The Very Best of | Loppylugs

Submitted by Neil Hornsey on 16 February 2013 - 10:03pm

Cover:

Artist:

The Velvet Underground

album-ID:

a_54

Nationality:

USA

Year:

1 973

Release-year:

2003

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Sweet Jane*I’m Sticking With You*I’m Waiting For The Man*What Goes On*White Light White Heat*All Tomorrow’s Parties*Pale Blue Eyes*Femme Fatale*Heroin*Here She Comes Now*Stephanie Says*Venus In Furs*Beginning To See The Light*I Heard Her Call My Name*Some Kinda Love*I Can't Stand It*Sunday Morning*Rock 'n' Roll

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_21

Now-num:

Spotify-URL:

2RYG5kcSQPqUMWgSXlzYD3

Grooveshark-URL:

The+Very+Best+Of/146364

Short-title:

bestOfVelvets

nominator-ID:

u_13

Meeting-date:

Tuesday, 23 June 2009

MusicBrainz-URL:

52518274-af5c-350f-8f40-7ffd93127d40

Wikipedia-URL:

The_Very_Best_of_the_Velvet_Underground

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Velvet-Underground-The-Very-Best-Of/master/258541

BBC-URL:

jqrg

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108

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117

reviewers-IDs data

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-14-

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79

reviewed by

Matthew Baker

Now go and form a band...

3-7-14-18

2

I'm a fan of the Velvets, they made up some of my formative musical expereinces. But I don't like everything they've done and that's the case here. The 'Best of' scenario has been discussed above, and I agree that for a band of their output, an actual album would be a better choice as they also vary a great deal, from quiet simple songs to 20 minute avant garde freak outs. Sister Ray is not on this compilation for example, which I would put right up there as one of their very best. 20 mins too long to include I assume! But there's plenty to enjoy here, Pale Blue Eyes must be one of the most beautiful songs ever written, with I think my favouriet guitar solo as well. Stirling Morrison very underrated as a guitar player I think. Music would be very different today without the Velvets.
78

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

I should have chose a proper album

2-7-8-11-17

6-14

A good introduction to this band for the uninitiated (me) but I admit it would have been more appropriate to have reviewed an original album. However there are some corking tracks on this and one can only wish one was there to enjoy it when it was fresh and original. Forty years on, what a great band.
75

reviewed by

Richard Norbury

One of the most copied and influential bands ever. Best of, smest of. Expected a few more of their noiser numbers to be included.
69

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

Neil should have chose a proper album

3-8-9-12-17

4-10-11-13

‘Best of’ albums can sometimes work very well, for singles based acts or when cherry picking from a few albums that have variable quality of output. However, when a band has produced some of the most iconic and well known albums in The History of Rock™ then I’m not sure how useful it is to take them apart, juggle around the tracks into new and unintended running orders and mix in some left over bits and pieces. I’d have to say I’m not sure of a reason why I'd play this album instead an original one, at all really, which is not an entirely irrelevant fact when assessing it.

Beyond that, I found it quite difficult to be objective in judging these songs, as they are so ingrained in humanity's collective subconscious and so representative are they of a particular approach to pop. At times they did strike me as being a bit more dated than I was expecting. Some songs, too, had exactly the same sort of sounds and arrangements as each other - spot the difference between Stephanie Says and Sunday Morning, for example.

There are some comically rubbish rhymes ("Alaska / people ask her" anyone?) that fall the wrong side of twee / charming and the songs largely have very simple arrangements - that sometimes don't quite hold together enough to amount to anything but when they get it right it is striking and powerful; a raw sound that is very effective, with a great unusual vocal styles for both Lou Reed and Nico that complement each other fantastically.

Perhaps sometimes for me their work is something to admire more than really get into but there's no doubting the calibre of the work this album represents.