Monday, December 04, 2006

Velvet Underground & Nico

The original studio recording of this famous album (the one that was originally sold with an Andy Warhol banana - with removable skin - on the cover) is being sold on Ebay - the current bid is $57,057US - not sure how long this link will last. It is a bit scratched but who cares about that when you are buying history.

I've got an early commercially-released version of the same album - which is also a bit scratched - and I am happy to flog it for $100. I am a big fan of VI and of the seductive, gravel-voiced Nico but the re-released CD version of this same album does me! I remember the late Lillian Roxon's early assessment of this music in her Rock Encyclopedia - 'not for the kiddies'. Of course, as a pimple-faced ex-adolescent struggling to achieve recognition as a newly-emerged adult, I went straight out and bought it.

Update: By 8-45am this morning the bid price had escalated to $100,100US.

Thanks David Prentice.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Harry

I love the irony of the first comment spam that found its way to a post that mentions the Warhol banana.

Anyway let me be the first commenter to amend that old line (attributed to Brian Eno) that "only about 1,000 people ever bought a Velvet Underground album, but every one of them formed a rock and roll band" to say that 1000 people bought the first VU album and 1 of them became an economist while the rest formed bands.

hc said...

I agree Procrustes that the comment spam is delightfully ironic so I'll leave it for once. A tribute to Andy Warhol?

Anonymous said...

Harry,

if you like Velvet Underground then you must have Rock'n'roll Animal the greatest live album ever!

Anonymous said...

There is more discussion on this at the site where i found out about it (http://blog.wfmu.org/ - scroll down as the entry is a few days old) including an interesting discussion other sources for the tracks.

hc said...

Homer, Actually I read that Lou Reed saw 'Rock 'n Roll Animal' as bourgeois VU & Nico. It is certainly very different - a lot smoother and less radical.