the velvet underground and nico

A bit late to the party I know, but I've been listening to The Velvet Underground And Nico - the umpteenth reissue with all sorts of bonus tracks...

And this time, just to confuse everyone, there's a double disc, just like the last double disc from a few years ago, but with different bonus tracks. AND there's also a Mega Sized Box Set with the Valleydale Ballroom gig from November 1966, the original recordings from Scepter Studios in April 1966, and some tracks from a rehearsal, one of the very first with Nico, recorded at the Factory in January 1966. Add to this the mono and stereo versions of the album, plus the single versions and Nico's Chelsea Girl album and you have a Mega Sized Box Set containing an awful lot of stuff that we’ve all bought many times before. A sneaky FLAC download has revealed that, as I thought, there’s only a small amount of stuff that is strictly ‘new’.

Let’s start with the fabled Scepter Studios acetate. These are the first recordings for the album. And so it’s been treated a bit like the Holy Grail for VU fans. Apart from "Sunday Morning" which was recorded much, much later, pretty much the whole album was recorded at Scepter in mid April 1966. Tom Wilson apparently later oversaw a new mix of these tracks which is what ended up on the album, but essentially the Scepter Acetate IS the debut album, just hissier and less clear. Three tracks originally taped at Scepter were totally re-recorded for the album a month later - "Heroin", "Waiting For The Man" and "Venus In Furs" – which means that the Scepter versions are new to my ears, but otherwise listening to a de-clicked, de-hissed recording is not worth the effort when the pristine Mono version in this box set gives you mostly the exact same tracks. The only other difference is that "European Son" on the album was edited down from the nine minutes plus version recorded at Scepter, but do you really need three more minutes of guitar noise? I certainly don’t.

FWIW the original Scepter versions of the re-recorded songs are inferior to the remakes and clearly the Velvets made the right call in re-recording these songs. AND, a couple of the ‘alternative’ tracks on the Stereo disc are actually the Scepter recordings nicely remastered and mixed into stereo (so we have the longer "European Son" and the un-used "Heroin" as bonus tracks for example, even though they are also on the Demos disc but in Mono and less clear!)

So, basically, apart from a couple of tracks the Scepter acetate is a bit of a wash out.

The January 1966 rehearsal is quite good fun, and is surprisingly good quality, but ultimately it’s the Velvets mucking around and jamming with the only notable track being Nico attempting to sing "There She Goes Again" and proving conclusively that she’s entirely wrong for that track. But really, how often will you want to play these songs? A couple of times perhaps, but that’s it, they’re not that interesting. .

The Valleydale Ballroom gig is the only complete Exploding Plastic Inevitable gig, and one of only a couple of live recordings where Nico sings with the band. The gig is bookended by two lengthy half hour improvs which feature Nico wailing tunelessly at times. "It Was A Pleasure Then" on Chelsea Girl was an attempt to capture some of this free-form improv style. But if, like me, you are one those people who finds even eight minutes of tuneless warbling to be irritating, then "Melody Laughter" and "The Nothing Song" will drive you to despair. The rest of the gig finds the Velvets playing most of the debut album, and they play it competently, but that’s about it. It’s surprisingly low key, everything is professional and very very safe. No surprises at all, with virtually every song sounding just like the record. So again, how often will this get an airing? Not often. Plus, despite the best efforts of the audio restoration boffins it’s still a fairly ropey audience recording from 46 years ago, so it’s never going to sound that good. This show has been booted loads of times over the years and it sounds better now that it ever has; it’s perfectly listenable, but it’s still muffled, muddy and murky.

Chelsea Girl sounds good though – cleaner, sharper than my now very old CD, and I’d not got the Mono version of the VU&N album before, which is very sharp and some songs undoubtedly sound better in Mono, with some noticeable mix differences too.

So, the Mega Box Set actually includes very little that is genuinely new and worth having especially if you've already bought the VU&N album many time before. If you've not already got this record, then where have you been since 1967? Go out right now and get the double disc version. It's the best it has ever sounded and contains the Scepter / rehearsal material for good measure.