Velvet Underground: Live 1969 vs. Grateful Dead: Live/Dead

Enjoy the Andy Griffith whistling during “I’m Waiting for the Man” but that’s the first track on both so it’s still a tossertossup.

xpost I'm another liker of both Complete Matrix and Quine Tapes---been a while, but seem to recall thinking that The Complete Matrix was more revelatory.
Would like to hear the show w 14-minute "Run Run Run," mentioned on Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question.
ditto The Velvet Underground ETC, and the other one incl. Reed apprenticeships---The Velvet Underground And So On?

In another news, not sure if I can justify liking Sterling’s spidery, fiddly playing but not ever having been able to acclimate to Jerry’s. Unless maybe it has something to with drummers, vocalists,”lyricists, etc.

Put Jerry on your shoulder.

Which locution first appeared here: Guess I'm Polling in Love: The Lou Reed Memorial Velvet Underground (and solo material) Ballot Poll Thread

xp Maybe it's the rhythm guitar? Lou's amphetamine groove rolling through songs like a bowling ball vs. Bobby's spacey sketches batting the songs around like a beachball.

Yes, thanks, I thought about that as well, good description.

Some good Garth Hudson-lite stuff from Doug on Matrix “Black Angel’s Death Song.”

And the bass is played by…Sterling?

Some lineup on “Venus and Furs” I guess. Sorry, never paid attention until just now.

Velvet Dead convergence was sometimes said of early live Television (also
15 60 75 The Numbers Band's 1976 live debut album,Jimmy Bell's Still in Town). Think Verlaine mentioned being an xpost John Cippolina fan or appreciator, like Sterling, don't recall comments about Garcia or Dead.
Thee man himself showed up on Man's live Maximum Darkness:
Rumours that Micky Jones had to over-dub Cipollina’s guitar, as it was out of tune, before the album could be released,[4] are greatly exaggerated. Only one track, "Bananas", had to have his playing removed/replaced, per Deke Leonard: "Everything ... which sounds like Cipollina is Cipollina."[5] O U Wiki Kid!

I had to stare at that for a long while looking for an ‘e’ to make sure it wasn’t the drummer Mickey Jones, who I recently discovered was there near the beginning when Joe Osborn discovered The Carpenters.

That's (sic) in main Man article too---Wiki doesn't have one for him specifically, but Man entry goes on to detail several of his later bands. like the Flying Pigs (also backed a "Welsh Elvis impersonator"). Thought he was Mickey or Mick Jones of Foreigner, but def. not. Good with Man, though!

(Terry Williams had no prob playing w druggy jammy Man *and* Rockpile, so too bad he wasn't in later VU.)

(Feel like deep down in his pounding-like-a-hammer heart of hearts he preferred playing on the ginormous kit with Direct Straits)

(Hah, Fab Fat Fingered Slip!)

Man... the extended solo on "White Light/White Heat (Version 1)," track 23 of Complete Matrix Tapes, is just terrific.

I absolutely prefer Quine Tapes to Live 69, by a wide margin

This bluesy, cough-syrup slow "Sister Ray" solo (Matrix Tapes, track 30) is also unlike any other VU I remember hearing before!

Need to revisit Quine Tapes after this, it's been a long time

This Sister Ray is astonishingly good

oh it's 36 mins long? this is the stuff, fam

yeah I registered to the whole set recently and it totally ruled

the long slow "Waiting For My Man" is A++ as well

"re-listened" jeez

how is this even a question?

(xp) Those are both on "Live at the Matrix" where they don't sound like shit though? I think?

They sure sound good (thru my headphones) on this Complete Matrix Tapes set(?)

live at the matrix sounds great!

the long version of what goes on is so so good

tom

(xxp) Oh I thought you were talking about the Quine Tapes recordings?

no, sorry, Matrix Tapes

(huh - there is a weird edit at the very end of Sister Ray, where suddenly the audio quality does drop significantly?)

The tape had run out and the guy recrding it had to swap to a new reel - what you're listening to in the gap actually is the Quine Tapes version that's been spliced in to fill the gap.

The 36 minute "Sister Ray" is great even though Lou takes an 11 minute solo which mostly consists of twanging the lowest notes on his guitar like a monomaniacal Duane Eddy.

Thx for the info! (yeah, if that's what the Quine Tapes sound like, I can see why they're not... preferred)

Some people seem to prefer them!

A lot of the Quine Tapes are from different venues (I think?) and it has some tracks which were missing from the Matrix Tapes which, in an ideal world, should have been on there - like a long "Ride Into the Sun", iirc?

i kind of love that sister ray edit, it's like you're losing your mind during this epic skronk fest and have to go out for a smoke at the 33 minute mark. but then you go back in to see how long they can keep it going.

yeah there's tons of stuff on the Quine Tapes that isn't on Complete Matrix, like the 17-minute "Follow The Leader" and two more "Sister Ray"s

sure the sound ain't great but the performances are fire

I actually forgot that the 36-minute Sister Ray was the same

xxp ha ha, yeah, that's a great analogy

theres an 11-minute version of New Age on the Quine Tapes that I dont think is on the Matrix set thats one of my favorite VU things ever.

I still remember buying the Quine set when it came out and the clerk scoffing at the combined total of 90 minutes of Sister Ray across 3 discs, "jeez, how much Sister Ray do you really need?" A lot, buddy. A LOT.

never enough

also Tyler otm about the "smoke break" effect of the edit

Amen to both those!
Here's what I said about The Complete Matrix Tapes in P&J ballot comments---I felt bad afterwards about not Top Tenning it, but only got that many places in the lifeboat:
VU's complete Matrix Tapes: although I'd heard some of it before on the Live 1969 mid-70s twofer (and yet more had been on The Quine Tapes [although TCMP sounds better ] and wildly deluxe editions studio etc., so it's not on this year's P&J ballot) was immediately astounded by entering the bluestopia of an epic, post(?)-doowop slow groove "Waiting For My Man." Plus, the most beautifullest "I'm Set Free" imaginable, so far ("What in the wor-rld/Is/Happening to me-e," and I'm rising, swooning). Margarita is waiting so patiently, stoically---"Between though and expression/Lies a lifetime"---'til she sees in Tom a suitable case, a suitable candidate----maybe "just" Mr. Right Enough, but her standards are...high. It's as uneven/predictable at times as a three-night club sojourn far from home is likely to be, with moody Lou as punk priest/tour guide, sometimes taking us from ritual invocation and philosophical testes cases to routine--- but the brittleness of some performances (the strongest of these "Pale Blue Eyes," especially) blends with the wariness of themes, implicit and explicit conundrums: how and why and when and etc. should you could he stick strictly with the pleasure principle, and guard it hard (leisure becomes a full-time job, depending on patterns of floatation; then again these can find "a wealth in confusion!")----keeping it all to and for yourself/trust another person, considering that they that anybody could be just as weird as you, given what you know about personhood. (While bouncing off Dylan's contemporaneous "Someone thinks that they have found you!") Also, no matter how incredible thee ongoing seemed last night about this same time or tyme (onstage, for instance) tonight and tomorrow are just some other times, exciting or not---and "Lisa Says" has nothing beyond cuteness to add to this inquiry, and "Ocean" once again seems too conceptual---"I never get things done," okay, but beating your head against the waves doesn't have too much impact here, and time and tide and wet sand all seem too vaguely implied, if even that, at such length, for instance--maybe it's a test: can we strike wet matches, abstaining from all the usual signifiers? But even such frustrations pull me into the club, the extended stay vacay, and oooweee (and finally all in stereo, so even on so-so headphones, even familiar tracks can be revelatory),
(PS: maybe it comes down to: Do not attempt listening to the whole thing in one session--but it's so hard to stop. Also, listening again to the slow "Waiting For My Man," I'm remembering the old expression "getting straight," and maybe that's what the narrator is looking for expecting here, no big whoop, just as solo Lou happily chattered about in an interview," ...drugs that don't getcha hight, they just getcha normal, even." Got any?)

to be clear regarding the OP, I am saying:

Quine Tapes >> Live 1969 > Live/Dead > Matrix Tapes

ofc they are all extremely awesome, this is like comparing a $175 bottle of wine to a $200 bottle

the Dallas tracks on Live 1969 make it slightly better for me, even though the sound quality of the Matrix is obv astonishing

The only "Ocean" I like is from the Loaded sessions, I think---anyway, I heard it on Peel Slowly and See.

yeah that's a good one, I also like the VU and Live 1969 versions, it's just such a great song. as usual with my VU preferences, the longer the better

The Loaded "Ocean" is fantastic and how the fuck did it not make the album and "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" did...

My copy of the The Quine Tapes is a promo – I think I wrote something up on it, but the reviews editor (B1lly Altm4n) gently declined to publish it (to his credit... I surely wasn't up to the task).