumbnails/455201b.jpg after that.

Left the third for a while, knew I'd like it more, so saved it..

"Ramble Tamble" is their "What Goes On."

"Keep On Chooglin'" is their "The Gift"!

Could imagine 'Heard It On The Grapevine' done in the style of 'Sister Ray'.

Talking of introductions to the VU, my sister had a live tape and some demos of a punk band she knew and when the punk band's own stuff finished the tape went into "Sister Ray", about halfway through, that sort of weird mellow bit with almost raga guitar from Lou - and for about a year I had no clue what it was and I'd never heard anything like it before! This is despite the fact that my sister had the 1st album and I knew it like the back of my hand.

Definitely associate CCR with post-Cale VU, sort of stripped down rock with a minimum of flashiness

My introduction to the Velvets was the Joy Division version of Sister Ray on Still and that put me right off for the longest time.

yeah, similar.