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

For me, obv VU...I've tried with the Dead, that record in particular, but nothing happening.

Also, VU has the far superior album cover.

VU. Especially now that the Matrix Tapes are out there with the self-titled super deluxe edition.

yeah the covers!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3c/1969Live.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3f/Grateful_Dead_-_Live-Dead.jpg

I've always loved the Dead's cover and disliked the Velvets cover. So they win that one.

I'm not a Dead fan until after this era. Their early 70s >>> any Velvets-related stuff except maybe Cale's solo records.

Lou Reed:
“Once when we were playing on a bill with the Grateful Dead, some reporter from the Daily News asked me what was the difference between us and the Dead. With a perfectly straight face, I told him, ‘The difference is that they take the kids backstage and turn them on – but we shoot ‘em up!’ Don’t you know, he actually believed me and printed that.”

Lou & Doug

LOU: We had vast objections to the whole San Francisco scene. It's just tedious, a lie, and untalented. They can't play and they certainly can't write. The Airplane, the Dead, all of them...
DOUG: They lose track of where the music comes from - they start thinking it instead of playing it. Especially the Dead. Now I saw the Dead when they just started, and they were a bunch of scuzzy kids just having a ball playing rock & roll - they were a lot of fun. But then they started thinking about what they were doing too much.
LOU: I can get off understanding the kick it was to play Lovelight.... But they're amateur...they can't play. Jerry's not a good guitar player. It's a joke, and the Airplane is even worse, if that's possible.
DOUG: Jerry, he'll play the same solo for a half hour, but if he'd done it for just two minutes....he plays the same notes over and over again.

otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvPdI0USSPk

love 'em both.

Also, VU has the far superior album cover.

always makes me think of nashi pears
http://www.loriendale.com.au/apple_pictures/kosuinashi.jpg

i just love that green on VU 69 for some reason. perfect color.

Couple years ago it would have been the VU for me, no contest... but now, Lou forgive me, I'm not so sure.

I almost just posted this exact sentence. Live/Dead made me do a 180 on the Dead, but as much as I love it, it doesn't have anything as majestic as "Ocean."

if Live Dead had a "The Other One" from that stint at the Fillmore I'd vote for it no question
but that "Ocean", man...
those Fillmore shows that came out a few years back, with such crisp sound, so nice, "St Stephen" comes out like a way better "Chest Fever", plus -> "The Eleven"
bullshitting here...

if it's just one of those Fillmore shows vs Live at Cole Ave then I probably vote Dead
but w/ these comps, I dunno!

VU 69 is a band at its peak, the Dead still had some mountains to climb as EZ alludes to. But I do like the rawness of Live/Dead's explorations.

ocean is ten minutes of just absolutely sublime music. i remember reading an article that was originally published before the dead's first album came out where one of them mentioned they changed their name from the warlocks because they heard there was a band on the east coast using it, not sure if the dates match up but always wondered if that was the pre-vu warlocks.

it may have been, though i think there were a few warlocks floating around at the time.
ocean on live 1969 is pretty interesting -- apparently it was the first thing Lou wanted to hear when those tapes first came up for release in the 70s. even he remembered it!

Live/Dead a big transformational record for me, will always win by default, but shit there is not loser here.

Doug Yule's quotes though, A+. Guess he was trying to please Lou?

Thanks for the thread. I have tried many times with live/dead and it never worked out. But right now dark star is really clicking with me. I think you have to be in the right mood. But overall live 1969 is a totally different beast. It really is live, lou is interacting with the audience whereas live/dead doesn't have a live atmosphere at all. As if they were playing on another star.

dark star on live/dead is incredible

That Dark Star is basically "it" for me in regards to Live/Dead, just a hugely influential recording for me, so very highly biased.

the dead mean way more to me than VU and 68-69 live dead is the peak of that band for me so this is pretty easy. tbh though i've heard very little off of vu 69 and i am digging it.

vu 69 is just the most pleasing music in the world to me... been listening to it regularly for more than 20 years and i'm still not even remotely tired of it. but yeah that dark star ...
the third disc on the Fillmore 69 disc (which cherrypicks the best of an even bigger box) is unreal, just a totally fearless band.

the third disc on the Fillmore 69 disc (which cherrypicks the best of an even bigger box) is unreal, just a totally fearless band.

otm!

Hah yeah. It makes those Yule quotes especially sweet. I mean, Yule probably never heard any of that stuff, but yeah "they lose track of where the music comes from - they start thinking it instead of playing it" doesn't really apply.

Tough choice, but VU for me.

actually for this era dead (68-69 that is, i realize "era" wrt the dead could be as much as a couple years or as little as a few nights) as much as i love live/dead my favorite is really two from the vault, dark star there is a little shorter but hits is pretty majestic

Turn on your lovelight suddenly has got a live atmosphere. I am slowly advancing in the course of things. frantic girls which are hooked by the music are screaming. Something else i didn't realize before is how much the dead sound like a folk rock band. And more european than american. There is also a lot of the doors in the dead. In both bands the keyboards play an important role. They kind of create the cosmic, psychedelic sound. But of course i voted for live with lou reed.

Prob won't try to choose, but this VU live 2-LP always fascinated me, the way this always proudly no-blues, anti-hippie 60s band's *rootsiness* just ambled right out of the closet here, although Moe's Bo Diddly thing and other elements were there, just a bit, in the studio versions---but damn this lonesome sidewalk cowpoke version of "Sweet Jane," all this stuff---and with no condescension or pandering to their Texas audience---thought about this set soon as I started hearing about cowpunk, a few years later (also think Paul Nelson edited well, considering what I've since heard of the original tapes, though certainly haven't heard all of 'em).

Funny how the Dead record has more feedback than the Velvets'.

yeah i remember being pretty surprised when i first heard the casual choogle of "waiting for the man" that leads off live 1969. loved it though.
guess the thing that Live 1969 is really missing is "Sister Ray." Maybe the jammy nature of that song in 69 didn't seem to fit the narrative of the band in 1974 when they were kinda riding the Bowie/Glam wave.
Funny that there wasn't an officially released live "Ray" until the Quine Tapes...

Although even as edited/condensed, the resulting double-LP gets pretty darn jammy!

even kinda laidback, in its way. Groovy.

I don't think there was a "Sister Ray" from those tapes/shows that would've fit on an LP side!

i just love that green on VU 69 for some reason. perfect color.

ocean is ten minutes of just absolutely sublime music.

otm

Lou & Doug don't seem to have actually heard any music from San Francisco but are content to respond to some pictures they saw in Look

"They can't play" is kind of lol coming from Lou Reed.

I've been wanting to play Dick's Picks #22 for a VU fan/Dead hater, as the similarities between that and Live 1969 are striking to the point that, in certain passages, the two bands are almost indistinguishable from one another.

OTM Tarfumes. That is why I find Yule's comments so choice.

Have yall heard the Yardbirds do "I'm Waiting For The Man"? LA '68:
http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=2339

(also, got a '67 tape where the Dead do a version of "Cream Puff War" which might be YU influenced--anyway, sounds like something I'd expect from a CBGB band a decade later---but they dropped that song from their setlists pretty early, right?)

Did Sterling ever say anything about The Dead?

I'd be surprised if he hasn't.

In that long Sterling interview in the VU companion, I seem to recall him commenting on the Dead, but saving real praise for Quicksilver Messenger Service.

yeah he was a big cippolina booster -- don't know what he thought of the Dead, though he probably took Lou's view.
the VU really hated Bill Graham (and the feeling was mutual), which i think colored everything for them about the SF scene.

VU (and arthur lee) otm re: bill graham

lol at saying the jefferson airplane "can't play". it really is a clash of opposites, in a way. i remember jorma and jack in some interview/documentary going off on how bemused/disturbed they were by pre-punk stuff like the who destroying their instruments... "like, instruments are like sacred temples, man"

jefferson airplane's music is a lot darker and more fucked up then they're given credit for, anyways.

the true darkness comes in the starship age

In any case, the Velvets didn’t return to California for two years. As Sterling said in his usual manner, “We left California alone for two years, because they’re so determined to do their own thing, their own San Francisco music. We were just rocking the boat – they don’t want to know about that. ‘There’s only one music, and we all know what that is…it’s what the Grateful Dead play. That’s the very best rock & roll can ever get…’ We said, ‘You’re full of shit, your city, your state, and everything else.’”

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).

xxpost That "Ocean" in/"Cowboy" out change will be made on my Loaded: Baked Potato playlist.
xxxpost Yeah, sleeve's right: if you need one, you need 'em all.
Xgau agreed, said:

Bootleg Series: Volume 1: The Quine Tapes [Polydor, 2001]
I was cynical too, especially once I'd ascertained that the audio on these three discs was as faint as I'd feared. Played loud, though, the sound improves--not quite crisp or bright, but there. Note that this trick doesn't work with *Live at Max's Kansas City and ask yourself if you wouldn't maybe like to hear the number three band of the '60s, after the Beatles and James Brown and His Famous Flames, without wearing out its tiny catalogue. No new songs, true. But over the two hours that aren't devoted to three long, distinct versions of "Sister Ray," no title is repeated, even though every one was recorded in a one-month span in San Francisco in 1969. That's pretty impressive. As is all the new guitar. A-

*Also, when the Max's Kansas City set got more songs and remastered, he liked it better.

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)
Aw. Was that Creem? Prob had regulars pitching it like whores jumping up for a blow of coke, as Bangs would say.

Nah, a “dot-com”…

I feel like “Ocean” doesn’t fit the vibe of Loaded, but that’s just me…

I still dislike the Live At Max's material, mostly because of Billy Yule's showboaty fills on the drums, which imho are antithetical to the band's essence

idk I guess it works better on Loaded b/c it doesn't bug me as much there

Think I'd make "Ocean" thee Loaded closer, for that late night 1970 FM stoner appeal (either that or make it next to last, right before the slow version of "Sweet Jane"? With the fast version still near the beginning of Side 1---which would start w "Satellite of Love," btw---"Who Loves The Sun" now a b-side only, waiting for CD- era collectormania)

I feel like “Ocean” doesn’t fit the vibe of Loaded, but that’s just me…

Not just you, it absolutely doesn't. And neither does the version of "Ride Into the Sun" recorded at the sessions, although that's better than about half the tracks on "Loaded" too. "Ocean" on Live 1969/Matrix Tapes is one of my favourite pieces of music ever.

live at Max's, esp the drumming is like them doing stand up of their own material. that beginning to see the light!!!

lol

Recently picked up the January 10th, 1969 and July 11th, 1969 Boston Tea Party shows (someone who is more well versed than I can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe both are part of the 'Professor Tapes'). The July performance is more fiery and frenetic, but the January is the better recorded. Either way, both great to hear and welcome additions to my VU collection.

^ also known as the "Legendary Guitar Amp tapes"

Just the July show is part of that, correct? The January show seems too clean to be recorded in the amp.

guitar amp tapes is a different show — march 15 1969, I think.

Thanks tyler, it's all so confusing. One of the entries at discogs shows the following recording dates for one of the "Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes" boots, which is why I was confused:

Tracks 1-1 to 2-1: Boston Tea Party, March 15, 1969
Tracks 2-2 and 2-4: Boston Tea Party, December 12, 1968
Track 2-3: Boston Tea Party, July 11, 1969

that boot contains bonus stuff on the second disc that IS from the professor tapes. Tyler is correct and I was wrong: these are the shows:

professor tapes
1968/12/12 Boston, MA - Boston Tea Party
1969/01/10 Boston, MA - Boston Tea Party
1969/03/13 Boston, MA - Boston Tea Party
1969/07/11 Boston, MA - Boston Tea Party
1969/08/02 Mason, NH - Hilltop Pop Festival

legendary guitar amp
1969/03/15 Boston, MA - Boston Tea Party

Thanks! This is all such a muddled mess for someone just diving in a little deeper.

Another question, while we're on it, is the first night of the Cole Ave. shows really that much worse than the second night? Seeing a lot of commentary that there is a pretty stark difference between the two nights.

Has anyone mentioned Poor Richard's yet?

xp it's definitely lower-fi, but it's not awful or anything, the taper was just further back

xpost Poor Richard's? You mean these two tracks (Heroin & Venus In Furs with Cale on vocals) from the Exploding Plastic Inevitable film by Andy Warhol & Ronald Nameth, recorded at Poor Richard's Club, Chicago, Illinois 6/23/1966 ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBfnukdsmSs

xp - Thanks sleeve, I wasn't clear if the "worse" was referring to audio quality or playing performance. Dodgy sounding cavernous bootlegs don't exactly scare me off.

oohhh gotcha jon, no the performances are fine

that Hilltop show is great as well, and unique in that it is the only live boot of them at an outdoor festival where they could really crank it up

Wait, Nico and Lou weren't at the Poor Richards' gig. Oh, I see.

First Night at Cole Ave. is a really interesting document if you can get through the somewhat lo-fi sound (though it isn't that bad, just not nearly as good as the second night). Lots of mellow numbers with some cool Lou talk.

And if you're really jonesing, the remastered, expanded Live At Max's Kansas City is not too bad---I wouldn't buy it, but heard it a while back on either Spotify or YouTube.
Xgau:
3 Stars
***
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND
Live at Max's Kansas City (Deluxe Edition)
Atlantic/Rhino

A last-ditch product of 1972 becomes a you-are-there keepsake of 2004

Recorded in notorious lo-fi from the table of Andy Warhol hanger-on Brigid Polk in 1970, Lou Reed's last Velvets show until 1993 is one of the few collector's items to gain patina with the remastered, bonus-cutted, double-disc overkill of the CD era. Although the basic effect is still that of hearing a band from the back of a noisy bar, the audio is crisper and more forceful. Although original bassist/viola player John Cale and drummer Mo Tucker are gone, Reed does sing songs performed in their official studio versions by Nico and auxiliary member Doug Yule. And although Live 1969 remains the essential document, it is cool to hear Polk's buddies chatting obliviously about Richard Nixon and Tuinols as punk's forefathers go gamely into that good night.

Blender, Aug. 2004

auxiliary member---forgot about that tag---poor Doug!

there's yet another remastered version of Max's Kansas City on the Loaded/ReLoaded anniversary thing - (with 2 tracks missing so it could fit on one CD I guess: Who Loves The Sun & Sweet Jane (version2) )

which one has the great recording of I think I'm falling in love?

Live At the Gymnasium?

I don't know, I just wanted to be in the chat!

Background, according to Wiki:
The Velvet Underground signed a two-album deal with Atlantic in early 1970 and released their fourth studio album, Loaded, in November 1970. By the time of its release, singer/guitarist/main songwriter Lou Reed had left. The rest of the band stayed together, with bassist Doug Yule moving to vocals and guitar and Walter Powers being drafted in to play bass.

This line-up did a tour of the United States and Canada promoting Loaded. As the band still had a contract for another album, they wrote and played new songs eventually to be included on it. Atlantic had lost faith in the band's commercial prospects and, wanting to cut their losses after the disappointing chart showings of Loaded, decided to release an archive live recording instead.

The tapes that would later become Live at Max's Kansas City were recorded on August 23, 1970, by Andy Warhol associate Brigid Polk on a portable cassette recorder. While they were recording Loaded, the Velvet Underground held a nine-week engagement (June 24 – August 28, 1970) at New York City nightclub Max's Kansas City, playing two sets a night. Polk recorded almost everything happening around her at the time, and this happened to include her attendance of the last concert that Lou Reed played with the Velvet Underground. She recorded both the early and the late set. Later that year, Atlantic A&R employee Danny Fields heard the tapes and submitted them to his superiors, who accepted the recordings and in 1972 decided to make an album out of them. The line-up at the concerts consisted of Reed, Yule, lead guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Billy Yule, the younger brother of Doug Yule; regular drummer Maureen Tucker temporarily left the group several months earlier when she became pregnant with her first child, Kerry "Trucker" Tucker.

Originally, Live at Max's Kansas City was a single album distillation of both sets re-sequenced and edited by Lou Reed and Atlantic staff producer Geoff Haslam to reflect the band's loud and quiet sides, respectively. On August 3, 2004, Warner Music re-issue label Rhino Records released a two-CD Deluxe Edition that contains both sets in their entirety in their original running order. The songs were recorded on a mono recorder using a simple ferro musicassette in a small venue, resulting in tape hiss and an audience often drowning out the quieter bits of music.

Author Jim Carroll can be heard speaking on the album, ordering drinks and inquiring about drugs between songs as he was the one holding the microphone. Who was talking about Nixon?

Not seeing that one, plax---this is the double:
2004 reissue edition
All tracks written by Lou Reed except as indicated.

Disc one
No. Title Length
1. "I'm Waiting for the Man" 5:50
2. "White Light/White Heat" 6:07
3. "I'm Set Free" 5:33
4. "Sweet Jane" (Version 1) 6:18
5. "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" (Version 1) 4:41
6. "New Age" 6:44
7. "Beginning to See the Light" 5:40
Disc two
No. Title Length
8. "Who Loves the Sun" 2:17
9. "Sweet Jane" (Version 2) 5:58
10. "I'll Be Your Mirror" 3:02
11. "Pale Blue Eyes" 7:10
12. "Candy Says" 5:48
13. "Sunday Morning" (Reed, Cale) 3:48
14. "After Hours" 2:50
15. "Femme Fatale" 4:07
16. "Some Kinda Love" 11:22
17. "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" (Version 2) 5:00
18. "Atlantic release promo" (hidden track)

They also show the 2016:
2016 reissue edition
All tracks written by Lou Reed except as indicated.

No. Title Length
1. "I'm Waiting for the Man" 5:44
2. "White Light/White Heat" 5:15
3. "I'm Set Free" 6:27
4. "Sweet Jane" 6:17
5. "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" (Version 1) 4:20
6. "New Age" 6:38
7. "Beginning to See the Light" 5:42
8. "I'll Be Your Mirror" 3:27
9. "Pale Blue Eyes" 6:01
10. "Candy Says" 5:50
11. "Sunday Morning" (Reed, Cale) 3:39
12. "After Hours" 2:58
13. "Femme Fatale" 3:09
14. "Some Kinda Love" 11:03
15. "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" (Version 2) 4:17

Personnel
The Velvet Underground
Sterling Morrison – lead guitar, backing vocals
Lou Reed – vocals, rhythm guitar
Doug Yule – bass guitar, backing vocals, lead vocal on "Lonesome Cowboy Bill", "Who Loves the Sun", "I'll Be Your Mirror", "I'm Set Free", "Candy Says" and "New Age"
Billy Yule – drums, cowbell

The Gymnasium "Guess..." is also on Peel Slowly & See.

I also think they'd quite playing it live by '70.

I doubt they played it live after Cale left.