There She Goes Again - Click Title To PlayI mean, come on people, if y0u don't like this album we have an issue. Before 'Walk on the Wild Side' and before 'Sweet Jane' and before Lou Reed started spouting off all the spoken word nonsense; there was this. The debut album from the Velvet Underground is just about as influential as you can get. The list of bands who cite this record as a major influence is a mile long.
In 1967, while the Hippies out in San Francisco were twirling around on LSD and the rednecks in the middle of the country were guzzling Pearl in a can and Jack Daniel's Black, the Velvets were in New York pumping their veins full of Heroin. And apparently visiting a lot of prostitutes, since most every song on the album is either about buying / doing drugs, or street walkers.
I started listening to this album in my junior year of high school and just about wore out the cassette tape over the course of the following summer. You can waste some serious time listening to this and it never sounds the same twice. Although, by the same token, you can pick it up after a five year hiatus and it FEELS exactly the same. Sure, the production values aren't exactly Dark Side of the Moonesque, but listen to I'm Waiting for the Man and tell me it doesn't feel like a trip to 125 to score a bag of H.
I haven't spoken to the guys who turned me onto this for years now, what a shame. I wonder what Kevin and Louis are up to.
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