Well my first review submitted to this site – going to take 2 VU reviews I wrote for an article and use those –t rying to invent a genre called avant garage – which is why I’ve only reviewed the first 2 Velvets LPs

These are firstly the peelable-banana covered ‘Velvet Underground and Nico which is at first hearing a very strange heavy folk-rock LP. This LP is often held responsible, along with the music made by the first line-ups of the Byrds and Love for the jangly guitar sound of the mid 80s indie bands. Only to see this though misses a lot. Cale’s Avant-garde roots show through in various places here including the repetitive piano pounding on the most famous track’ Waiting for the Man. Also in the weird tuning and eastern feel on most of the other tracks.
The album basically represents the stage show that the Velvets were performing throughout the summer of 1966 without the Warhol input of lights and dancers. Verve refused to put it out for a year putting all their energy into the release of the first Mothers of Invention LP ‘Freak out’
The bulk of this album was recorded in one day at a studio called Scepter, where a lot of early r&r had been recorded a decade earlier. When the Velvets arrived the place was in the process of collapse. They had to look around for a space with floorboards large enough to set up the drumkit and recorded everything in an 8‑hour session. 3 tracks – Heroin, Waiting for the Man and Venus in Furs were re-recorded with Tom Wilson during some time they had off in L.A. at T.T.G. studios L.A.
The tracks are as follows: -
Sunday Morning- a deceptively fragile/beautiful song. Actually about the paranoia of going home first thing Sunday morning after being up all night. Reed’s Voice is surprisingly high and sounds almost female
I’m Waiting For The Man — The most famous track, now conventional rock form; it must have sounded pretty revolutionary at the time. Cale’s piano pounding is dominant throughout. It’s about going to Harlem to score drugs and being mistaken for a trick by a pimp. ‘Up to Lexington /125’- a street corner in Harlem.
Femme Fatale — a song written for singer Nico, pretty sadistic, again deceptively tuneful, apart from the harmony singing which is decidedly flat.
Venus in Furs ‑Sacher-Masoch set to music. Sterling Morrison’s favourite of their tracks- he felt it was the closest they came to sounding unique ‘if somebody were to ask me what we did that nobody else did I could bring out Venus and ask them who else had ever sounded like that’. It lost least in studio translation. It stars with a violin drone then Lou Reed comes in doing a John Cale vocal impersonation.
Run, Run, Run -. A very evil sounding Bo Diddley/Chuck Berry-esque track possibly the closest the Velvets ever come to straight r&r but even here the tuning is very strange. Possibly a precursor to Reed’s later classic ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ it recounts the stories of various downtown characters amid the evil of drugs. Cale is on bass and the guitar jangle is so hard it sounds like a bombing mission.
All Tomorrow’s Parties-Possibly about Edie Sedgwick with whom Cale had a brief affair, definitely about one of the chameleon-like poor-little-rich-girls hanging around the Factory. It was cut down to2mins 49 for the first single from the 5.58 it is here. It was also Warhol’s favourite Velvets song.
It’s sung by Nico. Reed is playing ‘ostrich’ guitar-all the strings are tuned to the same note, an effect he later repeated on ‘Loaded’’s ‘Rock and Roll’. Cale’s repetitive piano pounding is taken from his own ‘piano exercise’ where he maintained the same chord intervals regardless of chord changes.
Heroin – originally side2 track1, this is a lot of people’s introduction to the band. A non-judgmental take on a heroin user, if not a downright mythologiser. Certainly this is the point that confuses the cult-of-personality’ there must be a load of weak-minded people out there who blame this song for their addiction.
The introduction is very sparse guitar which goes into the viola that remains a constant throughout the
Whole song, then Lou Reed enters with the declaration ‘I don’t know just where I’m going ‘.
In the liner notes to the Peel slowly and See box set Reed says that the way it was originally written means that the song speeds up all the way through even if played acoustically. There are more words as the song progresses so it naturally speeds up. This is probably the most famous utilisation of Tony Conrad’s method of note sustain. This is an incredibly sparse sounding track and the rise and fall of the viola is the main constant. It sounds oddly reassuring at times. The noise created by the combination of the viola and guitars has to be heard to be believed. Moe Tucker’s drums are another pulse. They lack the crisp hit of a normal drum sound and just thud; does she undo the traps on her snaredum?
There She Goes Again- this starts with an instrumental quote from Don Covay’s ‘Hitch-hike’ it remains very soul influenced throughout and has a very melodic guitar solo in the middle. Are the band’s harmonies altogether serious? The way they cop 50s doowop for the ‘Oooo-Eeee-Aaaaa’
Central part and the ‘Fly –fly-fly’ part at the end certainly raises the question. Reed starts improvising toward the end. You gotta ball and shout, you gotta work it on out’ etc.
I’ll Be Your Mirror — Possibly their most beautiful song, (the other main contender is the later Ocean) about trying to help somebody rebuild their self-confidence? Starts very delicately
Nico comes in gentle & clear and very deep voiced. Is this the gotterdamerung that is talked of by the band in Uptight the biography? Her Germanic accent comes through loud and clear. The verse is accompanied by guitar picking, which is punctuated by blunt rhythm playing during the instrumental chorus. The harmonies here are for once in tune and verging on the angelic.
Black Angel’s Death Song –a song written for the cadence of the words above all. It starts with a harshly sawn viola then goes into Lou Reed’s word flurry the drums are inaudible throughout are they there? The rhythm is carried by the back and forth 2‑beat sawing of the viola. A friend of the band who deputised for one gig was surprised to find it had chords to which Reed replied ‘Sure its got chords it’s a song.’
European Son (To Delmore Schwartz)- lyric written to Schwartz’s maxim about not overwording songs. It consists of two short stanzas then 6 minutes of near noise. It also thematically fits the immigrant poet. Musically this is the furthest out they get on the first album. At the time it must have sounded extremely unstructured it has now been surpassed by far in noise stakes. The instrumental part is announced by John Cale scraping a metal chair across the floor then dropping a pile of metal plates in a move he copped from the Fluxus circle he had been involved in through LaMonte Young