Out West With The Velvet Underground

Neumu's Michael Goldberg writes: The Velvet Underground's reputation is based mainly on their avant-garde sound and Lou Reed's conversational lyrics about New York's dark underbelly in the '60s. That's cool; I appreciate the group's more experimental and innovative recordings, the ones they made when John Cale was still in the lineup, but that's not my favorite Velvet Underground music. And I bet I'm not alone in thinking "Rock and Roll" and "Sweet Jane" are the songs that really made Velvet Underground fans of a lot of folks.

It struck me the other day that it's still Lou Reed's melodic VU songs — which also include "New Age" and some great material on their third album and most of Loaded — that I turn to. I was listening at the time to a fascinating three-CD mini-box set, Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes, just released by UMG's Polydor label.

"Bootleg" is misleading here — the recordings were made with the band's knowledge by a young Robert Quine (who later played guitar in Richard Hell and the Voidoids, then with Lou Reed's band for several years in the early '80s). Quine says in his liner notes that he recorded many, many shows when the band spent a month in San Francisco in 1969; Reed, he says, would let him know when a "special" song was going to be performed. "Sometimes, backstage, they'd ask me to play back a particular song they'd done in the previous set," Quine writes.

Quine used funky non-professional equipment: a Sony cassette recorder and a hand-held microphone. He was just a fan, making recordings for himself of a band he loved. The sound quality is low-fi — and actually there's something very right about that.

One of the best things about listening to these performances is that I shouldn't be able to listen to them at all. When they played this music, the band never thought recordings would be released someday. To hear this music now is so cool — it's like going back in time to a wonderful performance.

Quine's collection includes 23 songs (with three versions of "Sister Ray"). Some of them were recorded at the dance hall out at the beach where hippie production company The Family Dog put on concerts after being forced out of the wonderful Avalon Ballroom on Sutter Street. Others were recorded at The Matrix, a small Fillmore Street club; one is from a performance earlier that year at Washington University in St. Louis, where Quine had been studying law.

It's weird to think of the Velvet Underground in San Francisco in 1969, two years after the "Summer of Love," by which time dark days for the counterculture had definitely set in. Stranger still to think of them performing for the hippie crowd. Amazing that there were fans for the group's often unconventional music. It would have been interesting to watch a late-'60s audience trying to wrap their brains around the 38-minute version of "Sister Ray" that's included here.

"In the beginning, there weren't many people in the audience," Quine writes. "There were a few nights when they started the first set with only four or five people in the club!" But "the VU gradually built up an enthusiastic following at The Matrix and by the time they left, the place was always packed."

The performances have a loose quality. Reed delivers an almost country-rock version of "I'm Waiting for the Man." There's a lovely version of "Ride Into the Sun," with the most beautiful vocal harmonies.

After playing these shows, the group would return to New York and record Loaded, their final studio album. I suggest that you seek out this album if you consider yourself a serious Velvet Underground fan. You won't be disappointed.