Don't worry either, part 1 of my Truck Festival review is imminent. I have it more or less completed just tidying it up to post. Lots more to come in the coming days and weeks too.
However, just before sharing the press release there are two albums out today you MUST check out:
- More Than Boys from the highly prolific young roots singer-songwriter Luke Jackson. My copy is yet to arrive but you can read a review at Fatea magazine >> here<<.
- Traces - the latest album from Scottish singer-songwriter Karine Polwart. An album that really did blow me away, physically. It has such force yet retains the right amount of delicate grace. Time constraints have prevented me getting my own review out yet but I'm on it and looking forward to sharing it with you.
Super Deluxe six-CD collection
features previously unreleased recordings from Factory rehearsals, Scepter
Studios acetate, live performances
"Modern
music begins with The Velvets.” - Lester Bangs
When The
Velvet Underground & Nico album
was released in March 1967 on Verve Records, with its Andy Warhol-designed,
peel-off banana cover, it was far from a chart-topper. In fact, as
the quote attributed to Brian Eno famously put it, the album may not have
sold many copies, “but everyone who bought it formed a band.” And its
reputation as a groundbreaker has only increased over the four-and-a-half
decades since its original release.
Universal
Music / Polydor will celebrate the now-iconic album’s 45th anniversary on
October 30 2012 with a multi-format, worldwide release on October 29th and 30th
that includes stereo and mono versions remastered from the original tapes,
previously unreleased recordings of the band’s rehearsals in Warhol’s Factory
and the subsequent rare April 1966 Scepter Studios recordings captured on
acetate which feature early, alternate versions of songs later issued on the
album.
A
limited-edition, super deluxe six-CD box set will also feature a previously
unavailable November ’66 live concert performed by the Velvets’ original,
five-person lineup — Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker and
Nico — at the Valleydale Ballroom in Columbus, Ohio, and Nico’sChelsea Girl, an album released in
October 1967 (seven months after the Velvets’ disc) which featured all the
members of the band as well as a teenage folksinger named Jackson Browne. It
also includes an 88-page booklet with a new essay by band biographer Richie
Unterberger. All remastering, tape transfers and digital assembly was overseen
by veteran A&R producer Bill Levenson at the prestigious Sterling Sound
Studios in New York; Levenson has been involved with previous Velvet
Underground reissues for more than 30 years, working on VU and Another VU
in the ’80s, the banana-covered box set in the ’90s and UMG’s first expanded,
deluxe edition of The Velvet Underground & Nico in 2002.
This six-CD
set captures the Velvets in a crucial period in their development, covering the
band’s Factory rehearsals in January ’66, the original Scepter recording
sessions that April, then a live show in November, leading up to the March ’67
release, almost a year after the album was finished. Nico’s Chelsea Girl, which
came out seven months later in October, completes the set’s almost two-year
arc, chronicling the band both before and directly after its historic
debut.
The super
deluxe set allows fans to compare the mono and stereo versions of the album.
Longtime Velvets aficionados have touted the mono mix because of its lo-fi
quality, with the music coming off even tougher as a result of its compression.
The
Velvet Underground & Nico album has achieved many honours
since its release: The Observerplaced it number 1 in 50 Albums that Changed the World; Uncut placed it at number 1 of 100 Greatest Debut Albums;
it was placed in the top 10 of Mojo's 100 Greatest Albums Ever Madeand
it continues to consistently top UK polls.
In the US,
the earned the original band a slot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Rolling
Stoneplaced it at number 13 on the list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in November 2003, dubbing it “the most
prophetic rock album ever made”; Spin Magazine placed it atop its list of theTop 15 Most Influential Albums of All
Time that same year and the album is one of 225 recordings
in the prestigious Library of Congress National Recording Registry. In Czechoslovakia
Universal
will release the album worldwide simultaneously in six different physical and
digital versions. Aside from the Super Deluxe edition, The Velvet Underground
& Nico will be available in a brand-new two-CD Deluxe Edition which
includes a stereo version of the album along with a separate disc of the
Factory rehearsals and Scepter Studios sessions. There will also be a digital
exclusive and a one-CD original stereo album remaster in both physical and
digital form (alongside a remastered vinyl edition).
The deluxe
edition and digital reissue of The Velvet Underground & Nico is not only for hard-core fans, but
for anyone who wishes to trace the two-year development of a world-class band
in the process of creating one of the greatest albums in rock history through
rare and previously unreleased recordings.
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