I don't think I'd ever heard of the Velvet Underground before I went to university. But then that's what you go to university for, I suppose. I remember Phil Richardson talking about them and Sister Ray in particular. And there was a bloke called Steve (can't remember his surname) from Selwyn who kept going on about VU and Lou Reed.
I've always been a Cale man, myself, and this is the only VU album I've ever bought, about 22 years ago. I don't think I ever played it very much either: I can't remember ever really listening to Sister Ray before, and now that I come to do so, it's the wit of Cale's organ playing that strikes me. I guess he'd met Terry Riley by this point, but he does that Riley/LaMonte Young thing with, it seems, his tongue at least partly in his cheek.
Apart from that, well, I don't want to sound like I don't like or don't appreciate these many 'classics'. I do. But this ground seems so well-trodden now, that I don't get feel there's much to be got from revisiting it, and I've certainly not got anything intelligent about it that hasn't be said a hundred times before.
Lucy especially likes The Gift, but that's not on this album (and I think it's a bit daft).
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