The greatest album of all time discussion board

[rockysigman]

ded said:

I don't really think you could claim VU was a band "of the people". Seriously these guys were of the elite arty class.

Honestly, I don't think what "class" a band was in is relevent to this discussion one way or the other, but so long as it's going to be brought up, I think John Cale is probably the only member of the VU that this would really apply to. Lou Reed probably wanted to be artsy fartsy, but he had too much regular Joe in him to pull it off (which really was part of why he's so great). Moe Tucker and Sterling Morrison were really just two extremely talented regular shmos who happened to be in a band with two even more talented people.

[Galactus]

ritalinpants said:

the Velvets as a band are like a social force that whipped into popular music and redefined everything that came after.

As much as I know you believe this I just don't see much evidence that it's true. It sound like the speech they'd make you memorize when you join the fanclub.

[Rit]

ahh, but i didn't sign up to no fanclub, DED

it just seems obvious to me, having spent the past few years looking at the whole of rock music as a thing in itself, what role the Velvets played.

[shin]

rockysigman said:

And all the love for the White Album has absolutely nothing to do with the popularity they'd already amassed before it came out? It's popularity is completely due to it's own merits and it's own merits alone?

Certainly the Warhol connection got their music heard by more ears than they would have otherwise, but that has absolutely nothing to do with any of the arguments we're making.

You can't compare the initial draw/promotion of a band's debut, the band's de facto hype, to a another band's already established popularity. That's punishing a band for being successful and you know very well that's unfair. And you don't sell 19 million bloody copies of an album on your past merits. You can only get away with that for about 2 million *tops* before people figure it out and your sales tank. Yes, the White Album stood on it's own merits when it went double diamond.

But my actual statement is that the initial "popularity" of the VU in the 60's (everyone has to agree that quotes are well deserved in this instance on a matter of historical record) is based entirely on the notion that you're supposed to "get" the album, in much the same way you're supposed to "get" the Campbell's soup piece, because there's certainly nothing interesting about a Campbell's soup can on it's own. It becomes something of a cultural rite of passage, that in order to become a member the elite club of musical minds that wield the proverbial Sword of Cred, you have to "get" the VU. This is not to attribute it entirely to Warhol, merely to say that he set the tone of how they were to be looked at and everyone's followed suit. His connection clued people in to how they were to be viewed. Much like how Mike Patton producing the second Kids of Widney High album tells me aaaall I need to know about how to appreciate the music.

And I should point out that there is something interesting, at least in theory if not practice, about a Campbell's soup can from a post modern artistic standpoint, but only if you agree implicitly that this object is an icon of consumerism to EVERYONE, which is of course the crux of the entire debate about the piece. Because to some people, the can's just a can.

But with music, that Rorschach shit's usually a smokescreen to bad tunes.

[Rit]

But my actual statement is that the initial "popularity" of the VU in the 60's (everyone has to agree that quotes are well deserved in this instance on a matter of historical record) is based entirely on the notion that you're supposed to "get" the album, in much the same way you're supposed to "get" the Campbell's soup piece, because there's certainly nothing interesting about a Campbell's soup can on it's own. It becomes something of a cultural rite of passage, that in order to become a member the elite club of musical minds that wield the proverbial Sword of Cred, you have to "get" the VU. This is not to attribute it entirely to Warhol, merely to say that he set the tone of how they were to be looked at and everyone's followed suit. His connection clued people in to how they were to be viewed.

i agree with every thing you said there, Shin.

[Galactus]

ritalinpants said:

ahh, but i didn't sign up to no fanclub, DED

it just seems obvious to me, having spent the past few years looking at the whole of rock music as a thing in itself, what role the Velvets played.

Again, in the interest of objectivity, I don't see how the greatest album ever could be realised by only a select few. Rocky has made some very good points, many I'd hadn't considered very much. What I'm trying to do is strip down the liner notes rhetoric and find some real demostrateble reasons...I hope others here are also being open minded and trying to look at it from a differnet perspective. I'm not really trying to change anyone's mind...just really think about why you hold whatever opinion you have. As I said in the first post I don't believe there is a a greatest album ever.

[Rit]

it is a rite of passage, somewhat.. a kind of humanising force, forcing you to make decisions about your own tastes and perceptions.


Shin, you are a conservative at heart.. the Velvets entry into this whole debate complicates the issues, by demanding too many facets be looked at.. You'd rather have the Beatles pristine, unblemished GREATNESS on coronated display, admired from afar, without any need to look at how messy art and rock and roll and appreication and meaning can be.

which is fine. whatever. You're awesome. ;D i mean it too.

[Kensterberg]

ded said:

ritalinpants said:

fair enough, DED.. i was thinking that even as i posted that...

but Dylan had his severe messianic streak in him... he placed himself in a unique stream,

the Velvets made pop music. they were a pop band. Shin also missed that point when he called them tuneless and anti-musical.

I don't really think you could claim VU was a band "of the people". Seriously these guys were of the elite arty class. Dylan was a much better reflection of society and supose when you're channeling (some might even argue controling) the veiws of a generation it's expected you'd get a bit of a messianic complex.

The Velvets, in a very real way, were a populist band in a sense that many much more popular acts never achieve. They had a truly meaningful interaction with their fans, and always respected their audience. This is a group who would ask a club full of students if they'd rather have one long set or two shorter ones as the concert began. While Lou is notoriously anti-social, both Sterling and Mo were models for other rockers to emulate when it comes to interacting with their fans.

And perhaps most importantly, the Velvets sounded like something that could be done in your garage. They made it obvious that you didn't need the latest (and most expensive) equipment to make a great album, or to make music that was at least as "arty" as anything the Beatles were assembling in Abbey Road studios, even if it wasn't as polished. The Velvets represented both a new lyrical vista for rock and roll (and nothing in Dylan's catalog in '66 could match the stark realism of tracks like "Heroin" or "Waiting for the Man," songs that even today have rarely, if ever, been equaled as representations of the reality of the inner-city drug trade), and an affirmation that rock and roll was not something that had to be performed by professionals with shiny equipment and fancy studios. This is why so many people who bought a Velvet Underground album went on to start their own bands: it empowered the listener to make his (or her) own music. Without the Velvets, the entire New York City scene of the early seventies (which directly led to that movement we affectionately call "punk rock" and then on to such bands as Sonic Youth in the eighties) would not have existed in the form it took.

For better or worse, the most influential album in rock and roll is The Velvet Underground and Nico. The fact that (unlike Never Mind the Bollocks, for example) it is also among the very best rock albums is an added bonus. Every facet of rock and roll has ultimately felt the ripples from the release of this record, perhaps not directly but felt all the same.

The VU certainly are the most "inspirational" band in rock history as well, having quite literally inspired hundreds of people to start bands who went on to become major recording artists. Without the VU you don't have David Bowie, Brian Eno (and Roxy Music generally), Mott the Hoople, anything that came out of the punk scene, Husker Du, R.E.M. (remember that in early interviews the VU were the one band that they cited as a direct influence, and the pastel toned covers on Dead Letter Office show that beautifully), and a host of others.

Well, this Velvet cheerleading is making me want to pop in the whole of Peel Slowly and See, but instead, I think I'm going to shut off the Dylan that's been playing since The Beatles wrapped up, close things down here, and go the fuck home. I'm hungry, and it's a "holiday" afternoon. Lucky bastards at the county court house had the whole day off.

This has been fun ...

she started playing that sweet sweet music, you know her life was saved by rock and roll,
despite all the amputations, you could just go out and dance to that rock and roll station
and it was allllllright ...

[shin]

rockysigman said:

If you're going to claim that the Velvet Underground weren't unique, then you're going to need to name me another band doing the same thing as them at the same time they were doing it. Citing bands that copied them 15 years later sure won't count.

We had this same argument like 15 minutes ago, Chrisfan. Make sure you're understanding what I'm saying versus what Rit is saying

And if you think the Velvet Underground didn't have hooks...well, I'm inclined to wonder if you've ever heard them. Obviously Loaded is full of hooks, but to stick more strickly to the album in question here, anyone who says that "There She Goes Again" or "Femme Fatale" or "Run Run Run" don't have hooks is either crazy, stupid, or purposely pretending not to hear them because acknowledging it would hurt their argument. I'm guessing that you're in the last category

I'm neither. Just someone whose listened to a band's musical output and hasn't been moved. I should say that I do, in fact, really like Venus in Furs, so I'm more than willing to like the VU if they make good music. I don't think they do. I could care less about their place in music.

I love the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Hendrix because I (usually) like their tunes.

I don't like the Doors, Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan because I don't (usually) like their tunes.

[kmc]

I love the Velvets. I really do. And I think a sound argument could be made for calling the Velvets the best band of all time based on what they brought to the table. But none of their albums qualifies as best ever material, in my opinion (and yes, I do understand they made White Light, White Heat).

I am apt to agree with Mantis on this, but because I am more of a modernist, I want to throw two of my faves into consideration, those being OK Computer and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I propose that those two albums offer everything that can be found, at least, on White Album (though neither has the strength at closer to equal "Caroline, No".

[rockysigman]

shin said:

You can't compare the initial draw/promotion of a band's debut, the band's de facto hype, to a another band's already established popularity. That's punishing a band for being successful and you know very well that's unfair.

I'm not "punishing" the Beatles for their popularity. I'm just pointing out that it's unfair for you to penalize the VU for an association that certainly did get their music heard by a wider audience, but has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the album. Nothing.

shin said:

And you don't sell 19 million bloody copies of an album on your past merits. You can only get away with that for about 2 million *tops* before people figure it out and your sales tank. Yes, the White Album stood on it's own merits when it went double diamond.

I never said that the White Album sold all those albums based on their earlier popularity alone. Certainly a whole lot of the sales of the album were due to the quality of the album. But if an unknown band put out that exact album, note for note, word for word, how many would it sell? Obviously its impossible to prove, but you'd be pretty hardpressed to convince me that it would go double diamond.

shin said:

But my actual statement is that the initial "popularity" of the VU in the 60's (everyone has to agree that quotes are well deserved in this instance on a matter of historical record) is based entirely on the notion that you're supposed to "get" the album, in much the same way you're supposed to "get" the Campbell's soup piece, because there's certainly nothing interesting about a Campbell's soup can on it's own.

As I said, Warhol got the music heard by more people, and the band's associatation with him did allow them to record the album they wanted rather than being subject to record label pressures, but other than that...well, I'm really not sure what you're talking about. If I'm reading you right, you seem to be saying that no one would like the Velvet Underground if not for the Warhol association, and that's just ridiculous, and for that matter insulting. Also, you don't seem to be basing that argument on anything other than an apparent hatred for people who like art.

The Velvet Underground are still reaching new people and still impacting new musicians all the time, and most of those people nowadays really don't give a shit about Andy Warhol.

[rockysigman]

shin said:

And if you think the Velvet Underground didn't have hooks...well, I'm inclined to wonder if you've ever heard them. Obviously Loaded is full of hooks, but to stick more strickly to the album in question here, anyone who says that "There She Goes Again" or "Femme Fatale" or "Run Run Run" don't have hooks is either crazy, stupid, or purposely pretending not to hear them because acknowledging it would hurt their argument. I'm guessing that you're in the last category

I'm neither. Just someone whose listened to a band's musical output and hasn't been moved. I should say that I do, in fact, really like Venus in Furs, so I'm more than willing to like the VU if they make good music. I don't think they do. I could care less about their place in music.

You're making a different argument now. You're exact words before were that they did not have hooks, not that the songs did not move you. If the music doesn't move you, fine, but that's a completely different argument. Whether it moves you or not is subjective for sure, but whether or not it has hooks is a little more objective, and really, unless you're using your own completely out there, never-before-used-by-anyone-else definition of what a hook is, then those songs do have hooks.

[shin]

I won't argue against Who's Next, because even though I don't care much for a few songs that's purely subjective, but I've still yet to see a substantial argument against White Album that doesn't involve "IMHO". When the uncontested greatest band of all time puts out an epic monolith like that and succeeds on every level they intended to, commercially, artistically, culturally, historically, critically, and musically, that's a force to be reckoned with, not easily dismissed with "well what about Rubber Soul?" as if there's something implicitly greater in that album.

[Galactus]

Ken, brings up a great point, Holzmen has more then convinced me VU is a great band but not why VU& Nico is a great album.

[rockysigman]

Also, you were the one who said this:

Doesn't exactly lend itself to the claim that VU is somehow unique. Like saying the first gold rusher in San Fran in the mid 1850's invented gold, instead of merely being the first lucky soul to discover it.

So I have no idea what you're talking about when you're saying I'm arguing with R.i.t about them being unique. I'm arguing with you about it, because you're the one who said they weren't.

And seriously, I know the only reason you keep calling me Chrisfan is because you're trying to piss me off, and there's really no need for that in this discussion. Unless you're so unsure of your own points that you have to throw in insults to distract me.

And for that matter, if I'm arguing like Chrisfan, then you're arguing like Tuatha, constantly changing the terms of the debate and twisting your arguments into something completely different after someone else disputes it.