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| The Velvet Underground & Nico | 
 enlarge | Artists: The Velvet Underground, Nico
Label: Polydor / Umgd
Category: Music
List Price: $9.98
Buy New: $5.27
You Save: $4.71 (47%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $4.61
Avg. Customer Rating:  (264 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1305
Format: Original Recording Reissued, Original Recording Remastered
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.5
MPN: 531250
UPC: 731453125025
EAN: 0731453125025
ASIN: B000002G7C
Publication Date: 1996
Release Date: May 7, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Lather, Rinse, Repeat, to Get the Stink of This One Off You! February 2, 2008
5 out of 22 found this review helpful
No matter what musical source I'm looking at, I see the proclamation that The Velvet Underground & Nico is the greatest album...ever! I've given this album a fair shake. And I cannot help but think that it is, all around, simply a fetid turd of an album. Now, I'm not about to tell you what to listen to. If to you it is a magical album, then I'm glad you get some enjoyment out of it. But when an album is lauded as the best album in the history of music, I must protest, when I find the vocals to be bland and uninspired, the percussion to be sloppy, the songwriting to be lacking in emotion, and the band, in general, sounding as if another week's worth of practice would have done them a world of good. Perhaps those in love with this album are simply a very vocal minority. Perhaps my lack of a heroin habit is making me far too rational in my criticisms of this album. But I generally feel that this is overrated swill that a lot of people like because a lot of other people have told them it's "groundbreaking." Sorry if you got fooled and bought this one. You shouldn't try so hard to fit in.
 A musical contradiction. December 23, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
When I first listened to this album, when I was fifteen, I hated it. My experience with music extended to the church music and country pop my sister and parents loved, and whatever over-produced pop crap MTV, BET, and VH1 were endorsing. I expected easy-to-groove-to melodies, lyrics that were about as challenging as remembering to breathe, and slick production that obviously masked glaring musical inadequacies. We had the robot-voiced Britney Spears, the lyrical pissing contest that was mainstream hip-hop, and and endless stream of Nirvana and Green Day rip-offs.
So with the polished, unchallenging, shallowly melodic pop that was available, naturally I had problems with VU & Nico. Lou Reed sounded flat, Nico sounded like a man, the music was screechy and atonal. At the time, I described it as "somebody gave drugs and a guitar to a bunch of mentally-retarded chimpanzees (This is label is currently applied to The Legendary Stardust Cowboy)." And for four years, I left it at that. Eventually, I forgot about the album.
A lot happened in those four years, but the two most significant changes that I made were that I started writing, and I discovered punk rock. These two changes taught me that music doesn't have to be technically great to be truly great, and to value the literary side of music. Then, when a friend lent me the album, I was able to recognize it for what it was: Brilliant, nuanced, literate street poetry. It was eleven haunting tales of nihilism, hopelessness, and addiction neatly presented as a rock album. It was Dylan, after weariness and cynicism had killed the revolutionary, and worn him down to a spiritless, addicted, husk. It perfectly captured the zeitgeist of late 60's New York.
Each track on here evokes a nostalgic, yet weary feeling. The melodies are not really danceable, but perfectly capture the feeling of each song, from "I'm Waiting For My Man," which describes the thrill, need, and elation of getting your next fix, to the penniless, vain, and ultimately pitiful would-be social climber in "All Tomorrow's Parties," to "Heroin's" desperate, mad, frightening, alluring, and honest ode to that most vile drug, to the sexual masochism of "Venus in Furs."
The music is repetitive, droning, noisy, and above all, atmospheric. Unlike what some people think, this isn't the chaotic screeching of inexperienced musicians. The Velvet Underground knew precisely what they were doing. The music isn't there so you can dance to it. It's meant to inspire a certain mood in the listener. This album should set you edge, drain your energy, entrance you, entice your curiosity, and ultimately make you understand.
This album is a shout-out to the junkies, the weirdos, the lowlifes, the poets, the queers, and the drunks. Lou Reed finds his muse in the streets, with those forgotten, marginalized, and vilified by society at large. This album is unique, in that rather than the cloying "Carpe Diems" that we find in modern music, it resigns itself to the darkness.
I wouldn't rate Lou Reed as one of the better singers of all time, or Nico, for that matter. They both have staggering vocal limitations. However, those weaknesses work to their benefit with the Velvet Underground. This album wouldn't work if Paul McCartney or Frank Sinatra sang. This needed people who sounded gritty, untrained, and worn-out. They were perfect.
However, this is a challenging record. Perhaps not quite as challenging as, say, Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, but still very challenging. If you only like music that makes you happy, fun, or lets you dance, this record is not for you. But if you've grown weary of the shallowness of pop music, or the overly-masculine posturing of hip-hop, and long for something with a little more substance, check this out.
In conclusion, this is one of the greatest records of all time. It's also one of the worst. It's a musical contradiction, in that by breaking all of the rules of "music," it rises above it's contemporaries, and firmly entrenches itself as one of the most influential records of all time.
Essential listening for rock musicians and connoisseurs December 16, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have long believed that anyone who aspires to be a rock musician, or anyone who wishes to understand its evolution as an art form, needs to spend time listening to the catalog of artists who have influenced and shaped it. This is true for any art form: the dramatist needs to know Sophocles and Shakespeare, the poet Shelley and Keats; the filmmaker Hitchcock and Kubrick, etc. etc.
To that end, this record is essential listening because of the creative and experimental ideas employed in it and because of the influence it had on the art form. No artist from the sixties outside of the Beatles and Bob Dylan had more of an impact on rock music than V.U., and this album serves as a perfect entree of their creative sensibilities and musical ideas. Supremely recommended to anyone who considers himself or herself a fan of rock music.
One of the most over-rated rock albums of all time September 6, 2007
7 out of 28 found this review helpful
Lou Reed can't sing, or play, and if you combine that with a penchant for writing songs that are unpleasant to listen to, then you can call it avante garde , and it can somehow justify this foursome of nobodies having a record deal when many other bands with talent went hungry. Influential? You bet. Punk rock would not exist without this album. Interesting? Sure. It's different; that's for sure. Fun to listen to? Only if your tastes run the gamut from the frog-voiced fashion model Nico to the psycho rantings of Lou Reed about Heroin, sadomasochism, and other "fun" topics. John Cale's violin screeches offer the final proof that this is one album you cannot listen to for pleasure.
If you like this album, you deserve it.
 I Guess I Just Don't Get It August 29, 2007
4 out of 13 found this review helpful
In my "about me" area I post my e-mail address inviting comments and feed-back from others who, like me, are collectors of hit singles from the 1950s and 1960s. And so far I have been able to add quite a few new friends who share my hobby. However, I have also received a few messages from those who take me to task for my off-hand put-downs of The Velvet Underground in reviews of The Lemon Pipers, and the books Encyclopedia Of Rock & Roll by Irwin Stambler and Rolling Stone Album Guide. They feel I am being "unfair" and that I somehow just don't "get it."
Figuring maybe they were right I felt it was only fair to actually sample some of their work and so I went out and purchased this album and, at the same time, picked up another at my local library. Not only do I still not "get it" I cannot, for the life of me, understand how they made it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame [in 1996] when so many obviously more deserving artists are left on the outside looking in.
Clearly, like Frank Zappa, they are the focus of that small, elitist class now governing the Hall who feel that the masses just did not "understand the essence of R&R" when they were rushing out to purchase the records of those they actually LIKED, and in numbers sufficient to put them onto the charts. At least Zappa can actually boast three hit records, minor as they were. This group can't. And let's be honest here, The hit single was the focus of ANY recording artist or group back then, and to achieve one (or more) was to guarantee some measure of success along with TV appearances. Not to mention remuneration.
But not one of their singles could crack the Billboard Pop Hot 100 or, for that matter, the one created by Billboard to reflect those that just missed breaking into the Hot 100 - called the "Bubble Under" charts. That includes their first in October 1966, All Tomorrow's Parties b/w I'll Be Your Mirror, Sunday Morning b/w Femme Fatale in December 1966, White Light - White Heat b/w Here She Comes Now in January 1968, and I Heard Her Call My Name also b/w Here She Comes Now in March 1968, all for the Verve label, as well as Jesus b/w What Goes On? in May 1969 for MGM and Who Loves The Sun? b/w Oh! Sweet Nuthin' in January 1971 for Cotillion. The significance of that is born out by the fact that horrible junk like Home To You by Earth Opera and Camel Back by A.B. Skhy [also for MGM] DID chart!
Even their LPs - The Velvet Underground And Nico in October 1967 and White Light - White Heat in December 1967 on Verve, the April 1969 MGM LP The Velvet Underground, and April 1971 Cotillion LP, Loaded, could not dent the charts reserved for LPs, so one has to wonder just what it was that earned them a small but fiercely loyal following? So I listened. And what did I hear? An admittedly haunting anthem to paranoia in Sunday Morning, a tribute of sorts to sado-masochism in Venus In Furs, and a confused, up-tempo narration of the evils of drug use in Waiting For The Man.
I have to admit I did like Mo Tucker's vocal on Afterhours, but for every selection like that they also put out rambling horrors such as Sister Ray and The Black Angel's Death Song. In my opinion - and let's be clear on that, it IS just my opinion - their lasting claim to fame is the fact that they were the pioneers for subsequent groups whose goals were not so much the melody of their music as their shock value, outlandish appearance and social comment. As the late, great Johnny Cash says in I Will Rock And Roll With You "... and a bunch of weirdos waiting in the wings ..."
The originals were Louis Firbank (Lou Reed) on guitar and lead vocal (formerly with The Jades and Primitives, also notable for their singular lack of commercial success), John Cale, bass, viola and vocals, Sterling Morrison on guitar, drummer Maureen (Mo) Tucker, and vocalist Christa Paffgen (Nico). In 1968 Doug Yule replaced Cale who went solo, and in 1969 Billy Yule replaced Tucker who left to start raising a family, although she did return in 1970. Sometime in 1971 Walter Powers replaced Reed and Willie Alexander replaced Morrison. In 1973 they disbanded completely.
Doug Yule did finally make the North American charts in 1976 as part of American Flyer when Let Me Down Easy struggled to a # 80 Hot 100 for United Artists. In early 1993, Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker reunited and that October released the live album Love MCMXCIII for the Sire label and saw it reach # 70 in the U.K. But again it failed in North America. In February 1994 a live version of Venus In Firs b/w I'm Waiting For The Man got to # 71 in the U.K., again on Sire, but again failed to click in the U.S. A CD release included live versions of Heroin and Sweet Jane. It wasn't until early 1985 that a Polydor release of material cut in 1968/69, called simply V.U., made it into the North American album charts at # 85.
On August 30, 1995, Sterling Morrison, who had earned a doctorate in English right after leaving the group, sadly passed away following a battle with lymphoma. At their induction into the Hall Of Fame the surviving members performed Reed's composition Last Night I Said Goodbye To A Friend in his honour.
I understand that their devoted - and as I said fiercely loyal - fans will not agree with my opinions of their work, but I can't alter what I truly feel.
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