The Velvet Underground - The Hi-Res Album Collection (1967-1972) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

The Velvet Underground was one of music's most influential rock groups. Often referred to as the dark side of the psychedelic era, The Velvet Underground was rock's first great underground band. Its members consist of singer/guitarist Lou Reed, multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist/bassist Sterling Morrison and percussionist Maureen Tucker. Their daring and politically-charged lyrics help shade music forever.



Polydor celebrates the now-iconic album’s 45th anniversary with this newly remastered edition. The album is a groundbreaking work from one of music’s most influential rock bands. This self-titled 1967 classic helped the band earn a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and is one of the 225 recordings in the prestigious Library of Congress National Recording Registry. It ranks #13 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” and is one of Spin Magazine’s “15 Most Influential Albums of All Time.” It also topped the Observer’s list of “50 Albums That Changed Music”.

One would be hard-pressed to name a rock album whose influence has been as broad and pervasive as The Velvet Underground & Nico. While it reportedly took over a decade for the album's sales to crack six figures, glam, punk, new wave, goth, noise, and nearly every other left-of-center rock movement owes an audible debt to this set. While The Velvet Underground had as distinctive a sound as any band, what's most surprising about this album is its diversity. Here, the Velvets dipped their toes into dreamy pop ("Sunday Morning"), tough garage rock ("Waiting for the Man"), stripped-down R&B ("There She Goes Again"), and understated love songs ("I'll Be Your Mirror") when they weren't busy creating sounds without pop precedent. Lou Reed's lyrical exploration of drugs and kinky sex (then risky stuff in film and literature, let alone "teen music") always received the most press attention, but the music Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker played was as radical as the words they accompanied. The bracing discord of "European Son," the troubling beauty of "All Tomorrow's Parties," and the expressive dynamics of "Heroin" all remain as compelling as the day they were recorded. While the significance of Nico's contributions have been debated over the years, she meshes with the band's outlook in that she hardly sounds like a typical rock vocalist, and if Andy Warhol's presence as producer was primarily a matter of signing the checks, his notoriety allowed The Velvet Underground to record their material without compromise, which would have been impossible under most other circumstances. Few rock albums are as important as The Velvet Underground & Nico, and fewer still have lost so little of their power to surprise and intrigue more than 40 years after first hitting the racks.

Tracklist:

01 - Sunday Morning
02 - I'm Waiting For The Man
03 - Femme Fatale
04 - Venus In Furs
05 - Run Run Run
06 - All Tomorrow's Parties
07 - Heroin
08 - There She Goes Again
09 - I'll Be Your Mirror
10 - Black Angel's Death Song
11 - European Son

45th Anniversary Edition.




The Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat is one of the most confrontational and inspirational second albums ever made by a rock band. Recorded in a matter of days at the end of the summer of 1967, a season in which everything seemed possible in rock and much of it happened at now-mythic speed, White Light/White Heat is an album that reeks of the gritty NY street life and could only have been made in New York, by one band. And that group is the classic-quartet lineup of The Velvet Underground – singer-guitarist Lou Reed; bassist-organist and viola player John Cale; guitarist-bassist Sterling Morrison; and drummer Maureen Tucker.

The world of pop music was hardly ready for The Velvet Underground's first album when it appeared in the spring of 1967, but while The Velvet Underground and Nico sounded like an open challenge to conventional notions of what rock music could sound like (or what it could discuss), 1968's White Light/White Heat was a no-holds-barred frontal assault on cultural and aesthetic propriety. Recorded without the input of either Nico or Andy Warhol, White Light/White Heat was the purest and rawest document of the key Velvets lineup of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker, capturing the group at their toughest and most abrasive. The album opens with an open and enthusiastic endorsement of amphetamines (startling even from this group of noted drug enthusiasts), and side one continues with an amusing shaggy-dog story set to a slab of lurching mutant R&B ("The Gift"), a perverse variation on an old folktale ("Lady Godiva's Operation"), and the album's sole "pretty" song, the mildly disquieting "Here She Comes Now." While side one was a good bit darker in tone than the Velvets' first album, side two was where they truly threw down the gauntlet with the manic, free-jazz implosion of "I Heard Her Call My Name" (featuring Reed's guitar work at its most gloriously fractured), and the epic noise jam "Sister Ray," 17 minutes of sex, drugs, violence, and other non-wholesome fun with the loudest rock group in the history of Western Civilization as the house band. White Light/White Heat is easily the least accessible of The Velvet Underground's studio albums, but anyone wanting to hear their guitar-mauling tribal frenzy straight with no chaser will love it, and those benighted souls who think of the Velvets as some sort of folk-rock band are advised to crank their stereo up to ten and give side two a spin.

Tracklist:

01 - White Light/White Heat
02 - The Gift
03 - Lady Godiva's Operation
04 - Here She Comes Now
05 - I Heard Her Call My Name
06 - Sister Ray

45th Anniversary Edition.




The Velvet Underground is the third studio masterpiece by the American rock legends. The work features the rock anthems “Candy Says,” “What Goes On,” “Some Kinda Love” and “Pale Blue Eyes.” It is included on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” The album is a rich display of Lou Reed’s effortless songwriting abilities. The Velvet Underground ranked #6 on NME’s “Greatest Albums of All Time”.

Upon first release, the Velvet Underground's self-titled third album must have surprised their fans nearly as much as their first two albums shocked the few mainstream music fans who heard them. After testing the limits of how musically and thematically challenging rock could be on Velvet Underground & Nico and White Light/White Heat, this 1969 release sounded spare, quiet, and contemplative, as if the previous albums documented some manic, speed-fueled party and this was the subdued morning after. (The album's relative calm has often been attributed to the departure of the band's most committed avant-gardist, John Cale, in the fall of 1968; the arrival of new bassist Doug Yule; and the theft of the band's amplifiers shortly before they began recording.) But Lou Reed's lyrical exploration of the demimonde is as keen here as on any album he ever made, while displaying a warmth and compassion he sometimes denied his characters. "Candy Says," "Pale Blue Eyes," and "I'm Set Free" may be more muted in approach than what the band had done in the past, but "What Goes On" and "Beginning to See the Light" made it clear the VU still loved rock & roll, and "The Murder Mystery" (which mixes and matches four separate poetic narratives) is as brave and uncompromising as anything on White Light/White Heat. This album sounds less like the Velvet Underground than any of their studio albums, but it's as personal, honest, and moving as anything Lou Reed ever committed to tape.

Tracklist:

01 - Candy Says
02 - What Goes On
03 - Some Kinda Love
04 - Pale Blue Eyes
05 - Jesus
06 - Beginning to See the Light
07 - I'm Set Free
08 - That's the Story of My Life
09 - The Murder Mystery
10 - After Hours

Digitally Remastered Edition.




Loaded is the Velvet Underground's fourth studio album. In 2003 the record was listed at #109 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of 500 greatest albums of all time! This was the last Velvet Underground recording to feature Lou Reed before he began his solo career. Loaded features singles "Sweet Jane," "Rock & Roll" and more great tracks!

After The Velvet Underground cut three albums for the jazz-oriented Verve label that earned them lots of notoriety but negligible sales, the group signed with industry powerhouse Atlantic Records in 1970; label head Ahmet Ertegun supposedly asked Lou Reed to avoid sex and drugs in his songs, and instead focus on making an album "loaded with hits." Loaded was the result, and with appropriate irony it turned out to be the first VU album that made any noticeable impact on commercial radio – and also their swan song, with Reed leaving the group shortly before its release. With John Cale long gone from the band, Doug Yule highly prominent (he sings lead on four of the ten tracks), and Maureen Tucker absent on maternity leave, this is hardly a purist's Velvet Underground album. But while Lou Reed always wrote great rock & roll songs with killer hooks, on Loaded his tunes were at last given a polished but intelligent production that made them sound like the hits they should have been, and there's no arguing that "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll" are as joyously anthemic as anything he's ever recorded. And if this release generally maintains a tight focus on the sunny side of the VU's personality (or would that be Reed's personality?), "New Age" and "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" prove he had hardly abandoned his contemplative side, and "Train Around the Bend" is a subtle but revealing metaphor for his weariness with the music business. Sterling Morrison once said of Loaded, "It showed that we could have, all along, made truly commercial sounding records," but just as importantly, it proved they could do so without entirely abandoning their musical personality in the process. It's a pity that notion hadn't occurred to anyone a few years earlier.

Tracklist:

01 - Who Loves The Sun
02 - Sweet Jane (Full Length Version)
03 - Rock & Roll (Full Length Version)
04 - Cool It Down
05 - New Age (Full Length Version)
06 - Head Held High
07 - Lonesome Cowboy Bill
08 - I Found A Reason
09 - Train Round The Bend
10 - Oh! Sweet Nuthin'
11 - I'm Sticking With You (Session Outtake)
12 - Ocean (Session Outtake)
13 - I Love You (Session Outtake)
14 - Ride Into The Sun (Session Outtake)

Expanded & Remastered Edition.

There's a certain amount of disagreement among Velvet Underground scholars regarding whether or not this album, recorded by Andy Warhol associate and longtime fan Brigid Polk on a portable cassette recorder on August 23, 1970, does in fact document Lou Reed's final appearance with the VU. If this wasn't his last stand with the group, it was certainly close to the end of the line, and while the performance is technically strong, it isn't especially inspired, with Reed sounding more than a bit weary. (At this point, the band was near the end of a three-month residency at Max's, doing recording sessions for Loaded during the day, a schedule that would tax most performers.) The absence of Maureen Tucker on drums (who was pregnant and sitting out the Max's shows) makes an even bigger difference; the replacement of her steady, tribal pulse in favor of Billy Yule's busy, sometimes sloppy style does these songs no favors. But there are a few lovely moments, including rare live performances of "After Hours" and "Sunday Morning," and Reed and Sterling Morrison lock guitars with their usual authority on "Waiting for the Man" and "Beginning to See the Light." The audio quality isn't great, but given the circumstances it's better than you might expect (it's OK by the standards of an early-'70s bootleg), though historical merit seems to be more the issue than high fidelity. And yes, that really is Jim Carroll ordering double Pernods and asking about the availability of Tuinal between songs. Fun for fans, but 1969: Velvet Underground Live is a much stronger document of this band's on-stage prowess.

Tracklist:

01 - I'm Waiting for the Man
02 - White Light White Heat
03 - I'm Set Free
04 - Sweet Jane
05 - Lonesome Cowboy Bill
06 - New Age
07 - Beginning to See the Light
08 - I'll Be Your Mirror
09 - Pale Blue Eyes
10 - Candy Says
11 - Sunday Morning
12 - After Hours
13 - Femme Fatale
14 - Some Kinda Love
15 - Lonesome Cowboy Bill (Version 2)

Expanded & Remastered Edition.


Thanks to the Original customer(s)!