Loaded: best VU album, rite guys?

oh yeah, that's what got me thinking about Beefheart and the Magic Band etc xpost. And Moe didn't play so many straight-up Bo Diddley Burundi beats did she? Lou: "We just needed somebody to play the telephone book." Whatta guy.

god I love the Vulgar Boatmen and their predecessor Right To Left, thank you so much for bringing them up - and I think they do have a clear lineage from the Velvets in many ways. (xp)

The first Moe solo album is pretty damn amazing.

Moe is.

thread title otm

took me ten years to figure that one out

I don't think it's the best VU album, but I think the Fully Loaded edition might be the best reissue of all time. All those alternate takes and solo Lou sketches are essential.

Dave Marsh thought it was their best, and Mitch Ryder dug it:

Six months later, I’m sitting at a table at the Waldorf, some room where Mitch is doing a debut party for his Detroit [album], and they hit “Rock’n'Roll,” which they’d worked up about a day after first hearing it. We were sitting right up front, and Lou leans over from across the table next to us and says, “That’s what that song was supposed to sound like.”

"And then Lou put his hands around my neck and tried to strangle me."

and i dunno, loaded is one of the best albums ever, but an album w/o moe on it can't be the best VU album.

It's their only "very good" album. I have problems with Yule singing more than one song per album.

i think he works on "who loves the sun" and "oh sweet nuthin" but he does not deliver on "new age" -- the live 69 version is farrrrrr superior, vocally and lyrically.

Agreed except about his vocals working on "Oh! Sweet Nuthin"

"And then Lou put his hands around my neck and tried to strangle me."

hahaha

Interestingly, for all of Marsh's criticisms of Lou, they apparently got along great -- Marsh recently mentioned seeing Lou earlier this year, and said he seemed to be in great health/spirits.

But then, as Marsh notes, he never tried to interview Lou.

xp have you heard the versions w/ lou singing? there's one on the reissue and a bootleg version -- i'm not sure he would've been a better fit.

Only Yule vocal I think is iffy is "Lonesome Cowboy Bill." It's way too fast for a sweet vocal. He nails everything else, though.

As bassist he's far more interesting than Cale, or maybe the songs Reed was writing took advantage of Yule's particular talents. "Foggy Notion" is all-time.

cale is a pretty interesting bassist! but yeah, i love yule's playing -- i pretty much learned to play bass listening to live 69 as a teenager. what's weird is that yule claims he never played bass before he joined the velvets -- he had played baritone horn and tuba in his school band.

Cale is a brilliant bass player, but crazy, I love the bass on "The Gift"

He nails everything else, though.

He does.

So he had an idea of the parts to play, just had to transfer from breath power to finger power. Interesting.

yeah obviously he understood what the low end was supposed to do in music, but hadn't actually played bass w/ a rock band before (i guess he was playing guitar in previous bands). it's funny, he describes learning the repertoire as no big thing: "It was like, first chorus, play a solo for an hour and a half and we're out."

well the material's not terribly complicated

but hadn't actually played bass w/ a rock band before (i guess he was playing guitar in previous bands)

Bit like Noel Redding then

yeah, not complicated in terms of musicianship, though i can see how some players just wouldn't be able to go for it in the way that Yule did.

but anyway, otm about the fully loaded edition being essential, so much great stuff on there. though i still sort of have a quibble with the "heavenly wine and roses" "sweet jane" being put on there in the original album's sequencing. i love that part, but the performance there is kind of lamentable. the drummer (billy?) pretty much blows it. maybe i'm just used to the original CD I bought in the early 90s.

i still sort of have a quibble with the "heavenly wine and roses" "sweet jane" being put on there in the original album's sequencing. i love that part, but the performance there is kind of lamentable.

Sounds like it's from a runthrough, I've never believed Lou when he said it was edited out, I doubt it was ever seriously recorded for inclusion in the track

well, i don't know about that -- they play it at Lou's last show at Max's don't they? and i think in early solo versions from 72 or thereabouts, Lou plays it. I believe it was supposed to be part of the song, but once Lou left the band, they may have been unable to get a decent edit of that in there.

Cale does that great bass run at the end of the verse in "I'm Waiting for the Man."

And "European Son!"

"I Heard Her Call My Name" - wish I could hear him a little better on that. Sometimes I think Cale might actually be my all-time favorite bass player.

Sorry I'm always arguing with you Alfred!

As bassist he's far more interesting than Cale, or maybe the songs Reed was writing took advantage of Yule's particular talents. "Foggy Notion" is all-time.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, November 8, 2013 9:45 AM (1 hour ago)

While Lou's and Sterling's guitar tracks are both incredible, the bass playing on Foggy Notion is pretty basic/monotonous with a couple runs/turnarounds that aren't very difficult or original unless you are a novice. Great song, but the bass playing never stood out to me as anything more than serviceable.

Loaded is pretty overrated, seems like almost all of these songs were almost always improved when done live or when the album was reissued with better versions. I'll take "VU" over Loaded any day of the week.

Oh I'm not praising Yule's skillz so much as THAT basic hook. Easy to play, taken for granted.

Changing "Sweet Jane" and "New Age" on the Fully Loaded version was such a bizarre idea. Make bonus tracks, sure, but to seriously mess with major songs from a major album that people had been listening to for 35 years? So strange.

Yeah, I don't love the interpolated stuff either, it is weird. The only thing it sort of reminds me of is the CD of Money Jungle I have which has the songs in the order they were recorded rather than the original album sequence, so before you get to to the good stuff you have to sit through some lightweight warmup numbers at the beginning that I don't think made it into the LP.

When I first heard VU and Nico I didn't get what was all the fuzz about. With Loaded I got it. This is a top 10 album of all time for me, vu and nico is great but I wouldn't add it anywhere near a top 100.

Fell asleep halfway through my first listen of Loaded. First listen of VU&N keep me wide awake all night.

but hadn't actually played bass w/ a rock band before (i guess he was playing guitar in previous bands)

So why choose him to play bass then? Also Cale played his last gig with the VU on the 28th September 1968 and Yule his first gig on 4th October 1968, so I assume Yule had been waiting in the wings, as it were, after all probably half of the VU set at the time was unreleased material (and he was recording the 3rd album with them just over a month later).

yule says: "I was a PIsces and they needed a Pisces to balance it out. John was a Pisces, Lou was a Pisces, Moe and Sterling were Virgos, they wanted to have this astrological balance."

btw, all of this info comes from that unterberger book, which seems to me to be the best book on the VU. I don't always agree w/ his opinions regarding the music, but the dude has done a massive amount of research.

this is their 'fun' record, the one to play at parties, unless u r a goff

all of this info comes from that unterberger book, which seems to me to be the best book on the VU

Never read that... so where did I read the story Mo tells of when they were rehearsing with Yule, one of his first times, and he came up with the bassline for "Jesus" and Lou was all, "That is fantastic, Jeez, isn't this guy great?" or some such and Mo was like, "Hmmmmmmm, let's not blow this guy's ego up too much"?

that's in Uptight iirc. it is a pretty cool bass line tbh. yule says he basically spent a day w/ Lou right before that la cave gig learning about 30 VU songs.

which is crazy! as noted, the songs are not super complex, but just keeping them straight in your head seems like quite a task. that la cave show is amazingly killer though.

(xp) Yeah that's it, it was Lou reporting back to Mo + Sterling (who strike me as two people who were fairly hard to impress) the next day

Lost my copy of Upright, aargh, but a version of that story is also in a book called something like The Velvet Underground Reader

^^^ that reader is good shit

Mo + Sterling (who strike me as two people who were fairly hard to impress)

just watched a video of the 1st VU reunion in 1990 and sterling is pretty awesome in his i-don't-give-a-fuck-ness.

Book is actually The Velvet Underground Companion: Four Decades of Commentary, edited by Albin Zak III, is that the same one, Alfred? Interview with Nico is hilarious. The editor wrote two books I've been meaning to read, The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records and I Don't Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America.

yeah i have that one - it has some music students' thesis on sister ray, which compares it to madonna's "like a prayer."

Must have skipped that one.