lol this artwork is the epitome of ‘graphic design is my passion’.
To be brutally honest, this is the first album so far that isn’t really doing anything for me. Thought it would be part 1 only when Carnival 2000 started picking up with the different styles, but I’m on All The World Loves Lovers as I type and it really seems to be powering along as it started, I’ll see.
So yeah, on completion not much had changed for me, not something I’m compelled by to revisit or explore the artist further at this stage.
Your intro mentioned strong songwriting a lot, which I could appreciate in like a U2, or maybe The Who kind of way, but those aren’t my scene either haha. It obviously has an impressive scope.
I’m definitely one who would say it ‘sounds dated’, which yes of course can be a great thing, but to me this record is not an anachronism. Surely when it dropped it would have felt 3-5 years too late for this sound? Whereas Jellyfish was a solid generational divide away from their sound, which gives the opportunity for the nostalgia effect.
Not that any of that matters listening to it in 2023, but it does make it harder for me to grasp what they were going for here 
Still, an interesting story, and I’m grateful I know it exists.
sorry, can’t get to this until tomorrow, but its definitely in queue.
I gave this an honest shot but couldn’t get into it. I appreciate the melodic songwriting, but the digital keyboard tones became too much for me, I’m afraid. Still happy to know about it and learn about a new artist.
This album reminded me of my dad. This is totally something that he would listen to… I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t play it at sometime in my youth. Whenever I hear something that sounds like something he would play it makes me happy 
we lost him about 3 years ago after a brutal decade long battle with ALS. Listening to his kind of music makes me feel like he’s still around, so that made this special for me.
That being said… we didn’t always see eye to eye on music and I think this is one he would have liked a lot more than I did! I found a few tracks here that I really liked though - The Ice Maiden was probably my favorite… it kinda goes hard? Scarlet Nights was another favorite. A lot of these are ear worms.
I think the segmented sections of the album that @phreakbrain identified made it feel a bit disjointed, and thus hard to get a handle on for a first time listener. Also, Jordan: The Comeback was a cool listen but also kinda made me laugh w/ the Elvis stuff. I appreciate what the band attempted to do here… and for a fan I think this is a treasure… but in the end maybe a bit too much for the unfamiliar.
Thanks for sharing!
I liked the first song, Looking for Atlantis, but now onto Wild Horses, and I think I prefer the Prince music by Prince or a bit weirder like some of Ween’s pop songs.
The rest has been hit and miss as well. When it drifts into a little more dream pop or avant-garde, the more I like it I think. Stuff like the Wedding March isn’t for me though…a little childish imo. The other responses had me worried I wouldn’t get through this one, but even if it doesn’t all connect, the vocals are pleasant and its pretty easy listening.
Going by the original schema I set out, we have run out of eligible suggestions for the first time. If I wasn’t a bit busy the last few days I wouldn’t mention it and just bend the rules a bit, but in the interest of brevity I thought we’d do a classic week (hopefully to foster some more regular contributors!).
So this week we will be listening to The Velvet Underground and Nico.
Before Strange Days, Are You Experienced?, the debuts of both David Bowie and Pink Floyd, Love - Forever Changes, Safe As Milk, Cream, and even before even Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - came The Velvet Underground and Nico.
This is the original visual banana reference (King Gizz are into these guys btw), and there is very little about this record that didn’t originate with it.
This is the album that Brian Eno famously said ‘only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought one started a band’; and many of those bands got their 15 minutes of fame, a turn of phrase at the time recently coined by Andy Warhol. Warhol’s influence on this (apart from the cover art) is apocryphal and esoteric, credited as ‘producer’, this role consisted of little more than sitting around in the studio making sure Nico was allowed to participate.
Of course Nico’s presence here has always been a point of controversy too, and in my opinion the album would be weaker without her. But for a band who thrived on their creative differences (how else could you invent Noise Rock?), her departure (was she ever a true band member to begin with?) led to many other important moments.
But most people know all this anyway, so let’s dig in and get mutually acquainted with easily one of the most important art records ever made.
I thought i submitted 3 originally. its been over 4 weeks since my first submission was picked. I guess I’m confused as to how we run out?
Yeah, but I haven’t been participating either (sorry all, just haven’t had time lately), pretty sure that’s a requirement lol. I’ll see if I can jump in over the weekend.
lol because I’m scattered as fuck and couldn’t do the basic maths in the moment of realisation I nearly forgot about the club this week.
Very fair assessment! It has always been in pretty regular rotation for me, but I still feel similarly in that it continuously reveals more over time. To me there is an opposite side of the spectrum with classics, ie. The Beatles which no longer seem to yield anything new. If that’s just America vs. England, cutting edge vs. popular, Nico vs. Yoko (joking), etc. I’m not certain.
I only relatively recently found out that by the time Lou Reed wrote Heroin he had largely got over abusing it, and so that song was like an exorcism of the habit before he went on to have much bigger issues with stimulants. Totally flipped the experience of listening to that song for me, having never tried it myself it has made it much easier to relate to in terms of vices in general, but yeah even just musically there is not much else like it.
I’m just about to finish reading The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, and I guess this is just confirmation that his part in this album is massively overblown, but I am surprised so far that he hasn’t mentioned it, anyone involved with it, or The Factory (pretty much) at all.
I’m pretty into Warhol outside of The Velvet Underground so maybe I’ll never be satisfied digging into their relationship, but its clear that this at least wouldn’t have happened without him and so the implications are still endless.
Great to revisit this one. Put me in the mood to replay some lesser-known work from VU-associated acts, in particular John Cale’s excellent 1970 album Vintage Violence.
And also a nod to poor Doug Yule. I actually think Squeeze is a cool record. If it were released under any other name than VU, I think more people would appreciate it.
I think we discussed this album earlier this year on discord. It’s still my 2nd favorite VU album (after Loaded) and my 2nd favorite Nico album (after Chelsea Girl). That hasn’t changed in well over a decade.
My relationship with VU has evolved a lot over the decades. 1st experience was probably opening night of the 1991 movie The Doors that my classic rock obsessed 15-year-old friends and I had our parents buy tickets for us since it was R rated. That was when i first heard Heroin. I had the Doors movie soundtrack on CD and I know Heroin made it onto mixed tapes once I turned 16 and needed tapes for driving 45 minutes to and from high school. I probably checked out the rest of the album from the library, but really don’t recall. Also i would of watched any 60s music and art type documentary and VU always popped up in those as an avant-garde art house type band. Their true influence and impact would be lost on me as a teen and i didn’t get into them enough to catch their 1993 reunion tour.
My next major intro to VU would be when Phish covered Loaded in its entirety Halloween 1998. I recall when that happened (didn’t attend) and being familiar with The VU and Nico album a bit, but not Loaded. It definitely pushed me to look into them more but beyond a handful of songs like Sweet Jane, Oh Sweet Nothing, Rock and Roll and Heroin, they still weren’t a top band for me and I’m sure I enjoyed Phish versions better at the time.
Then in 2001 The Royal Tenenbaums came out, and again i was in the theater opening night because my now post-college friends and I were huge Wes Anderson fans and had probably seen Bottle Rocket and Rushmore a dozen times by the time his 3rd (and best imo) movie was released. And I’m pretty sure my favorite scene is the slow-motion introduction of Margot Tenenbaum over the angelic yet melancholic These Days by Nico off of Chelsea Girl. This moment and subsequent rewatches is what finally made me fully appreciate Nico and The VU and Nico album, but I also started digging more into Nico and it didn’t take long for Chelsea Girl to become more of a favorite than VU and Nico.
So, while I think VU and Nico its an outstanding album, and definitely in my top 200, I just don’t hold it in the same esteem as others. I get that it was groundbreaking, etc., but so was Sgt. Pepper and that is nowhere near my favorite Beatles albums. I value timelessness the most, and most of the tracks don’t feel as timeless as their other albums I described. I think maybe the combination of talent and ideas feels as forced as we have learned it really was.
Ah cool, I’ve only really gone deep on Lou Reed’s solo work so I’m keen to hear more of how Cale got to his most recent album, which was a bit esoteric for me.
Yeah, very weird situation after the rest of the original members were gone or over it, I find it difficult to imagine what purpose they had by publishing that as The Velvet Underground. I haven’t listened to it for a while but I think this song is enough to convince me to give it another shot.
@Gizzhenge Couldn’t even tell you about how I discovered VU, or remember first hearing them. I think they were too firmly part of the canon by the time I was born; like Andy Warhol they are really just the kind of thing I would have become aware of through my mother and probably heard at some point in childhood.
I think ‘timelessness’ is different to me. If TVU&N came out today it would still sound very weird and make just as much sense, whereas anything post Cale would be more forgettable. I guess thinking about it like that, White Light/White Heat has a pretty equal claim to timelessness, which goes to show that ‘forced’ melting pot of opposing contributors is what pushed the boundaries furthest.
But then, I think my favourite VU song ever is The Murder Mystery which is probably the best four people called The Velvet Underground ever got along in the studio, so who knows
I think it’s the impact of Cale that dates it the most for me. His sound is what plants it firmly 60s in my mind. Maybe because my earliest memories of earliest VU songs with Cale were typically accompanied by grainy Warhol film clips in some VHI behind the Music documentary on the band or something like that. While Nico’s voice can still feel ahead of its time to me and Lou Reed’s songwriting is high quality rock n roll that artists and musicians love to reinterpret each new decade.
And as far as them being part of the cultural fabric, that is how Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Hendrix, Dylan and many other were for me, but VU still felt pretty underground most of the 90s outside of a few songs, maybe until you went to college.
I was informed that my pick is next for this week. It’s Concrete Blonde by Concrete Blonde
I went for something pretty obscure, but also an artist and band that I have loved longer than almost any other. Concrete Blonde has been one of my favorite bands since high school in the early 1990s and I think Johnette Napolitano’s voice is probably one of the first female voices that truly captivated me and began my love for strong and unique female vocalists and songwriters (Joni, Nina Simone, Bjork, Nico, Neko Case, Chrissie Hynde, Fiona Apple, Lana Del Rey and many more). Johnette also plays bass and wrote most of Concrete Blonde’s songs, including most on this their debut album, with the exception of the George Harrison cover.
Its important to note about this album is its from 1986, so you will hear obvious sounds of 80s pop/rock, but also bits of punk and country/folk music, with Johnette’s vocals being the connecting throughline across the genres. Per usual, its been lumped in broadly as alternative rock despite it hitting many different genres. Johnette and the band also got lumped in with Goth music because of a few songs on this and later albums and they seemed to embrace that a bit likely in attempts to gain a following, but I still think that label is very limiting for this band. I associate Concrete Blonde sound more with LA, SoCal, and the Soutwest in general. It like concrete and desert or an early precursor to desert rock.
I still believe she was one of the most underrated rock vocalists of the last 50 years and a great songwriter too. While none of the albums are masterpiece, there are more good than bad songs, plus a few great songs on each album. I’d love to pick like 3-4 from each album to give you an even better idea of Johnette’s range as a vocalist and songwriter, but that’s not the format so here we go.
For you @W.B.T.G.Slinger I have to share one of the few songs without Johnette on lead vocals (she’s on backing), its an early cover of Nick Cave they added to a b-side compilations album back in 1994:
I saw them live at Cleveland Agora in 1993 with Counting Crows and Cracker opening, missing football practice the next day and getting a lot of shit for it. Its still one of my favorite pre phish shows and I really wish I got to see Johnette live more than a just a few times. I don’t think there is anything live from their debut album on YouTube, but here are a few of my favorite other live clips:
Hell yeah! 1st off, real stoked about the Album club. I’m always lookin to diversify music tastes but it’s very easy to get stuck for long periods of time.
Listening to this album was one of those times where my expectations made something more enjoyable rather than the other way around. I wasn’t expecting to care for this. The only Nico song I know is the one from Royal Tennenbaums, which I LOVE, but it’s definitely kind of a meloncholy-typa song, and I’m not always in the mood for that kinda stuff. I also love the handful of popular Velvet Underground songs that I know, but overall I know pretty little about both artists.
The Andy Warhol cover, and inclusion of Nico had me expecting some sort of like, sad, avante-art rock album that seems COOL, but is actually really hard to listen to. ha. But then Sunday Morning started and it was like a wonderful dream. I also thought it would be more of a duet, where they’re singing together on every song, like a traveling wilbury’s supergroup kind of thing, but was surprised how they kind of alternated tracks.
I doubt I’ll come back to this album to listen to very often, if ever, but I feel like I’ll find at least one song that I like and remember from any album I give a shot. Sunday Morning was that song. There were another 2 or 3 that I liked but can’t remember which ones. This will also probably have me listen to the other more popular Velvet Underground albums, which is a good thing.
ONCE MORE. Love this album club idea! I haven’t been a part of a forum in over a decade and I’m a bit intimidated, but I’m sure it’s pretty self explanatory and I hope I can stay up to date with this one. PEACE!
Of course I’m late. I’ll get on this concrete blonde album. Never heard of them. Also, how do I submit an album for next week?
Use this form to submit. Go to very start of this thread for rules and stuff.
