The Velvet Underground & Nico
by The Velvet Underground & Nico

From Decurso TOP 100 COMMENTER 06/13/2014 02:56 | #114352 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

One of the finest compliments I can pay this album is that despite the fact it's a product of the "classic rock" era, it still gets virtually no radio airplay on classic rock FM radio. You are still far more likely to hear it on college radio. More than 45 years later, it's still too "out there" for mainstream audiences. (Edited)

'The Velvet Underground And Nico' is arguably one of the two most groundbreaking and influential pieces of music ever to have been produced in the entire history of rock music. It is no exaggeration to say that alternative rock music was born the moment the Velvet Underground entered a recording studio.

Most notably, their influence can be heard in the progressive and new-wave movements of the 1970s through to the post-punk and shoe-gazing movements of the 1980s and 1990s and beyond.

The Velvet Underground's approach to their art was not as a commercial enterprise in order to satisfy the aspirations of record company executives and the public relations industry, but was deliberately intended to disturb and unsettle.

Their music self-consiously explored the inner depths and recesses of the human pysche. Unlike their mainly pop contemporaries, the Velvet Underground were classically trained musicians who engaged in elongated suites and complex jams. The cultural tradition that the band aligned themselves with was not the jaded faction of the hippy movement, but the progressive movement that was to follow in its wake.

The band were as far removed from hippy culture as it was possible to be, but paradoxically were also embedded within it to the extent that, like Frank Zappa, they were able to successfully garner a platform from which they critiqued and challenged the all-pervasive current that dominated it.

So although the album was recorded during the time of the hippy movement, their 'darker' programme represented its antithesis. In this sense, they originated the 'pessimistic' strand of psychedelic music (as opposed to San Francisco's optimistic strand).

Above all else, they originated a spirit of making music (independent, nihilistic, subversive) that ten years later will be labelled 'punk'.

'The Velvet Underground And Nico' recorded in the spring of 1966, includes an impressive number of masterpieces (mostly penned by Lou Reed and John Cale, and sung by Nico): the cold, spectral, autumnal odes of 'Femme Fatale', 'All Tomorrow's Parties', 'Black Angel's Death Song' and 'Heroin' are particularly stunning.

The latter piece symbolizes the dark underbelly of hippydom like no other piece of music has ever done. Its sheer magnificence is unsurpassed. When I first heard this on the radio, I knew from that moment on my life would never be the same again.

'European Son' pounds to a dissonant tribal beat and a cross-fertilization of musical textures add to the incredible mix.

A rich decadent spleen imbued with Indian raga, permeates 'Venus In Furs' which is immersed in a dark, almost oppressive atmosphere of decadence and oppulence.

German expressionism and French existentialism is evident throughout the entire recording, as is the exhaltation of an epic libido: Each song is exumed with a sexual and fetishistic undercurrent for which no precedent exists in the entire history of music. (Edited)

From SingingPeasant96 TOP 100 COMMENTER 08/12/2013 04:32 | #83762 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Who cares if the music is "influential"?
I love this album because it sounds fucking awesome! (Edited)

Velvet Underground created an original piece of work that has arguably become the most influencial album in alternative music. Produced by Andy Warhol, this album is something special when it comes to the creative artistic expression. The music and lyrics are incredibly minimal, yet powerfully beautiful and harsh at the same time. This album proved that it's the subtle creative moments in a song that matter most. (Edited)

The original indie act, they probably opened more minds per record sold than any band in history. Their droning, off-beat sound has many imitators, but few peers. I think this, their first statement, was their best. (Edited)