The Velvet Coverground

I’m going to be away for the next few days, so I’m putting my Friday songs up on Thursday. This week it's covers of all six songs on the first side of an album that came out 40 years ago this week.

I’ve always felt that The Velvet Underground & Nico album is a little bit.. overrated. Calling something "overrated" is kind of a loaded gun, but I think the legacy and influence of this record is more important than it's worth as an actual listening experience. So much of their sound has been co-opted by other bands (some great, some good, many not-so-good) over the years that it's hard for us in the here and now to hear VU & Nico the way listeners did in early 1967.

The Velvets have built up such a legend over the years that it’s hard to divorce the music from the myths. One of the biggest prevailing myths is that the VU were shunned and ignored while they were together and only appreciated after they broke up. From David Fricke’s Britannica entry on the band: “At a time when the San Francisco scene represented the euphoric apex of 1960s counterculture, the Velvets' harsh dose of New York City-framed reality was scorned by the music industry and ignored by mainstream audiences.” Or this writeup that says "their records didn't get much airplay, even on 'underground' FM stations."

The Velvets weren’t played much on mainstream radio, but their first record got lots of airplay on "free-form" FM stations like San Francisco's KMPX, and they were headlining large halls even before the record came out. The flyer at the top of this entry shows the VU playing three nights at SF’s Fillmore (5/27-29/66) as part of Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, supported by Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention (I would've loved to be a fly on the wall at those shows!). Even in mid-1966, anonymous bands weren't headlining at the Fillmore!

These EPI shows got a positive mention in the Chronicle (reproduced on the LP gatefold), but apparently Bill Graham didn't like the Velvets because they never played the Fillmore again. But through the rest of their career, they played a bunch of S.F. shows attempting to build a as West Coast audience. Their Live 1969 and Bootleg Series were recorded entirely from San Francisco shows. The Chronicle had an article after the release of the Bootleg Series about the Velvets’ residency at the Matrix in late-1969 that more or less kills the prevailing myth that their NYC attitude was antithesis of West Coast flower power. The popular West Coast bands of that era (the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane) were every bit as “dark” as the VU were, just a little more popular.

Anyway, here are six VU covers making up the entire first side of The Velvet Underground & Nico. Like some folks say about Bob Dylan, I usually prefer Velvet Underground songs by other people to their originals. These are six of Lou Reed’s best songs, I think, and they're downloadable either individually below, or collectively as a big zip file.

1. Sunday Morning – Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs
2. I’m Waiting For The Man – Maureen Tucker
3. Femme Fatale – Tracey Thorn
4. Venus in Furs – Makrosoft
5. Run Run Run – Echo & the Bunnymen
6. All Tomorrow’s Parties – June Tabor & Oysterband

I might do the second side if I can find a decent cover of "Black Angel's Death Song". For those who prefer the originals, the WFMU blog has all the tracks from the acetate of the the Velvets' 1966 Scepter studio sessions that sold for $25,000 on eBay. I'm not sure what you do when you pay that much for a record -- you sure don't play it! Are acetates the vinyl equivalent of CDRs? These mp3s sound scratchier than Robert Johnson 78s from 1927.