Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

there was a smattering of VU bootleg talk in some other VU thread a week or so ago ... Hilltop is definitely great! love that Run Run Run -- Lou shredding at its finest. You might also be interested in this: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/325332296/pre-vu-ive-been-od-ing-on-the-velvet-underground

hilltop link please? can't find the site with all the VU stuff that was mentioned. Currently reading the VU + Nico 33 1/3rd book and the Untrberger. Hopefully will get the Kugelberg for xmas! Right now it's all Velvets and Devo all the time. Strangely the Devo kick started prior to the recent thread revivals.

thenunsareontheseawall.blogspot.com
should have the Hilltop show somewhere ... and everything else!

Favourite Velvet Underground album (with extra facility) right here.

Run Run Run To The Hills

interesting that the VU were headlining over Van Morrison at the Hilltop Festival ...

fella over at thevelvetforum.tk has posted some innnnnteresting upgrades on the Boston Tea Party shows ... Just look at the thread called "professor tapes" ...

Whoa! The "Professor Tapes" are leaving me speechless. Fantastic!

yeah, as they note, all of these recordings circulate, but the quality here is (for the most part) waaay better. January show in particular sounds great ... Hope they get it together to get the complete shows out there ...

wow. Thanks for the heads up & fingers crossed indeed!

Meanwhile, though, someone is still sitting on those Matrix tapes. :-(

Droooollllll.......

heard they're re-ishing Live 1969 on vinyl ... not terribly exciting. Wonder what it would take to get the Velvets bootleg series going again? Thought for sure that the Gymnasium tape would get an official release. But noooooo.

as usual I blame LOU REED

he's afraid that releasing VU live shows will distract from his thriving iphone app business.

Legit fear.

funny though, over on that velvet forum they're talking about getting Easy Action or Captain trip to release the tapes ... is that possible? Could they do it legit w/o Lou or the band's approval? How does this stuff work anyway? What goes on in your mind?

Pretty sure that you cannot do that legally.

what if you just didn't mention it to Lou.

Release it under a codename so he doesn't find out. Velours Metro.

Doug Yule & The Boston Tea Baggers

http://i45.tinypic.com/fxa16s.jpg

unseen VU film premiering: http://www.warhol.org/calendar/events_detail.php?eventID=1831

anybody who's interested in those Professor Tapes in full should check out thevelvetforum.tk. Dude who posted the sampler is looking for paypal donations to cover his costs, or something ... probably worth chipping in a few bucks for!

as usual I blame LOU REED

I blame Mike Love.

I can't claim to be an expert, although I've heard a lot more VU bootlegs in the last year than I've heard in the rest of my life, but hardly any of them sound as good as "Live 1969", even the ones that are supposed to - and, yes, I know "Live 1969" is from different sources. So if someone had access to all this material in 1974, which is when I believe "Live 1969" was put together, where is it now? Who actually compiled "Live 1969" anyway?

A lot of it was from the "End Cole Ave" tapes, that got a separate release a while ago (from certain ahem outlets)

tbh, apart from that recent Lp with "I'm not a young man anymore" and anything with unheard songs on, the remainder of this can lie as far as I'm concerned.

(I did have a listen in to some of this, no surprises really)

A lot of it was from the "End Cole Ave" tapes, that got a separate release a while ago (from certain ahem outlets)

I know, I've got that, I'm still convinced "Live 1969" sounds better. I'm with you though, I love the Velvets, but my interest in indifferently recorded bootlegs of the same songs over and over again has dipped alarmingly in the last year.

the origins of 1969 Live seem to be super murky -- the Unterberger book goes into in some detail, but doesn't really have any concrete conclusions. No one knows where the tapes came from!

from heaven maybe

I did have a listen in to some of this, no surprises really
to each his own ... I guess I can't get enough, hence my regular presence on this thread. That 14 minute version of Run Run Run from the Professor Tapes is craaaaaazy. That said, if you don't want to get deep into the murky bootleg world, Live 1969 is certainly good enough. It is one of my favorite things ever.

I'm with Tyler - I just can't get enough of live Velvets, even if of dubious sound quality. I also rate the Quine Tapes over Live 1969, and by quite a margin. I've never really warmed to live 1969, despite owning and listening for 20-odd years.

I've never really warmed to live 1969, despite owning and listening for 20-odd years

You are Lou Reed

I was listening to the Quine Tapes yesterday - soooo good. Especially the Sister Rays! Like a whole, weird world to get lost in.

Quine Tapes is all about the Sister Rays imo

just ridiculous that there are close-to-perfect quality recordings of some of those shows in that Matrix dude's vault. Not that I don't love the murk and hissssss ...

The murk and hiss somehow works with Sisters, not sure about the rest though

i also love other sister rays that are out there. one called "Sweet Sister Ray" is esp. wonderful (sorry don't have deets handy). oh, and the End Cole Ave. i got ~1990 from Italy still sounds a bit better than 1969 Live, fwiw

Sister Rays are generally great. What's the one where it goes straight into it from "Heroin" - and it's like, to quote Nico, "The red sea paaaaaaaaaarting"

yeah, and then there are the ones with bits of the Murder Mystery thrown in at the end ... They're just awesome rollercoasters.

The Quine Tapes are pretty dud free, IMO. "Sister Ray" live is almost always a highlight of any of the boots I've heard. I wrote something about the version "I'm Waiting For The Man" (Quine Tapes, disc 3) several years ago that I think holds up okay. You can read it here if you choose:
http://ezsnappin.blogspot.com/2007/04/cold-chillin.html

nice! i love that version -- so mellow, but so intense. Kind of unbelievable really -- what else sounds like this in the 1960s? Not what the VU is known for but kind of just as revolutionary. And I think you're right about the dreamlike quality -- for all the talk of Reed's lyrics being "hardboiled, photorealist" kinda things, I think that there's a strain of the epic/surreal, too. even in "waiting for the man" it's sort of a fantasy, quest kind of thing. With heroin.

"Waiting For The Man" as hero's quest - classic or dud?

http://www.rpgmmag.com/images/site/rpgm/games/heros_quest_title.jpg
Hey, Knight Boy, whatchu doing uptown?

Ha!

"Thou chaseth our maidens around"

There is now a reason for this wistful, strolling take on the song; the singer is already fixed, just picking up more before the hunger ever hits.

such a great version of that song, immediately I thought "oh that has to be about that long lazy one".

I want them professor tapes but I can't be arsed to register at that forum :-/

i'm sure they'll slip into general circulation pretty quickly. Not sure why there's all the cloak & dagger stuff over at the velvet forum -- plenty of other unreleased VU material circulates freely doesn't it? Doesn't seem like Lou has an intern surfing the blogs for bootlegs or anything. I would apply to be that intern, however.

I do that for my label. It's really frustrating work. Some of the file sharing sites are like "abuse? sorry, we'll take it down" (not in an email, just in their FAQ or whatever, and they do.)

Others though...have all this text saying "if you have a claim of ownership to something being hosted with us, you have to send us your name and address and explain how you own it and where you found it and who linked to it and prove this and that" and even then still don't take it down. The bloggers themselves are more response in deleting the link to the shared file, even if the sharing site still has it up.

I have google alerts for my releases and have to say either file sharing has gone up or the new CD is more popular than the last, but it's not a great feeling to get emails from google every day telling me about the various torrent sites and mediafire and rapidshare and megaupload locations that the entire CD is being hosted at.

oh yeah, i can see having someone tracking down sites that are offering officially released material, but the bootleg-y stuff seems like a different thing ... at least I hope it does, as someone who runs a bootleg blog! btw, dan, you reminded me I need to order that Method Actors disc!