Track Listing

1. Waiting For My Man
2. Lisa Says - Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground
3. What Goes On - The Velvet Underground
4. Sweet Jane - The Velvet Underground
5. We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together
6. Femme Fatale - Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground
7. New Age
8. Rock And Roll
9. Beginning To See The Light
10. Heroin

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7503 in Music
• Released on: 1988-08-24
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 58 minutes

CD Description
Though 1970 brought LOADED and (relative) commercial success for the Velvets, it also saw the beginning of their decline. Apparent commercial concessions and interpersonal tensions had already begun to tear the band apart at the seams. Their real peak came the year before, when--finding themselves halfway between artiness and pop pursuits--they dived headlong into amphetamine-fueled, minimalist-influenced proto-punk. The European influence had lessened with the departure of John Cale, allowing the VU to become a pure rock & roll bandof unprecedented fervour.
From the strung-out stomp of "Waiting For My Man" to the churning, perversely repetitious rhythms of "What Goes On" and the ironically revelatory "I'mBeginning To See The Light" the band blares away with such determinism it sounds like they're trying to bore a hole through the bottom of the stage. This live recording sees the fruition of their structural collectivist ethic; there are essentially no solos or improvisations, and yet they jam on the progressions of many of the songs for several minutes, allowing minute changes in dynamics to substitute for melodic/harmonic explorations. One of the finest live albums you'll hear, this is rock at its purest and most functional.

Customer Reviews

greatest live album ever?
I've never quite understood why this album has been separated from Volume 2, given they were originally two discs of a double lp, but it does at least mean you can buy the better half separately.

Both CDs contain material recorded over a series of concerts in San Francisco in late November/early December 1969 (the majority) with a few tracks from a concert in Dallas a few weeks earlier. But the sound quality from the two sources is so similar that it sounds as if it could all have come from one night.

Waiting For The Man, preceded by a marvellous spoken intro by Lou Reed, opened the Dallas concert and presents a radically different arrangement from the studio version, starting off with an almost country feel before rocking out convincingly. Lisa Says first appeared on Reed's debut solo album, but both that and a Velvets studio version unissued at the time are deeply inferior to this, one of their greatest performances featuring a superb lyric on the vagaries of shyness and sexual attraction. What Goes On features a relentlessly fast rhythm guitar and amazing organ mangling from new boy Doug Yule before they stop dead after nearly 9 minutes of bliss. Sweet Jane is a superb slow, gentle version, as good as any they ever did. We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together does exactly what it says on the tin - no irony at all. Femme Fatale features another fabulous spoken intro, and hardly suffers the lack of Nico's vocal. New Age, with Reed on vocals instead of Doug Yule, is hugely superior to the Loaded version and has a better lyric. Rock'n'Roll and Beginning To See The Light slightly improve on superb studio versions and the only slight lapse in quality is the bonus version of Heroin - and even that's pretty good.

The sound quality is not fabulous - these recordings were not made for release. But they were made to be listened to, and to preserve performances by a great band still at the height of their powers. There is quite a lot of hiss, but you'll get used to that pretty quickly. Apart from that it sounds pretty fine to me. But the quality of the music is such that even if the sound was badly compromised this album would still be pretty essential. Buy both volumes, but if you can only buy one, get this one.

Greatest album of all time?
When Paul Morley -- later of Art of Noise -- reviewed this for NME many years ago he more or less declared that it was the greatest rock album ever released. With the exception of Sister Ray what you have on volumes 1 and 2 together are the best versions of the Velvets' best songs, without any arty-farty messing about, and with splendid singing from Lou Reed and magnificent guitar playing from Striling Morrison: listen to his solo on White Light, White Heat and witness a rival to Neil Young and Tom Verlaine. Finally, the sound is marvellously appropriate to the music: what it lacks in clinical polish it more than makes up for in ambience. Forget the other Velvets albums and grow old with this one.

Decidedly mellow....
This album (and its sister, part2) has much to commend it, but first, the negatives. The sound quality is pretty poor, with significant quantities of background hiss & not all of the songs included would be universally regarded as being from the top drawer. That said, the recordings have a charm that is not present in anything else that Reed has done. The ambience is incredibly laid back, with frequent low-key exchanges between band & audience. Songs like 'Lisa says' & 'Pale blue eyes' (& many others, I must add) work particularly well for me in this way. It may also be worth noting that this is post John Cale & the avant garde image of early material does not tag along. The sleeve notes (not by the band, I should point out) are cringe-inducingly pretentious. Do not read...