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The Velvet Underground

Music

The 50 Albums Everyone Needs to Own, 1963-2013

By Tom Hawking on

No one buys albums anymore, goes the music industry truism. And yet, for all that the format’s commercial viability may or may not be on the wane, sitting and listening to a great album from start to finish is one of the greatest pleasures that music can bring. Flavorwire recently got to thinking about how one might build a record collection if you really only did buy one record a year. So here’s the result of our thought exercise: 50 albums you really should own, one a year from 1963 until the present… Read More

Music

Fascinatingly Bizarre Radio Ads for ’60s and ’70 Bands

By Tom Hawking on

We were fascinated to see yesterday afternoon that Dangerous Minds’ latest YouTube discovery was… a vintage radio ad for The Velvet Underground. Quite apart from the fact that the ad in question is weird as hell, we were amazed by the simple existence of such a promo for a Velvet Underground album, and the whole thing got us thinking: If Lou Reed et al were getting plugged on radio back in the day, surely there must have been other, similarly unexpected slots? Sure enough, looking for radio ads for ’60s and ’70s bands turns out to be one hell of an awesome YouTube rabbit hole. Record companies shelled out to promote bands you’d never, ever expect, and there’s a certain bizarre charm to the resultant commercials — especially when it’s clear that whoever wrote the ads didn’t know what on earth to make of the band in question. We’ve shared a selection of the best! … Read More

New York

The Velvet Underground Members’ Top 10 Post-VU Albums

By Jason Diamond on

[Ed. note: In honor of John Cale's mini-residency at BAM this week -- including an all-star tribute to Nico on Wednesday and performances of his 1973 solo album, Paris 1919 on Friday and Saturday -- Flavorwire New York has embarked upon a week-long celebration of all things Velvet Underground.]

While there is no dearth of books, magazine articles, blog posts, and record store conversations as to just how important the LPs put out by The Velvet Underground were and continue to be to modern music, the various members of the group have also amassed a pretty remarkable string of albums since the band’s first record came out in 1967. Below, we rank the band members’ top ten most essential post-VU releases. … Read More

New York

John Cale Restores Nico’s Musical Legacy in All-Star Tribute

By Judy Berman on

[Ed. note: In honor of John Cale's mini-residency at BAM this week -- including an all-star tribute to Nico on Wednesday and performances of his 1973 solo album, Paris 1919 on Friday and Saturday -- Flavorwire New York has embarked upon a week-long celebration of all things Velvet Underground.]

With all the tribute albums and concerts (and art shows and dance parties, etc.) on offer these days, it’s easy forget that they can be more than just shallow attempts on the part of their organizers to cash in on a name more famous than their own. Last night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the consistently thoughtful, uncompromising John Cale reminded me. Not only did he amass an appropriate and diverse set of musicians for Life Along the Borderline: A Tribute to Nico, but his clear-eyed and unsentimental celebration of his one-time Velvet Underground bandmate did what any worthwhile tribute should do — broadened and deepened our understanding of its subject. … Read More

Music

The Real-Life Stories Behind 10 Famous Love Songs

By Tom Hawking on

This week sees the release of the new solo album from Christopher Owens, formerly of Girls and now of lovelorn solo balladeering endeavors. The album’s called Lysandre and is particularly notable for being based around a narrative thread about Owens’ love affair with the girl of the same name. The story behind the record is an interesting one, and it got us thinking about the real-life stories behind some of our other favorite love songs, and we’ve related a selection of the best of them… Read More

New York

Why John Cale Is Better (or at Least More Interesting) Than Lou Reed

By Tom Hawking on

[Ed. note: In honor of John Cale's mini-residency at BAM this week -- including an all-star tribute to Nico on Wednesday and performances of his 1973 solo album, Paris, 1919 on Friday and Saturday -- Flavorwire New York has embarked upon a week-long celebration of all things Velvet Underground.]

Seeing as it’s John Cale whose performances in Brooklyn have inspired our week of Velvet Underground-centric coverage, this seems an especially apt time to look back at the man’s career. With that in mind, we’re kicking off this series by reevaluating Cale’s solo work, and exploring why it never quite resonated with the public the way Lou Reed’s did (despite being arguably superior, or at least more interesting). … Read More

Music

10 of Music’s Most Literature-Obsessed Songwriters

By Matthew Bower on

Good songwriting requires a lot of technical skill, artistic intuition, and, sometimes, literary genius. There’s something tremendously impressive about being able to create a song that’s not only poignant and moving, but also rich with historical or literary context. Leaving aside obvious one-off references to literature, such as The Police’s famous nod to Nabokov or Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic foray down the rabbit hole, musicians with a more encompassing, perhaps even obsessive, appreciation for literature are harder to come by. We’ve put together a list of ten of the most seemingly literature-obsessed musicians who have shown a certain bookish tendency throughout their careers. See if you can think of others. … Read More

Music

Watch Lou Reed and Metric Perform “Pale Blue Eyes”

By Judy Berman on

Not to be outdone by David Byrne and St. Vincent, another May-December rock legend/breakout indie star duo has emerged: Lou Reed and Metric’s Emily Haines. The Velvet Underground icon agreed to sing back-up vocals on “The Wanderlust,” a track from Metric’s recent album Synthetica, after meeting frontwoman Emily Haines and quoting some lyrics from “Gimme Sympathy.” The pair debuted the collaboration live at Radio City Music Hall over the weekend, where Reed — wearing his signature leather jacket, looking a bit antsy — also joined Haines in a beautiful rendition of VU’s “Pale Blue Eyes.” Click through to see both videos and join us in wishing you could have seen it in person. … Read More

Music

A Longish List of Long Songs That Are Totally Worth Your Time

By Tom Hawking on

As you might have read yesterday, we’re going quietly bananas over the new Swans record, which is definitely our favorite album of August and quite possibly our favorite thus far of 2012. It’s also home to two tracks that clock in at above 20 minutes long, one other that’s just over 19 minutes, and a couple more that push 10 minutes. Songs that long are always a risky proposition — the whole idea of the ultra-lengthy epic is often associated with prog and its multitude of sins, but the realms of a 10-minute-plus song are also home to some of our absolute favorites. Here’s a nice long selection to get the discussion started — what did we miss? (If you say “Stairway to Heaven” we reserve the right to trace your IP and throw fish food at your window.) … Read More

Design

Iconic Album Covers Recreated With Socks

By Emily Temple on

Now this is an entertaining way to spend laundry day. Neatorama pointed us towards The Sock Covers, a very clever Tumblr devoted to recreating famous and iconic album covers with, you guessed it, socks. Sure, it’s not high art, but it’s goofy and cute and irreverent in all the right ways — if a sock-version of Warhol’s iconic banana on The Velvet Underground & Nico doesn’t make you at least crack a smile, well, we just don’t know what to tell you. In addition, we have to say that we’re rather impressed by the anonymous author’s collection of socks. Click through to check out a few of our favorites from the project, and then head on over to The Sock Covers to see some more for yourself. … Read More