This shit is bananas
A couple of months ago, an extraordinarily rare acetate containing an alternate version of monolithic rock and roll touchstone The Velvet Underground and Nico sold on an eBay auction for over $25,000 following its initial acquisition by one Warren Hill of Montreal for 75 cents at a 2002 Chelsea (NY) yard sale. The acetate, believed to be the only copy in existence, documents the "lost" Scepter Studios recordings, helmed by Columbia record exec Norman Dolph - the "N. Dolph" on the above white label - at the behest of the Velvet Underground's patron, Andy Warhol. The recording sessions were intended by Warhol to capitalize on the Velvets' growing notoriety from their involvement with his Exploding Plastic Inevitable review, while at the same time affording he and the band complete creative control over the end product. The band, with German chanteuse Nico in tow, would cut a complete debut record and shop it to record labels as-is. Columbia, Dolph's corporate home, balked at the Velvet's uncommercial sound as heard on the acetate, and the VU, Nico, and Warhol went back to the drawing board, rerecording new versions of several the Scepter session tracks with ghost producer Tom Wilson (Warhol is credited as producer on the album sleeve) and significantly re-mixing several others for what would become The Velvet Underground and Nico.
(The complete story of the Scepter session and the acetate can be found over here courtesy of the Portland Mercury and here courtesy of Goldmine.)
If you're interested in hearing The Velvet Underground and Nico as it was allegedly originally intended to be heard, (Jersey City-based freeform independent music station 91.1 FM fuck-your-podcasts-NYC-listen-to-this-instead!) WFMU's Beware of the Blog is still hosting MP3s purportedly ripped directly from the acetate. Please be aware that because they are derived from a 40+ year old analog recording, they sound like shit and are best appreciated for their historical significance.
The actual The Velvet Underground and Nico is commonly available today as either a 1996 remastered CD released by Polygram Records or as a two-disc Deluxe Edition featuring both a full stereo and full mono mix of the album (or as a special reissue on banana yellow 180 gram vinyl - if you have a turntable, then you have no excuse). TVU&N remains one of the Rosetta stones of rock and roll as we know it today, informing much of punk, post-punk, and the avant-garde through its risque lyrical content, lo-fi atmosphere, and often-radical compositions. The record veers expertly from style to style, from straight-ahead garage rock through Bacharach-ian pop to almost atonal noise, unified by the VU's inimitable attitude and the consistently superb quality of the music.
Despite its confrontational reputation (and initially poor commercial reception), nothing about TVU&N is deliberately inaccessible or alienating. Indeed, much of the album feels like a distillation of then-contemporary trends in pop applied to a decidedly left-field point of view. This makes sense; lead singer Lou Reed had cut a doo-wop single in high school and worked as a songwriter for hack outfit Pickwick Records out of college, and John Cale (who recently recorded a crack cover of LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends") was an extremely accomplished cellist who joined up with the group seeking to move into the rock form. Sure there's S&M ("Venus In Furs") and heroin ("Heroin"), but from a bunch of art-damaged speed freaks and junkies, you might have expected, oh, say, this.
