Land of the Velvets

. Arguably the first "hipster" band, a genre and sound which has all but conquered the youth of today and driven neo "hippies" screaming to the local starbucks, ironically this band "jams" longer and better then a lot of "jambands."

Some VU Tracks
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Who Loves The Sun
Candy Says
Sweet Jane
Pale Blue Eyes
The Velvet Underground is a tremendously influential rock and roll band that formed in the early 1960's, though the band struggled to achieve commercial success, they were tremendously influential and have been covered by innumerable bands that came after them. Musician Brian Eno sums it up,

"while only a few thousand people bought the first Velvet Underground record upon its release, almost every single one of them was inspired to start a band."

The band consists of Lou Reed, (Guitar, Vocals), Jon Cale (Bass guitar) Sterling Morrison (violin & Random instruments), Maureen Tucker (drums) and for their first album Nico (vocals). Doug Yule Replaces Cale before their third album and his brother Billy Yule fills in for Tucker during her pregnancy on some tracks of their album Loaded. An Album created in response to a record executive from their label Atlantic, demanding an album Loaded with hits, this after they had been dropped from their previous label MGM.

The Velvets came about while the Haight Ashury and the psycadelic music coming out of the west coast was hitting it big. The Velvets represented the east coast 60's counterculture which was notibly darker and more self consiouse and avant gaurd. They were notable for being regulars at the renowned hang out Maxs Kansas City. Lou Reed was the primary singer and song writer for the group and got started in music in his teenage years, writing songs for very low wages, as the record companies exerted even more influence then then they do today. Reed then met Cale and formed a band called the primitives, they then recruited sterling Morrison—a college classmate of Reed’s who had already played with him a few times—to play guitar, and Angus MacLise joined on percussion. This quartet was first called the Warlocks, then the Falling Spikes. The Warlocks was also the original name of what many consider their west coast counterparts the Grateful Dead.

The band rose to fame by support from Andy Worhol, who featured the velvets in many of his films and had them play a central part in the artistic happening the Factory and part of his traveling road show

"The Exploding Plastic Inevitable" Worol helped the band secure a contract with MGM’s Verve Records, with himself as a producer, Worhol insisted that they record their first album with the deep voiced women known as Nico, this became what is known as the banana Album. and album with a vinyl banana on it with the words printed "peel slowly and see", when the banana was peeled back it revealed a pink banana, that many regard as a phallic symbol. This original, "peelable" banana record is very rare as reproductions of the album do not have the vinyl banana.

Ths first album The Velvet underground and Nico, or the Banana Album as it was come to be called, featured some of their most famous and most heavily covered songs many of which have a dark and ominous mood including "I’m Waiting for the Man" "Femme Fatale" "Venus in Furs" and the infamous "Heroin," "I’ll Be Your Mirror," is a lighthearded departure from their gothic norm. "All Tomorrow's Parties" featuring Nico was Worhols Favorite.