Four studio LPs, four live albums and two discs of outtakes – which is your favourite?

Note: have excluded the Peel Slowly & See box-set plus lots of other compilations on the basis that they mostly duplicate much of the main discography.

Solo Lou Reed poll here.

WL/WH straight down the line for me.
If you pardon the expression.

Hey Steven, have you done a fave Can LP poll?

live 1969 (& 2nd favourite album of all time anyway (for The Record!))

Live 1969 is best if you already know the studio albums.

an impossible task, like picking your favourite child

I went with the first one b/c it strikes me as most varied. I played it for years and still found myself forgetting one track, being surprised by another, etc, esp after a turntable or cartridge upgrade (Do try this !!).

Startling for its time, yet in some way also entirely of its time.

They never made a bad record or played a poor gig, reunion excepted.

This one's hard because there's such a dichotomy between the early (Cale) stuff andf later (Yule) stuff.

WL/WH and the s/t 3rd album are equally amazing to me, but different as night and day.

They really didn't make a wrong move...

yes and they never messed with Jazz, which musta been tempting and coulda been disasterous!

well, they could've perhaps stayed away from eachother in the early 90s (that said, was glad to be able to see em at the time - thankfully not supporting u2 though!)

Yeesh. I shudder to think.

I recall hearing that at least in their early years when they were jamming Lou would fine the others in the band for playing anything resembling a blues lick.

Rejecting the previous generations "cool" was part of their genius. Sorta like Warhol rejecting Pollock et al (although before he became WARHOL, he did illustrate some jazz album jackets). I must add though that I like quite a lot of late 60/early 70s jazz. Had I been in the band (ha ha), I'd have ruined it with my open-minded tastes. You need to have some serious prejudices to be a good artist or musician, I believe.

White Light/White Heat for me, though to be honest it's a hard choice between the first three LPs (I can't stand Loaded) and the Quine Tapes - the latter if only for the 34+ minute long version of Sister Ray.

I would normally have gone for WL/WH, but since I got the Quine tapes about a year or so ago, I have not listened to anything else by them. I think this is the nearest I will ever get to hearing what they were really like.

Sometimes a studio can throw a group into a totally new direction and I think this is what happened with VU - each album sounds like a different band. The Quine tapes show something different altogether.

mmm..Hard to choose
Id have to put my own compilaton with

After Hours
Some kinda Love
What Goes On
beginning To See The Light
Pale Blue Eyes
Sunday morning
Rock N'Roll
I'm Set Free
White Light/White Heat
I Heard Her Call My Name

Yes please do a Can poll, as I only have tago Mago and would be v. interested in seeing what u good ppl recommend B)

What about Squeeze :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: I just answered my own question!!!!

Tho the "Final VU" compilation isnt so bad - apart from the awful sound quality...

Reissued next Monday 2CD version of Max's Kansas! Which I will be buying coz Im an idiot...

I woulda included the Bataclan 72 as a sorta VU album. At the moment Im collected rarities and bootlegs off Soul Seek... Coz IM VU obsessive, more so than The Fall.

The first record sounds JUST like they did live at that time... In fact it was mostly recorded as "live" as was WL/WH I think... The development of style was more out of necessity than anything else as just before the record The Grey album they had there fuzzboxes stolen.

Also the version of the third album On Peel Slowly is a completely different mix to the regular version - and there IS material on this box not available on other compilations... So maybe we could have whats ya favourite disc off the boxset poll? I really love listening to (and laughing at) the demo tape CD!!!

yeah me too - do you know anything about the stuff on the 2nd disc at all?

Hm All I heard was that they had put back the complete setlist and put it in its correct order, as apparently the original is edited down and resequenced. But Im not sure if thats ALL thats on it or not as I think there was more stuff taped during this Max's period..

Edited.

Just found this tracklisting on amazon

Disc: 1
1. I’m Waiting For The Man
2. White Light, White Heat
3. I’m Set Free
4. Sweet Jane (Version 1)
5. Lonesome Cowboy Bill (Version 1)
6. New Age
7. Beginning To See The Light

Disc: 2
1. Who Loves The Sun
2. Sweet Jane (Version 2)
3. I’ll Be Your Mirror
4. Pale Blue Eyes
5. Candy Says
6. Sunday Morning
7. After Hours
8. Femme Fatale
9. Some Kinda Love
10. Lonesome Cowboy Bill (Version 2)
11. Atlantic Release Promo (Hidden Track)

If you have Tago mago and you like it, you will likely enjoy Ege Bamyasi.

Monster Movies has some high spots, particularly the incredible, side long "Yoo Doo Right" (Malcom Mooney was vocalist here, pre-Damo S.)

I seem to be considered heretical for this belief, but I have not heard any other Can I care for.

I have not heard "Delay" which is material they recorded prior to their first "legit" album, Monster Movies, but I know people who feel it is their best work.

yeah, just found that meself...wonder if all from same gig or wot...oooh, never heard a live version of i'm set free before so am v excited about that at least...

Yeah Im Set Free is a fantastic song! The "Closet mix" makes me openly weep whenever I hear it... its so beatifully touching. I downloaded the Thom Yorke/Beck version the other night. They do a very half arsed job in my opinion. Yorke mistakes "earnest" for "emotional" when he sings I think... He always sounds earnest...

"There are problems in these times/ But, woo, none of them are mine"

I've been set free and
I've been bound
Let me tell you people
What I found
I saw my head laughing
Rolling on the ground
and now...
I'm set free.

Astounding lyrics.

Or this (from The Ocean):

Earth is a hollow head
Part of a bigger head
It really drives me crazy...

Oh, and Some Kinda Love must be the sexiest song ever.

I can still remember the thrill of the new when I first heard the VU&N record. I didn't get it at all (I was 15 and still into prog), but I could tell there was something there-- a language whose grammar I hadn't yet learned. In a way those were the most pleasurable spins of the record for me, when it was all unexplored territory.

Andy

banana opened the world of music

Love 'em all, voted for the first one, with Quine and WL/WH just behind. I seem to recall a quote from MES about the Velvets, and the renewed interest in their work after punk; Mark said something about their new fans like "Nerds, where were they when it mattered?". Well Mark, I wasn't very old when they were around, and by the time I got round to looking for their stuff, it wasn't readily available, and I didn't have the (then)major dollars to spend on it on the extremely remote chance that I'd actually find something by them.

Poor showing for Loaded so far. The so-called 'Fully Loaded' edition casts this album in a much better light (superb outtakes etc).

surprised to see white light white heat beating the 3rd album meself...

You cannot have too many versions of "New Age". It has been medically proven!!!

Well they're all great in their different ways, but why no post-Reed albums to choose from? His historical revisionism seems to have been accepted as fact by now. At the time, his name meant nothing - nobody noticed any major difference when he left. After all, Doug Yule had sung half the songs on Loaded and some on the 3rd LP.
Sadly Squeeze has been out of print for years (why - surely it would sell loads just for curiosity?) but there's ample evidence of the group's continuing post-Lou greatness on the Final VU live box set. Just about everything on it is better than most of Lou's solo stuff. The Raven? :gun:

but lou wrote the stuff n just told yule what to sing didn't he. and d'yer mean the quine tapes by the final vu live box set? coz lou plays on that. (or am i just being daft n missing something here? (apologies if so!))

FINAL VU 1971-73 Japanese only boxset containing 4 discs of 4 seperate live performances of Doug Yules post Lou Reed band. Its actually really great performance wise but is probably the second worst sound quality official bootleg (after Live 1977) ... The gig at Lampeter University just lifts the roof off! Dopey Joe sounds better live... And Actually Doug is quite a good songwriter. Squeeze isn't THAT terrible... It just sounds like college-kid pop... Try to track down Doug Yule's Live in Seattle CD. He's got a song he wrote "Purple Mountain" which is pure class!

Oh by the way Lou Reed consistantly takes all the songwriting credit for everything whereever possible despite the fact John Cale was almost certainly an equal partner. Legally just before 1993 they resolved the royalties issue in court. I actually found an mp3 of a "factory rehearsal" of John Cale playing "Oh Sweet Nothin'" on VIOLA (tho it says Cello on the file I downloaded) John's voice can be heard explaning about drones and sithars and strings etc...

coo, cheers for letting us know about that mcr - am slightly ashamed with myself for not knowing it even existed (though to be fair my interest with post-lou reed velvets is fairly non-existant (up till now??!!)). am a completist but haven't bothered seeking out squeeze or any of the yule bros' solo work. maybe i should? (hmm. still not convinced to be honest. still, am pleased to have some vu blanks filled in knowledge-wise (sincerely!))

WL/WH - the Hex to the 1st album's Witch Trials

So does that make Loaded their Room To Live?

by the way, what velvets velvets stuff does doug yule's velvets play live on that box set? is it mostly stuff he had a hand in or do they actually (dare!) to play stuff like heroin, venus in furs, etc?

Ahh well. I voted for the third album because WHAT GOES ON is on that record...the Velvet's most FALL-like recording and my favorite Velvets tune ever.........even though I recognize that technically the best album is the first one.

But if I could just have only one Velvets song...it would be WHAT GOES ON, and I don't even care what's on the rest of the third album. That one song makes it for me.

Ah, but the Live 1969 version of the track is SO much better.

I spoke to David Gedge in a Leeds night club once, and he claimed to have based much of the Wedding Present sound on that version.

He missed the mark a lot but it is nice he tried eh?

What else did he say?

Quite a bit. He was mostly talking to a mate of mine who was trying to get him to play a benefit for a kids home where he worked. Lovely bloke - bought us both a pint and chatted for a while, saw him quite a bit out and about in Leeds and he was always dead friendly.

Glad he likes the VU anyway.
Then again, does anyone not?