Loaded: best VU album, rite guys?

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.

lol just looked it up, i was wrong -- not "like a prayer" -- "express yourself."

he says that the "harmonic and melodic organization" of both songs "subvert the phallic narrative assumptions of standard western harmony."

Don't go for second best, baby, don't you know you'll stain the carpet?

Perhaps you preferred the prior piece, "Sylvia's Husband," by Donna Gaines.

haha, yeah, there is some interesting stuff in there.
the 1968 review of white light white heat is kind of amazing, too, in that it's simultaneously pretty insightful and totally off its rocker (lots of mel lyman references).

One good thing about the VU being a little under the radar back in the day is there wasn't an ocean of Baby Boomer inkspill about them to contend with. As far as I knew there was only whatever was in Trouser Press or The Voice, the Ellen Willis piece in Stranded and the CREEM guys calling Lou Butch Firbank.

http://scoobydoo.wikia.com/wiki/Butch_Firbanks

haha, yeah, there is some interesting stuff in there.
the 1968 review of white light white heat is kind of amazing, too, in that it's simultaneously pretty insightful and totally off its rocker (lots of mel lyman references).

That had to have been written by Wayne McGuire, right?

indeed!

Ahahaha, thought so!

Guy was apparently a bit of a nutcase with some 'peculiar' views on race and other things

yeah, that's the dude -- some deep investigation here: http://black2com.blogspot.com/2004/08/do-any-of-you-remember-wayne-mcguire.html

I feel the need to respond to the OP with a resounding NO, Loaded suxxx and its defenders are deluded at best, every single one of these songs that has a live version is better served by said live version.

happily deluded, then.

I crap on this album too much, it's such a great record. Listened to it today on the way to the river. "Who Loves the Sun" is the perfect goth Beach Boys song. Twee Anti-Monkees. "I Found A Reason" inventing slowcore w music from the hearts womb. "You are what you percieve" so beautiful so simple so spiritual. A lot of this album is joyful, and joyful in a pure way wo the trappings of perversion and noise found on the earlier more experimental work. The triangle is mixed really loud on "Who Loves the Sun" and I love it.

This is the VU's "LA Woman", the blues rock last gasp, maybe Reed thought the band would be over soon and wanted to do hyper real satirical versions of the west coast hippie rock that the VU was always opposed to. Underneath the good vibes and "Head Held High" there is this sneering cynicism, the too fast punk pace of "Lonesome Cowboy Bill". The urban cowboy who just sleeps around and crashes on couches and needs you to hear him yodelayheehoo. This is Bizarro VU, anti-cheerleaders for the prom king.

There is some soul in this stuff. "Sweet Jane" and "Rock n Roll" are both lo fi Dylan sped up and run through a gospel filter.

"Oh Sweet Nothing" is really amazing. It's a shame The Marshall Tucker Band ripped it off, "Can't You See" is nearly the exact same instrumental performance. It's weird because in their hands it was woman-blaming southern machismo flexing, but in the hands of the VU it is beautiful asexual transcendental ephemeral.

It's weird but I feel like "We're Only In It For the Money" and this have a lot in common.

"Train Going Round the Bend" is AMAZING. Those guitars. It's a track that would fit perfectly on "Slanted and Enchanted".

I must hate Velvet Underground because I love this album - and it's actually one of my favorite albums of all time - but I don't really rate the rest of their work that high. All VU fans I've met think I'm being stupid for rating Loaded as their best but just a listen to, I dunno, 'Sweet Jane' and you can immediately hear the unbelievable scope of this album. Almost every song in here feels joyful and miserable at the same time.
Take a look at these lyrics: “Jack is in his corset/Jane is in her vest/ and me, I’m in a rock and roll band.” the distinction is meaningless. Usually VU use a question and response on their lyrics which is mostly absent from Loaded. In Loaded it feels like they're just observers, not active and critical participants of their environment as they are in other albums. They dropped the dark, bleak band from previous albums and showed how they can contrast the rock rebellious spirit with pop sensibility just as easily.

The original version of the album is unfortunately a travesty: too many inner drama between the band, the label forcing needless edits and remixes of an album which was supposed to be 'loaded' with hits. If you're still unsure about this album the Fully Loaded and Peel Slowly editions correct some of this problems.

It's by far the VU album I listen to the most, but of course it's not as "important" as the others. 12 people on ilm think it's da best
Ranking the Velvet Underground studio albums

Favourite Velvet Underground album (with extra facility) say it's only five.

However, Ten people say it's their Fourth fav VU album

at the university gym last night, the 18-year-olds on the climbing wall were blasting this album, so it must be cool with the modern youth of today