I've tried listening to this thing numerous times. I see this hailed as the one of the greatest things to ever happen...

I've tried listening to this thing numerous times. I see this hailed as the one of the greatest things to ever happen. What the fuck is this thing, and why is it so BORING?

What do you guys see in this thing that I don't?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtu.be/Guu0BEmnLlc
youtu.be/G6LLSfk6Jec
youtube.com/watch?v=3qK82JvRY5s
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

nice production and textures or dynamics for druggies like me. fun garage rock with lots of overdrive.droning. simple ass songs presented in a way that sounds groundbreaking, which is why its considered so influential to modern music

I agree, I can't get into TVU and find them to be very boring as well. It's probably a "you had to be there" kind of thing.

I really don't personally care how influential it was.

So considering I'm barring that, what I like about it is just the songwriting, it's pretty good. Every song sounds different too and seems to demonstrate a different sort of distortion or experimentation too.

It's a good album, but nothing amazing imo. Nevertheless worth having in your collection, as it's one of those ones that's just there and a fact of life after a while, you know?

Listening to The Velvet Underground for the first time was one of the most disappointing experiences for me musically. I expected it to at least keep me from zoning out.

I'd suggest listening to the remastered version of the album. The original mix is so bad compared to the remaster, that I thought the people playing were just beginners on their instruments and are barely able to play. They weren't beginners, but they aren't very technically proficient at their instruments either. Even with that being sad, I like White Light/White Heat better. What this album is praised for is the creation of a new genre.

noise rock?

Exactly. I have a deep respect respect for innovators in any field, but this album isn't really anything special sadly.

It grows on you, I didn't think it was much at first but now it's my favorite album.

If you have to ask then you'll never get it.
Go back to listening to Death Grips or whatever people on Sup Forums listen to these days.

It's an album worth listening, but I don't find anything great in it either.
Seems decent.
>mfw this post

You really need the right kind of atmosphere.

It's fantastic for a smoky room full of stoned, half-asleep, 20-something hippy students/bums at 5am. Or the exhausted aftermath of a house party, just as the sun's coming up and the last handful of guests are lingering, looking for that last cigarette in the disheveled garden before they leave.

I hear it's great for heroin too, but I wouldn't recommend that. Any recreational painkillers would probably do.

It's a dazed, chilly sunrise kind of album.

Best Velvet Underground album (pic related).

But how? This is the album on which they toned it down and tried to make music for the masses.

man, that's just a couple songs
the whole thing goes way beyond even that

>It's fantastic for a smoky room full of stoned, half-asleep, 20-something hippy students/bums at 5am.
I try to avoid degeneracy
Heroin/Venus in Furs are still ok tracks though

i agree so hard, that shit is only for heroin addicts, there is no value if you dont routinely inject dat brown, seriously, his whole catalogue is this, and it is so universally hailed. not to mention songs about getting head from janis joplin really burst the bubble on how deep he is. he's a druggie who somehow isn't really looked at as such musically.

I guess I really was just talking about the Nico songs, there is a wider variety of styles on the album, you're right.

Because that's my opinion. Who knows why people have different taste in music? I can understand people preferring OP's album, or even White Light/White Heat, but more of the songs on Loaded moved me for some reason.

I could go on about it being less pretentious or self-indulgent or whatever, but at the end of the day, it's just personal preference. I enjoyed that one more, although The Velvet Underground & Nico does trigger some fond personal nostalgia for me.

There's only one song about heroin,

technically speaking bubububub, dude cmon, don't do the semantic arguing bullshit, the entire album smells like chicken soup, if you are confused thats the smell of the open pores of a user.

>Pretentious
>Self-indulgent
People often bring this up when discussing music of technically proficient bands and although it's not a valid point of criticism, they at least have a leg to stand on. How exactly were they pretentious? The original mix of their debut album is so bad that when compared to the remaster they sound like beginners who were barely able to play their instruments. Lou often his poor guitar playing abilities and joked about how his D chord got better over the years. Being pretentious is often used a label for lyrics in progressive rock music, but I wonder how TVU was pretentious in that regard. It's not like every single song they've made has a profound meaning and a message.

Lou often commented on*

>I try to avoid degeneracy

What're you doing on Sup Forums then faggot?

>taking Sup Forums's use of the word "Pretentious" seriously

It's just a buzzword used by plebs who don't understand music.

>>I try to avoid degeneracy
>points out weed
>ignores the heroin and recreational painkillers

>TVU is not technically proficient
That's just plain wrong. John Cale, who probably had as much creative input into the project as Reed, is an amazing multi-instrumentalist who was classically trained and collabed with some big names from the American avant-garde. Reed himself even though he wasn't a virtuoso guitarist was a fantastic lyricist and had distinctive singing style. The production on this thing isn't "badly mixed", it's just lo-fi, and deliberately so. Isn't there an anedocte on how their sound engineer quit halfway through recording Sister Ray? Anyways...

Plebs and patritians are also terms that shouldn't be taken seriously on this board. With that being said, I don't really expect a reply from him.
>Call something pretentious and the discussion is over, you ''win''

Their first album, The Velvet Underground And Nico (1966), introduced their detached cabaret. Shifting between the elegant fatalism of Nico and the paranoid misery of Reed, and anchored to the arrangements of Cale, the Velvet Underground developed an infernal atmosphere - equally atrocious comedy and perverse tragedy. Taking inspiration from Middle Eastern and Oriental scales and the rhythms of African and American Indian tribes, the group connected the vices of modern life to the decadent eroticism of Baudelaire, the penitential irony of Dante Alighieri and the profound nihilism of Ecclesiastes. Ignoring the ideas of rhythm and lead, the guitars of Morrison and Reed duelled throughout, complementing and competing as they went. Cale shifted between piano and viola providing a connection to the elements of classical music and the elite of society whilst it was left to Tucker to tether the hysteria to her pulsating, primitive beat.

Lou even said that he couldn't sing and that he was proud of it. As far as John Cale goes, yes, he was a multi-instrumentalist and so was Bowie. You wouldn't call any of those 2 as your '' ''guitar heroes''. And it's questionable what John Cale did with his technical abilities later in his career on: Dream Interpretation: Inside the Dream Syndicate - Volume II, Stainless Gamelan: Inside the Dream Syndicate - Volume III and Black Acetate (which is an electropop album). I respect his collaborations, but that doesn't inherently mean that everything he ever did was noteworthy.

I was going to bring up the lyrics to The Black Angel's Death Song as an example, but it turns out Lou Reed said he chose those words just for the sound they made, and there was no intended meaning whatsoever, so I guess "pretentious" is wrong. Honestly, I'm not really sure how to describe why parts of it rub me up the wrong way. They seem a little like posers to me, even though deep down I know they're more authentic than 99% of the bands playing in '67. Possibly it's the association with Andy Warhol, who seems phony, although I do appreciate his contribution to Pop Art.

I do love both albums, but Loaded always seemed a little more relatable to me, which I know has nothing to do with pretension, I'm just struggling to nail down what feels a little "off" about the first one.

>Dream Interpretation: Inside the Dream Syndicate - Volume II, Stainless Gamelan: Inside the Dream Syndicate - Volume III
these are both fantastic and they're actually from very early on in his career (but released in the 2000s, I think?). Black Acetate is trash.

>I respect his collaborations, but that doesn't inherently mean that everything he ever did was noteworthy.
How's TVU not noteworthy? lmao

>I'm just struggling to nail down what feels a little "off" about the first one
Seeing how their debut album is universally praised here, I think you might have had unreasonably high expectations.

Listen to Loaded

Fag. I felt the same after numerous listens and even made the same thread but then It really grew on me, It's pretty good.

>Dream Interpretation: Inside the Dream Syndicate - Volume II, Stainless Gamelan: Inside the Dream Syndicate - Volume III
>these are both fantastic and they're actually from very early on in his career (but released in the 2000s, I think?).
Fantastic? Those albums sound like he's throwing household objects on his viola and electric guitars which are plugged into a highly distorted amp.
youtu.be/Guu0BEmnLlc
youtu.be/G6LLSfk6Jec
>How's TVU not noteworthy? lmao
I wasn't talking about TVU and you know that. I was taking about those 3 solo albums and his work outside of TVU. And you even acknowledged that Black Acetate is trash.

You don't have to like every album user, please delete this thread

I was listening to that album in the 90s, before Sup Forums even existed, so Sup Forums's overhype didn't spoil it for me. As I said, I still love it. Transformer was the first record I ever bought as a result of that album introducing me to Lou Reed. It just doesn't feel as genuine to me as Loaded (one of my all time favourites), even if it's objectively much more genuine.

Maybe it's Nico's seemingly affected accent, maybe I find it hard to relate to heroin addiction, I just can't say.

>Maybe I find it hard to relate to heroin addiction
I think that this isn't a problem, given that they weren't condoning drug and heroin use.

Come on guys, Heroin is literally the greatest rock song of all time

Well Loaded and Transformer are pop records, so by definition they're more accessible to 99% of listeners. There's nothing wrong with enjoying it, it's made to be enjoyed.

youtube.com/watch?v=3qK82JvRY5s
>there's "people" in this board that unironically dislike this song

Transformer is a perfect example of Lou Reed's albums that just don't work with his inability to sing (never mind the fact that it's a pop record, which isn't something I appreciate). Narration worked for Lou, reciting lyrics worked for Lou, but actually singing didn't produce great results. With that being sad, I like Songs for Drella, Berlin, New York, Magic and Loss and Ecstacy.

It was innovative, which is no reason for you to like it.

>It was innovative, which is no reason for you to like it.
What? I'm not the biggest fan of TVU, but how exactly is innovation something that's not praiseworthy?

Being praiseworthy is no reason to like it. You can recognize its merits without enjoying the work.

Some people just prefer to listen to modern bands ripping off the sound of classic artists instead. They don't care about originality.

Try listening to Loaded if you haven't already. I tried VU&N but it just felt so pretentious to me. Loaded is basically their pop album and i thought the songs were a lot more enjoyable. Rock & Roll, Sweet Jane, New Age, and Who Loves the Sun are my favorites.

Take some drugs and then listen to the album, you'll see.

ITT : the average Sup Forums pleb who listens to hip hop

kill yourselves

>What the fuck is this thing, and why is it so BORING?

so you not into drugs, bdsm and trannies. big deal.

Why do people act like you have to actually relate to the lyrics to appreciate an album? I can't relate to being a gangster and enjoy rap. I can't relate to being a drug addict but enjoy 80% of rock music that exists.

I first heard this album when I was about 13 and it was after I'd already heard a lot of punk and alternative. I was expecting something I guess along the lines of that stuff but like way ahead of it's time. I guess in my head I envisioned like an MC5/Stooges kind of thing because I was aware of how protopunk they were, but when I heard TVU&N I was really really underwhelmed.

For years I really just didn't get it. I kept hearing praise for Heroin and thinking it was kind of boring but I kept trying. White Light White Heat I loved right away. It was pretty much what I was expecting them to sound like at first, and the other two albums I thought were just alright (with the exception of The Murder Mystery off the self titled, which I wanted more of.)

However, going back to the debut over the years after learning about life and art I've come to really appreciate it. My recommendation is to read the lyrics along with the album as they are really pretty great. I can only think of Dylan to match how raw and well put together the lyrics are with the music at the time this came out. Sadly the production on nearly all the releases are shit.

bump

I'm glad that I've always loved this album starting with the first listen.

I've gave it a couple listens and it's maximun seinfeld effect but yo can't deny how impressive it is that this was released in 66, you really can't not put it in context when talking about how important this album was when it was released.

Sounds dated as fuck
>Cale
>virtuoso
Kek. Any student that's been playing for six months could play his viola drone stuff, and his piano playing is amateur as fuck, probably intented to sound like that as to fit with Lou Reed's "ostrich" guitar or whatever, Sterling's clumsy picking and whatever the hell Tucker was doing (hint: it's not playing drums)

lol would you seriously change the way she drums? Yes it's "amateurish" but it sounds great.

This album fucking sucks ass

take some dxm listen to this album then get back to me

Guys Kanye West has many albums to choose from if you don't like what you hear from the VU

She isn't drumming though. Heroin is embarrassing, I guess this is way they call this "proto-punk", that sort of pride in being musically incompetent

I just don't think a song like Sister Ray would work with a bunch of cymbals and fills, the minimalist approach was better suited. And I happen to like her work on Heroin.

fuck off kill yer self u stupid mongoloid what the fuck do you want i will smack your bitches ass and rape your family you fucking idiot fuck the fuck off cock