Download: VELVET UNDERGROUND "I Can't Stand It (Legendary Guitar Amp Tape version)
The Velvets played their last in a three-day run of shows at the Boston Tea Party in Boston on March 15, 1969. Apparently they played Boston quite a bit in 1969 -- just look at the set lists and posters here, and imagine what a Holy Modal Rounders/ V.U. show woulda been like (and how the heck did the hippies react and stuff?!) The whole evening was taped by an audience member, who was either too stoned or else totally smart enough to have just stuck the tape recorder right inside Lou Reed's guitar amp where it's distorted as hell, and pretty much, that’s all you hear, just Lou’s guitar, with the rhythm section a ghost throb through it, every thirtieth word faintly audible as well. In two words: fucking perfect. Someone posted 40 minutes of the Guitar Amp Tape in real audio here.
I first heard the thing as a VUAS tape (Velvet Underground Appreciation Society -- very active early '80s, super important work they did esp. before the V.U. LPs came out. Growing up in FL made it really easy to find these tapes since local shops like Open Books & Records would carry them all). Here, use "VUAS" in a sentence to impress girls: I used to have every VUAS tape, BITD.
3 Comments:
sullo here...
good to hear this madnes onslaught... didn't make it to Tea Party until a couple years later, too young in '69 - the line-ups were mindblowing back then - poster page attesting to that. there were often free shows on harvard commons and saw the Rounders there... too bad about the drug haze.
nice idea on the blog will check reguarly...
ms
Oh, now, see, it'd be perfect if the tape recorder were inside Sterling's amp. (Ask me about my fascination with rhythm guitarists in general sometime, i.e. I contend that John was the key Beatle not because of his songwriting but because of his unbelievably kick-ass rhythm guitar playing, etc.)
But yeah: great to hear this!
(And the fact that there was a Velvets/Muddy Waters/Fleetwood Mac/Byrds show... wow.)
There's, erm, no chance you can post this again, is there? I'm dying to break it up and use it as a bunch of interstials for a big ol' mix CD I'm putting together.
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