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2 comments:
As good as 1969 Velvet Underground Live is, it’s worth reiterating that none of the Matrix cuts are from the original four-track tapes, for which all the instruments and vocalists had a mic. As far as Peter Abrams can remember, “the vocals are on one track, and bass and drums are on a track, and each of the guitars is on a track. [The tapes] were recorded at 15 inches per second, so that makes them very clean.”
There’s definitely yet more material recorded on the Matrix’s four-track equipment. Abrams retains four hours worth of recordings, and notes, “’69 Live was only the tapes from the first two weeks. When they came for another two weeks, I got some more material, and cut out some of the [recordings] that are on ’69 Live. Some of [them], I improved on; I found better performances, so I deleted ones that I had saved from the first two weeks. At the time, our budget was very small; I couldn’t afford to save all the tape. It was just too much tape; it was half-inch tape, and rather expensive. So I edited it down to the four hours that I ended up keeping.”
Those four hours of half-inch, four-track tape amount to 42 songs, including versions of a few tunes that don’t appear on 1969 Velvet Underground Live, among them three takes of ‘There She Goes Again,’ two each of ‘Venus In Furs’ and ‘After Hours,’ and one apiece of ‘The Black Angel’s Death Song,’ ‘I’m Set Free,’ and ‘Sister Ray.’ There are also additional, as-yet unreleased versions of most of the songs that do make it onto the LP, including no less than four takes of ‘Heroin.’ According to the notes of one listener who has heard the tapes, most of these 42 unissued tracks fall into the good-to-excellent category; some are great and inspired, and there are only a few weak or flawed performances.
Two-to-three minute excerpts of nine of these songs and a seven-minute segment of ‘Sister Ray’ (all of which start at the beginning, and fade out mid-performance) have since leaked into circulation and verify that the sound quality on these recordings is outstanding, and in fact notably – if not hugely – superior to the tapes used for 1969 Velvet Underground Live. Of even more interest is the fact that the performances themselves are good-to-superb. They include a version of the rarely heard ‘There She Goes Again’ with more jagged rhythm-guitar than is heard on the studio cut; ‘I’m Set Free’ with a magnificent Lou Reed lead vocal; a really slow ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ with curling, bluesy guitar-riffs and a cool interjection of ominous chords right after the white boy is asked what he’s doing uptown; and a version of ‘Sister Ray’ that starts off slow and bluesy but just keeps accelerating in rhythm and intensity until the tape cruelly cuts off. The other excerpts – ‘Ocean,’ ‘Some Kinda Love’ (introduced as “an alcoholic’s dream”), ‘The Black Angel’s Death Song,’ ‘After Hours,’ and two versions of ‘Venus In Furs’ – aren’t quite as novel, but will likewise make the Velvet Underground fan yearn for the day when the tapes can be released.
The myriad choices of his fate
Set themselves out upon a plate
For him to choose
What had he to lose
Not a ghost bloodied country
All covered with sleep
Where the black angel did weep
Not an old city street in the east
Gone to choose
And wandering's brother
Walked on through the night
With his hair in his face
On a long splintered cut from the knife of G.T.
The rally man's patter ran on through the dawn
Until we said so long
To his skull-shrill yell
Shining brightly red-rimmed and
Red-lined with the time
Infused with the choice of the mind
On ice skates scraping chunks
From the bells
Cut mouth bleeding razor's
Forgetting the pain
Antiseptic remains cool goodbye
So you fly
To the cozy brown snow of the east
Gone to choose, choose again
Sacrificials remains make it hard to forget
Where you come from
The stools of your eyes
Serve to realize fame, choose again
And roverman's refrain of the sacrilege recluse
For the loss of a horse
Went the bowels and a tail of a rat
Come again, choose to go
And if Epiphany's terror reduced you to shame
Have your head bobbed and weaved
Choose a side to be on
If the stone glances off
Split didactics in two
Leave the colors of the mouse trails
Don't scream, try between
If you choose, if you choose, try to lose
For the loss of remain come and start
Start the game I che che che che I
Che che ka tak koh
Choose to choose
Choose to choose, choose to go
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