Peel Slowly And See [Box set]

While many people believe this album to be the most influential album ever (it is by the way), they rarely concentrate their praise on anything else.

Granted, while it is hard to imagine Smashing Pumpkins, Jesus & Mary Chain, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Godspeed You Black Emporor!, My Bloody Valentine, (countless others) making the extraordinary albums they did without this album existing, it is also worth noting that this album is still ahead of the times.

35 years on, it still astonishes for its audacity, its experimentation with sound and its originality. Sunday Morning's hushed druggie fall out ambience, Waiting For The Man's pure rock 'n' roll innovation and stark imagery, Venus In Fur's hypnotic and off-kilter swirl of detuned guitars and viola, Heroin's distressing seven minute caustic attack on addiction, the nausea inducing musical headf**k of the closing European Son. It all adds up to an amazing listening experience. You hear the history of almost all alternative music in the 48 minutes and six seconds this album contains.

This deserves to be considered the starting point for anyone interested in alternative music, and anyone considering should stop considering and start purchasing!

Had this one for a while and have given the CDs a good listen.
CD1 contains the stereo mix of the original album with 5 alternative track versions, all worth having as European Son being possibly better than the original. This must be as good as this album is going to sound in my opinion. Much better having the original album to start with not "sandwiched" as it is on Peel Slowly And See.
CD2 has the mono version + some singles and surprisingly does not have the impact of the stereo version.
CD3 is Nico's album which I must admit I have never owned before unlike VU's album where I still have my original '67 vinyl. As this album had Reed, Cale & Morrison playing on it (along with Jackson Browne), it is a logical inclusion, and a worthy one.
CD4 has the studio sessions and rehearsals which for any fan of the band is such interesting listening, (although the early recordings on Peel Slowly on CD1 are essential as well), and again are a really worthy addition.
CDs5&6 contain a live concert from 4/11/66 and are bootleg quality. Anyone that has ever heard bootlegs of rock concerts as early as 66 may know how bad the quality can be!
However, for a band and an album of this historical importance, I'm am so happy that they were included. They should carry a caveat emptor though as they are rough!!

The package comes housed in a large format book far more suited to your book library than your CD library, however it is beautiful in my opinion with many photos of the band and memorabilia, lyrics and 6 slots at the back to house the CDs.

Many cite this as a landmark and influential album, but I remember it selling in minute quantities when first released. Me hearing the original album for the first time 45 years ago though is still one of those moments that is burnt into my brain, such was the impact, and there is very few that have ever done that. The content of many of the songs might not be everyone's cup of coffee, but this is one of the true monumental rock albums of all time and as such this deluxe volume is well deserved. I do not considered VU ever equalled the impact, urgency, macabre beauty of this album again.

Few albums are really worthy of the term classic but this one is not only a classic, but it is a 24C solid gold classic, and this set is a most welcome addition to my library. This had to have five stars due to the iconic status of this album and the overall package.

Alongside Captain Beefheart's 'Trout Mask Replica', 'The Velvet Underground And Nico' is arguably one of the two most groundbreaking and influential pieces of music ever to have been produced in the entire history of rock music. One notable critic has even argued that "rock music as it is today was born the moment the Velvet Underground entered a recording studio."

Unquestionably, the impact of their debut recording is immense and traces of its sound can be heard in almost everything that followed - most notably in the progressive and new-wave movements of the 1970s through to the post-punk and shoe-gazing movements of the 1980s and 1990s and beyond.

The album was a major contributory factor in changing perceptions about what was possible in rock music and almost single-handedly influenced the way musicians approached their music in terms of aesthetics.

The Velvet Underground's approach to their art was not as a commercial enterprise in order to satisfy the aspirations of record company executives and the public relations industry, but was deliberately intended to disturb and unsettle. In this regard, their approach was one that was self-consciously devoid of the traditional approach to making music that up to this point was characteristic of melodious 'pop' and the 'radio-friendly' three minute ditty.

Their music self-consiously explored the inner depths and recesses of the human pysche. Unlike their mainly pop contemporaries, the Velvet Underground were classically trained musicians of the avante garde who engaged in elongated suites and complex jams. The cultural tradition that the band aligned themselves with was not the jaded faction of the hippy movement, but the progressive movement that was to follow in its wake.

The Velvet Underground were as far removed from hippy culture as it was possible to be, but paradoxically were also embedded within it to the extent that, like Frank Zappa, they were able to successfully garner a platform from which they critiqued and challenged the all-pervasive current that dominated it.

So although the band recorded during the time of the hippy movement, their 'darker' programme represented its antithesis. In this sense, they originated the 'pessimistic' strand of psychedelic music (as opposed to San Francisco's optimistic strand).

Above all else, they originated a spirit of making music (independent, nihilistic, subversive) that ten years later will be labelled 'punk'.

The Velvet Underground And Nico (1967), recorded in the spring of 1966, includes an impressive number of masterpieces (mostly penned by Lou Reed and John Cale, and sung by Nico): the cold, spectral, autumnal odes of 'Femme Fatale', 'All Tomorrow's Parties' and 'Black Angel's Death Song', are particularly stunning.

'Waiting For My Man' has Reed string out every syllable to great effect, a style that has been imitated so often it would take an entire piece to list all of the imitators. The song is ushered along by a relentless percussive boogie whilst clipped spectral guitar chords echo a million and one guitar bands for whom it inspired.

'Heroin' is another blissful piece which symbolizes the dark underbelly of hippydom like no other piece of music has ever done. Its sheer magnificence is almost orgasmic.

'European Son' pounds to a dissonant tribal beat and a cross-fertilization of musical textures add to the incredible mix.

A rich decadent spleen imbued with Indian raga, permeates 'Venus In Furs' which is immersed in a dark, almost oppressive atmosphere of decadence and oppulence.

German expressionism and French existentialism is evident throughout the entire recording, as is the exhaltation of an epic libido: Each song is exumed with a sexual and fetishistic undercurrent overlayed with a sense of cathartic sadomasicism for which no precedent exists in the entire history of music.