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Sunday, January 17, 2016

The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground & Nico (IAS #003)

This week's Important Album Series update is up:

The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground & Nico

11 comments:

  1. So you'll be going in the order of RyM's list of best-rated albums for this whole series? The tastes of RyM are respectable, but seem too reflective, IMO, of the tastes of alienated teenagers (Pink Floyd? Radiohead? King Crimson? Goes well with high school social confusion! I don't mean that in any bad way, considering I was one of those kids) I hope other external factors will come into play when choosing "great" albums to review. Otherwise you may never live long enough to review other "great" albums from artists that are less popular today. (I'm hopefully waiting for whenever you review "There's a Riot Goin' on")

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    1. Personally I am worried that George will re re re review Beatles albums when it is their turn on the list. :/

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    2. I assumed he'd ignore any repeats -- there's no way he could top his review for "Abbey Road".

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    3. I'm also guessing he'll be skipping over jazz albums like Kind Of Blue, A Love Supreme and The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady and hip-hop albums like Enter The Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers. Now you could make the argument that albums like Kind Of Blue and A Love Supreme are so prominent and have made that big an impact beyond just jazz that they should deserve reviews regardless (plus there was nothing stopping Mark Prindle, Adrian Denning and Capnmarvel from all reviewing hip-hop)... but you could say the same thing about Der Ring Des Nibelungen and nobody's asking him to review that.

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    4. "...but you could say the same thing about Der Ring Des Nibelungen and nobody's asking him to review that." I am!

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    5. I'm very curious about this as well. Already raised that point as a comment on the DSOTM review but apparently that comment as absorbed by the darkest corners of the internet and never found its way to the board.

      I'm curious if George keeps this order and mostly about the following three things:
      - Will he do a third round on the Beatles, Beach Boys and some others?
      - Are jazz albums included?
      - Will we really see reviews of MBV, NMH and GYBE this year? If so, wow!

      Although signs for the MBV review are not so good based on the Velvet Underground review. Given Georges tastes I suppose he will slam Loveless under the ground.

      I also requested George to breach his principles and do a full week of David Bowie reviews after the DSOTM review, but unfortunately this request didn't make the board either. It'd have been a good way to honour the Chameleon and the Sunday review could easily have been the Ziggy Stardust review.

      As for VU&N: Nice album, really dig the first 7 songs, but the others not too much.

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  2. The thing about Velvet Underground was they were cool but not very good. Kinda like the Fugs. 13th Floor Elevators were cool and pretty good. Kinda like the Stones. It was important back in the sixties to know that. Now days not so much.

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  3. First and foremost the album sounds very dated in 2016. And it did not date well, like, say The Beatles or The Rolling Stones late 60's albums. I believe that it is an important artistic statement from the historical point of view, but I do not enjoy it much along with the whole Velvet Underground catalogue.
    George, will it be possible to review Blackstar by David Bowie out of turn and as an exception?

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    1. "sounds very dated" This may be true, but then, I'm finding more and more that this seems to be the case for basically everybody EXCEPT the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan.

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  4. Don't want to be a pain in the ass, but I'm just freaked out by all these beaches and hands. What's wrong with a good old 1 to 10?!
    Speaking of the album, I just love Reed's performance of "Black Angel Death's Song". A highlight for me. Like Dylan on heroin.

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    1. It's alright friend, if you just imagine each "thumbs up" picture as a star/point and the "comme-ce comme-sa" hand wiggle as a half-star/point, that should give you a good reference grounder.

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