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your velvet top 10

 
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Dav
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Joined: 30 Oct 2005
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Location: Rennes, France

PostPosted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 1:00 pm    Post subject: your velvet top 10 Reply with quote

I'm curious about what's your favorite Velvet underground songs ?
let's say top 10

Here are mine

White light white heat
Lady godiva's operation
i hear her call my name
begining to see the light
the story of my life
candy says
she's my best friend
coney island sleepchase
sunday morning
venus in fur
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jefflewis



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PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 7:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's quite a good top ten!
Mine would probably be kind of similar...
Let's see...
Not in any order:

I Heard Her Call My Name
The Murder Mystery
Lady Godiva's Operation
Heroin
The Gift
Oh Sweet Nothing
Foggy Notion
I'm Waiting For the Man
I Found a Reason (the demo version, done in country-style)

oooh darn, that's 9 already... that means I only get to pick one more... but how can I possibly choose what #10 will be when I have such incredible options to pick from? I guess I have to go with the classic:
Venus in Furs


But these are the ones that I had a very hard time leaving off the list!
She's My Best Friend
I Can't Stand It
What Goes On
Temptation Inside Your Heart
Follow the Leader
Run Run Run
Candy Says
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Dav
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

that's also a great top 10!
i was about to choose oh sweet nothing, temptation inside your heart too...
the i found a reason country style is a great tune too.
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jefflewis



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PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Coney Island Steeplechase is definitely the strangest entry on your list! Probably not in very many people's top ten...
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jefflewis



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PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And then we could also do a top-ten Lou Reed solo songs...
But that's a lot harder because the Velvets is such a nice, condensed body of work... Lou's solo career has so many songs and albums, it would take more work to look over it all.
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Dav
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm notre familiar with with Lou Reed's solo work, apart from the well known...got suggestions?
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Dav
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Coney Islande steeple-chase is a great tune. I love Lou's singing. I like the clean voice version.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

WHere are the two different versions of Coney Island Steeplechase? I think I only know one version.
For Lou's solo material, obviously the big famous fantastic album is Transformer, everybody should have that album, it is a totally solid classic great album whether you are a super-fan of Lou Reed or not.
Then the other really greatest Lou Reed solo albums, which really show his power as one of the world's greatest songwriters, are his albums from the late 80s/early 90s:
New York
Set The Twilight Reeling
Songs For Drella

There's great material on all of his solo albums, even if the style of production is sometimes annoying on certain albums, his personality really comes through and the power of his poetry and his unique rock style.
The other best Lou Reed solo albums all have some weak moments, but are still great and important albums:
Coney Island Baby
Street Hassle
The Blue Mask
Well, really I can find plenty to love in all of his albums, so my list would include all of them, eventually! But I think all Lou Reed fans would agree that any of those albums I listed are really top quality.
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Dav
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks Jeff, ill check those. The 2nd coney island version juste has different voice mix, with some kind of distorsion on it, and it misses the woo woo woo part before the week days part.
Have you noticed that the intro os really close tout pavement's trigger cut
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 10:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah you're right, similar intro to Pavement!
I guess this is the other Coney Island Steeplechase mix, this Youtube clip calls it the "2014 mix" so I guess it's a more modern mix than the 1986 mix that was used on the "Another View" compilation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWZSrQfHBWw
It's a bit weird to think of those mixes of songs that are on the 1986 albums "Another View" and "VU". All of those songs that were sitting in the vaults, I guess the mixing on all of them was only done in 1986? Maybe I'm wrong about that, maybe some of those mixes were done in the 1960s. But it's still strange to think, because the mix does affect your perception of the song quite a lot. A style of mixing in 1968 would have been quite a bit different from the mix of a song in 1986, unless they were trying very hard to duplicate the same style of mixing that "would have been." So whose decision was it to add the distortion to Lou's voice on one mix of Coney Island Steeplechase, and then whose decision was it to release another version without the distortion on the voice?

I also think about this as an especially important thing regarding the wonderful out-take song "Temptation Inside Your Heart." It's such a great and weird song. But a big part of what makes it so cool is the strange dialogue voices and laughter and silliness happening between the verses. My impression of this is that Lou (and John? or Sterling?) were in the recording room adding backing vocals to the song as an overdub, and they were just fucking around with each other during that overdub session, Lou saying silly weird things and laughing, while they were waiting for the backing vocal part to come around (at which point the "real work" would get done). So these weird talking snippets were never intended to be part of the song, I think, and in fact maybe Lou ALWAYS fucked around and said weird things on top of songs during vocal overdub sessions... but this one time, whomever was mixing these leftover tracks in 1986 decided to take this chatter and use it in the mix of the song, and make it part of the song. It was a great decision, and it makes the song fantastic. But was this a work of art from the mixer? If the song had been mixed and released in the 1960s would it have none of that weird chatter? Is there chatter like this on a lot of other Velvets vocal overdub tracks too, that we never get to hear? Who makes these decisions that have such a big impact on the way the final song is heard by the listener?
Similarly, the version of Sweet Jane on Loaded is an edited version, where somebody chopped out the "wine and roses" section, and Lou was apparently not happy about this. But I think it was the right decision, I think the song is better without that part. So who "really" wrote the song?

I guess when you have material as fantastic as the Velvet Underground maybe the answer is that you can't really be wrong. The music is so great, the lyrics are so great, and the vocals are so great, you could mix it and edit it and release it a hundred different ways and it would still be great. Maybe that's the answer.
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dazmann



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PostPosted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 2:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Lots of great song choices so far ... one of my favourite tracks of all time (not just best of the Velvets) is the guitar and piano instrumental version of "Ride Into the Sun" that appears on the Another View compilation.

Its a beautiful piece of music, extraordinary considering the noisy stuff the band could also produce and that it could remain unreleased for 20+ years.

Its a very different work to the track with the name name that appears on "Peel Slowly an See" boxset which includes lyrics and is organ led.
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Dav
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 6:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

anyone noticed the Barrett's lucifer sam riff around 2:20 in the 1969 live recording of white light white heat ?



Barrett would have been such a great guest as a velvet live guest.
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jefflewis



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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2019 4:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ha, nice catch. Unlikely to be on purpose...
Raises the question: what would have happened if David Bowie had gotten his hands on Syd to produce and rescue his solo career, the way Bowie got his hands on Lou to produce and rescue his solo career?
Well, maybe it would have been terrible.
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2019 6:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've read that Syd hated David Bowie. Maybe in a parellel universe he did rescue Syd's career...let's hope these worm hole will give us some answers...
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PostPosted: Sat May 25, 2019 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What if you could only keep one single song?
I'd keep i 've Heard her call my name.
Jeffrey dis you ever covered velvet tunes? I remember i've heard her call my name on Rennes.
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