Review:

on 2011-05-17 CharlesMartel Said:

Sooner or later you come up against something which you have been trying to avoid for a long time. That is because it is something you have subconsciously feared, like trip to the dentist because you know you are going to be subjected to intense pain while being told, sarcastically, by a white-coated sadist you just know is grinning maniacally behind that little white mask, that it is for your own good. Or maybe it is a visit to a distant relative, something you have nothing to say to and no desire to meet but on this occasion you have to, perhaps because there has been a family tragedy or something. But you know what I am talking about  those moments you put off and put off and put off until you can delay no more; you bite the bullet and dive straight in.

This album represents two of those moments. The first is that I have been ploughing through my album collection, writing reviews, and I knew this was coming up and dreaded the moment, the moment I had put off as long as I could. And second, this album represents the moment when I finally ran out of options for avoiding the music of the Velvet Underground. I had put it off for a long time, but finally I could procrastinate no longer. I went out and bought this album of off-cuts, b-sides and outtakes.

This album was my first real introduction to the music of the Velvet Underground. I have to say that this album was not a good place to start. In many ways it reminded me of the first place I went to in the United States, Los Angeles. Not a good introduction to a country as it embodied the worst aspects of what I thought about America and put me off going to the rest of the country for years. It is the same with this album. Outtakes and album rejects are not the best way to get to know the output of a band so I was always going to struggle with this. Imagine if the first album you heard by Led Zeppelin was "Coda", then you would think Led Zeppelin were shit.

To be honest I was never really a fan of the Velvet Underground in the first place. I always thought they were over-rated and their place in musical history has been given greater prominence than it deserved. They may have inspired a generation of kids to pick up a guitar but their music was rooted in a sub-culture, a place and a time which had so little relevance to me that the gap in the end proved too wide for me to overcome. Not surprisingly, therefore, while I felt it best to pick up a compilation, a compilation of this nature was not going to do much to change my mind. If you really want to understand and begin to appreciate the Velvet Underground, do not start here. This does not contain their most well-known tracks and is in that sense a very poor introduction.

So, as a result of my first comprehensive experience of the Velvet Underground, I was rather put off them. Maybe it had been my choice of album but in truth I went for the cheapest option I could find, dreading that I would spend/waste money on something I did not like. And sure enough, when I got it home, I did not like it. It would be several years before I would give the Velvet Underground another view. Even then, I am not sure I can say that my opinion changed all that much.
Rating: 3/10