great, great band.

i recently saw Lou Reed's live performance of his solo album, Berlin on the Palladia channel.....worth checking out if you've never seen it.

God bless.

Attention:

Lou Reed was the fucking man.

Thank You.

I highly recommend the 45 Year Deluxe Version of The Velvet Underground. It is a really good collection of 6 CDS. The new mixes are great.

My ears have fallen in love with the closet mix on disk 2.

The 4th CD is from a session that was pre-Loaded. Most of been released before (VU,ect) but they sound better in this collection because of better mixes and album continuity.

The last two CDs are a 1969 performance from The Matrix. Nicely recorded and its a expansive performance. It features a 36 min long version of Sister Ray. I'm always game for new live recordings from the Velvets.

I dearly love every album that the band made and this was a nice gem.

'Rock 'n Roll' by the Velvet Underground is about the only song in my iTunes library that I'll never skip.

God bless.

I still miss Lou. It's weird, I know it's a weird way to feel about a famous person you never met. But I always related to Lou. For me he's one of the very best singers and songwriters. I know he's not what's considered a conventionally good singer, but he has such depth and nuance, and transmits so much emotion. He's far more subtle than his immediate contemporaries, Dylan and Jagger, and even slightly more than Leonard Cohen. I saw him live twice before he died. Wish I'd stayed afterwards to say hi to him, I heard someone say it wasn't hard to meet him. Just never thought he'd die, he seemed invincible.

I'm just going through a pretty bad breakup and Lou's music seemed the obvious place to go, so I've been listening to loads of his stuff lately. It's easy to relate to Lou, more so than most other artists, because he was a deeply flawed person. I mean everyone said he was an arsehole. He beat his wife. He had no regard for his fans. But that makes him more human, and means a song like 'Coney Island Baby', which in someone else's hands would merely be a great song, becomes a truly transcendent experience.

Lou has a lot of great stuff to soundtrack a breakup. Both good and bad, sad and angry. 'Temporary Thing' from Rock n Roll Heart seems a good place to start, but a little obvious. As a whole record, Street Hassle is fragile and self-lacerating, but bitter enough to keep itself afloat. 'Perfect Day' and 'Satellite of Love' hit hard. 'Pale Blue Eyes' devastates. The ballads from 'Take No Prisoners' are intense and funny, which only makes them sadder. Lou's 'marriage albums' (Growing up in Public, but more so The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts) have formed most of my listening lately. The last suite of songs from The Bells are pretty sad too. 'Families' from that record isn't really a breakup song, but I had to go back to my parents house for a few days, so there's that. Haven't listened to much Velvets stuff, but the 'Shelley if you just come back it'll be alright' from 'I Can't Stand It' hits pretty hard, although the song is pretty funny. Sally Can't Dance is nasty fun, although reminds me of a boot of the title track Her Dad gave me. On a cassette. Still no idea how I'll ever play that. I don't have a cassette player, I mean who does? Still a nice touch though. Haven't touched Berlin. Not for the obvious reasons, I've always found it too over baked to be affecting. Most of the songs have better versions elsewhere too. But I remember distinctly listening to that record on a grey overcast day, the day after a great week of parties, but a huge stretch of empty time ahead of me. It was the night after me and her met, and I figured I had the time to indulge in a little teenage self-pity, so I put on Berlin. But I couldn't get into it, and she called me up out of the blue. And in the years since, this is really the first time I've gone a while without speaking to her. It's odd man. 'I'm gonna stop wasting my time/Somebody else would have broken both of her arms' is a pretty brutal line from that record. Most of the time Lou makes me feel better because he reminds me I'm not the only bad guy in the world. That line makes me shiver a bit and reminds me I'm not such a bad guy really. In the scheme of things. Lou really could be a bad guy, it takes a while to wrap your head around. Once you do though, it makes a song like 'Pale Blue Eyes' a towering achievement. And I'm not going anywhere near Coney Island Baby. That was one of our songs. For one Christmas we both ended up buying each other that record. Just by coincidence. I thought that was sweet. But that's my favourite Lou song, and when I can bear to listen to it, I know it'll give me solace and perspective.

'But remember the princess who lived on the hill,
Who loved you, even though she knew you was wrong.
And right now she just might come shining through,
And the glory of love, the glory of love, glory of love,
Just might come through.'

Some truly great posts going on in this thread. I was lucky to catch Lou solo in 2008 in NYC. He was fantastic.

I've always been a huge fan of this alternate/demo of "I Found A Reason". Big Dylan vibe going which I like.