by Velvet Underground
1988, Mercury

the sound: The opening chords of “Ocean” fade in slowly, like a rising tide creeping up the shore, but soon swell into a turbid sea of entrancing music that works on you like an opiate. Lou Reed’s vocals skim precariously over the surface, sometimes off key, but always with a mundane clarity that draws listeners into the forlorn substrate of his words. The tone continues through the second track, “Pale Blue Eyes,” although the background music is simpler and less ambient. Guitarist Sterling Morrison, drummer Maureen Tucker and bassist Doug Yule later open the flood gates to unleash long noise experiments in the middle of songs like “Sweet Bonnie Brown,” “White Light/White Heat” and “I Can’t Stand It.” The second volume of Velvet Underground’s 1969 live recordings sounds, at times, like a 1950s rock ’n’ roll band playing on a tour bus as it crashes into an industrial park. Even the low recording quality (some of the songs did not translate well from vinyl to CD) gives the album a strange sort of character and legitimacy, as if you’re hearing the songs in a dive club with faulty sound equipment. But the band’s full reeling intensity—all its drug-addled anguish and bohemian poeticism—is heard on the third track, “Heroin.” Even without the screeching effects present on the song’s studio incarnation, the live version cuts through to the most passionate core of rock performance. “Heeeeee-row-in. Well, it’s my wife and it’s my life,” Reed drawls with mournful resignation as the song nears its tempestuous climax. The tune has reached a feverish pitch by the time Reed wails out the final lines: “And when that heroin is in my blood, and that blood is in my head, man, thank God that I’m good as dead, and thank your God that I’m not aware, and I guess I just don’t know, and I guess that I just don’t know.” The song dies down instantly after he utters the final syllable, returning to the slow, sedate guitar melody with which it began.

the background: Originally released by Mercury as a double album in 1974, both volumes of the Underground’s 1969 live recordings were released separately on CD by PolyGram Records in 1988. By that time, VU fans were hungry for fresh material. The group only released four studio albums before Reed left the band in 1970, but 1969 found the members in their prime. Armed with a healthy load of material from their first three albums, along with some not yet released tracks from the fourth, Reed, Morrison, Tucker and Yule (original band member John Cale is conspicuously absent) played more than 70 dates on the tour, showcasing a slummish, urban style to which most listeners were utterly unaccustomed. Although other previously unreleased recordings sprang up throughout the ’70s and ’80s, most of them received mixed reviews from fans and critics, alike. There were a couple of reunions in the 1990s, but friction between Reed and Cale prevented the band from starting afresh. A live recording of a 1992 tour in Europe was exciting, but its pretentious grandeur did not reflect the band’s true unwashed spirit. The two live discs from 1969, however, stand out as enduring fan favorites, capturing the band’s intimacy and intensity at a number of smaller venues around the country. At times, you can hear the tink of glasses as Reed chats casually with audiences. “We saw your Cowboys today,” he tells a Dallas crowd at the beginning of Vol. 1. “It was 42 to 7 at the half. It was ridiculous.”

the significance: In the late 1960s, at the height of psychedelic hippie rock, bands like the Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention represented the antithesis of typical popular music. VU had emerged under the management of artist Andy Warhol in the mid-1960s, releasing its first album, “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” in 1967. Instead of writing lyrics about peace, love and happiness, Reed wrote songs about addiction, desperation and violence. (“The Gift,” on 1968’s “White Light/White Heat,” tells the story of a lovesick college student who ships himself to his girlfriend’s house in a large package, only to be stabbed through the skull with a pair of scissors when his girlfriend attempts to open the box.) And, instead of jamming around classic blues riffs like Fleetwood Mac and Eric Clapton, Velvet Underground produced squealing guitar improvisations and cringing noises that made many listeners cover their ears. But they also wrote luscious melodies and beatnik lyrics that touched the softer side of street-hardened city slickers. The songs often expressed musical short stories, harnessing literary influences like William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. The raw, candid honesty and energy of Underground songs scared parents—and MGM executives—out of their wits. But the band’s poetic vocals and often abrasive sound paved the way for genres ranging from punk to rockabilly to emo, and nowhere is the essence of VU’s sound captured more accurately than on the live ’69 recordings. The 1988 releases each include one bonus track, to boot.