r/VelvetUnderground

White Light / White Heat super deluxe set for $60 (used)

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When discussing his decision to include The Velvet Underground, Bowie said: “Brought back from New York by a former manager of mine, Ken Pitt. Pitt had done some kind of work as a PR man that had brought him into contact with the Factory. Warhol had given him this coverless test pressing (I still have it, no label, just a small sticker with Warhol’s name on it) and said, ‘You like weird stuff—see what you think of this’. What I ‘thought of this’ was that here was the best band in the world. In December of that year, my band Buzz broke up, but not without my demanding we play ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ as one of the encore songs at our last gig.”

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/david-bowies-25-favourite-albums/

FULL LIST:

​The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground and Nico

​The Last Poets – The Last Poets

​Shipbuilding – Robert Wyatt

​The Fabulous Little Richard – Little Richard

​Music for 18 Musicians – Steve Reich

​Tupelo Blues – John Lee Hooker

​Blues, Rags and Hollers – Koerner, Ray and Glover

​The Apollo Theatre Presents: In Person! The James Brown Show – James Brown

​Forces of Victory – Linton Kwesi Johnson

​The Red Flower of Tachai Blossoms Everywhere: Music Played on National Instruments – Various Artists

​Banana Moon – Daevid Allen

​Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris – Cast Album

​The Electrosoniks: Electronic Music – Tom Dissevelt

​The 5000 Spirits of the Layers of the Onion – The Incredible String Band

​Ten Songs by Tucker Zimmerman – Tucker Zimmerman

​Four Last Songs (Strauss) – Gundula Janowitz

​The Ascension – Glenn Branca

​The Madcap Laughs – Syd Barrett

​Black Angels – George Crumb

​Funky Kingston – Toots & The Maytals

​Delusion of the Fury – Harry

​Oh Yeah – Charles Mingus

​Le Sacre du Printemps – Igor Stravinsky

​The Fugs – The Fugs

​The Glory of the Human Voice – Florence Foster Jenkins

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​This post is not intended to provoke or foster unproductive debates; it is simply a reflection on the concept of musical influence, intended to be in line with the theme of this sub.

​Well, it is well-known that many people argue that because The Beatles were the first band to achieve global mainstream commercial success by writing their own repertoire, all subsequent bands that achieved worldwide success while writing their own songs were musically influenced by Lennon, Paul, George, and Ringo. However, this view confuses the influence exerted on the artistic field with the influence exerted on the dynamics of the music industry.

​I hope that an analogy with cinema can help illustrate this distinction. Suppose that, in 2010, I am a film director and I observe the growing public interest in the found footage subgenre, following the immense box-office success of Paranormal Activity (2007). Wanting to capitalize on this consumer interest, I decide to direct a film in that subgenre, but I seek aesthetic and technical inspiration entirely from Cannibal Holocaust (1980) - filming in a forest, for example, rather than a house. If my film becomes a box-office success because the audience wants to feel something similar to what they experienced with Paranormal Activity, it does not change the fact that, artistically, I was not influenced by the 2007 film, even though I commercially benefited from the market gap it fostered.

​Similarly, suppose that in 1968 I have a rock band and release a globally successful album with original compositions, drawing musical inspiration only from La Monte Young, Bo Diddley, and Ornette Coleman. There is no musical influence from The Beatles on my album. The commercial success of the Liverpool quartet may have drawn a lot of new audiences to my work, but the music itself was not influenced by them.

Although these things I am talking about may sound obvious to many, they are not to others.

​These perceptions are among the various factors that lead me to conclude that, musically, artists like The Velvet Underground, James Brown, and Kraftwerk are far more influential than The Beatles. But of course, I don't claim to possess the absolute truth, and I respect those who hold a different opinion on the matter.

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We all know Brian Eno's great, famous quote: "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 30,000 copies in its first five years, but everyone who bought one started a band."

​In this sense, do you think it's likely that we'll ever see a phenomenon at least a little bit similar to what happened with The VU again? I'm not asking exclusively about music; it could be in literature as well. After all, The VU was heavily influenced by writers such as Hubert Selby Jr., Delmore Schwartz and William Burroughs, and later became a major influence on literary figures such as Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, and Denis Johnson.

Photo: https://darkcircleroom4.blogspot.com/2015/04/nico-john-cale-brian-eno.html?m=1

Edit: yeah, it's also worth mentioning artists who have already gone through something similar to what happened to VU.

https://stereogum.com/2503577/ben-gibbard-explains-why-the-velvet-underground-are-better-than-the-beatles/news

Well, "best" is a subjective matter. For me, VU is also the best band ever, and in my view, the most musically influential rock band in history. Just keeping in mind that Kraftwerk - despite playing krautrock early on - isn't a rock band, but rather an electronic music band. I’ve already written about these topics in other posts; for anyone who wants to check out my take, I'll leave a link

https://www.reddit.com/r/LouReed/s/7EWViGGWYn

​Anyway, it’s undeniable that it’s really cool how Ben expressed his opinion, making it clear that he doesn’t care about pleasing everyone or being disrespected.

At the decades turn into the 90s, Melody Maker did a review of the proceeding decade. Amongst the usual suspects of 80's pop and political culture, a rather underrated appreciated band from the 60's (and, separately, their mentor) made their mark...

picture taken from a book

"There’s the sample in ‘Risingson’, which, once you notice it, you can’t not hear. Yet, it’s so easy to listen to the song without even hearing the glaringly obvious sample because it is blended in so well.

The song features vocal samples from The Velvet Underground’s ‘I Found A Reason’, which first appeared on their 1970 album Loaded. The tender track from the experimental pioneers sees Lou Reed sing heartwarming lyrics like 'I found a reason to keep livin’/ Oh, and the reason dear is you.' Massive Attack inserted Reed’s delivery of 'I found a reason' between the last 'Toy-like people make me boy-like' part and the first 'Dream on…' at the end of the track. The 'Ba-ba-ba-ba' sections are also cut up and manipulated, with these sections playing behind verses throughout the song.

It’s a very clever sample that blends so well into the song that many Velvet Underground fans have listened to ‘Risingson’ without hearing the sample. Despite Massive Attack’s smart use of sampling on Mezzanine, difficulties securing rights for the samples in ‘Exchange’ led them to step away from the technique for their next album, 100th Window."

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-velvet-underground-sample-massive-attacks-risingson/

I also highly recommend checking out Massive Attack's great cover of 'I Found a Reason' ( https://youtu.be/YPe2dQNww7I?si=LZ\_r6ej8FgSj\_idK ) and my post about VU's great influence on electronic music starting from the late '60s ( https://www.reddit.com/r/EDM/s/THCe1lR3Va ).