3rd Album Deluxe - Bill Levenson drops a hint?

[leamanc]

Well, I've been waiting a long time for this. The "early Yule era" -- roughly October 1968 through early 1970, before Moe left for maternity leave -- is my favorite VU period. The third album, 1969: Live With Lou Reed, and the Quine Tapes are my all-time favorites. Not that I don't love the Cale era just as much, but if I have to pick, I'm going to pick the Velvets in 1969, as they were playing what came to be known as indie rock and shoegazing well before anyone knew what those terms meant.

Anyway...since the "45th anniversary super deluxe" sets started in 2012, I've been waiting for this day. I've actually only bought it on iTunes at this point, as I'll save the physical copy for my wife to buy for me as an Xmas present. It's as great as I expected. It's hard to say if it's better than the VU&Nico 45th anniversary super deluxe, but it's certainly better than last year's WL/WH, as the only real surprise it offered up was the early "Beginning to See the Light."

The first three discs will be a revelation for anyone who hasn't been keeping up with re-buying this album over the past few years. The first disc seems to be based off of the remaster previously available at HQtracks. It's the best sounding Valentin mix on CD, to be sure. The Closet Mix on disc two is an improvement over the Peel Slowly and See version, but there's only so much you can do with a deliberately lo-fi mix. The third disc is the mono version previously available on vinyl via the Sundazed "MGM Albums" box set, that I ripped and posted here a couple years back. I know some people have questioned the need for this, as the album was not made available in mono back in 1969, but this is a really outstanding-sounding version of the album. I've come to prefer it since the Sundazed box set, and it's nice to not have to rely on the vinyl rip, even as good as mine and others' sounded.

Similarly, disc four offers little surprises for those who've already heard the "1969" album included in the Sundazed set. There's more songs than what was included there, the sound is more uniformly mixed than on previously available versions, from VU and Another View on up to Sundazed's 1969. If you're hearing these versions for the first time, you'll really be in to it.

Which leaves us with the Matrix soundboard recordings. Holy hell, are they wonderful! They are worth the price of admission alone. As we all knew, some of these are the same performances that appeared on 1969: LWLR and The Quine Tapes, but the upgrade in fidelity is marvelous. For someone like myself who loves this era of the VU, they are a godsend.

It does appear that part of The Quine Tapes are spliced in at 32:48 on Sister Ray, probably due to changing tapes as theorized above. Sweet Jane is the same performance as the one on 1969: LWLR, but has a few extra seconds at the beginning, including an audience member yelling "yeah!" which is totally awesome.

The version of Heroin is incredible. The original 1969: LWLR version was one of my favorites, a real display of the band's soft-to-hard dynamics. The extra version that was tacked on to the Volume 1 CD of 1969 was a hulking monster, showing some of the noise-rock of the Cale era. This new version is something to behold, with awesome tribal drumming from Moe and a VERY enthusiastic vocal from Lou. I think it's already my favorite of the three versions.

And I always wondered if the "why I am so shy" bridge on Lisa Says on 1969: LWLR was from a different performance than the rest of the song, due to the audio dropping out a couple of times. Now I know it was to cover up some flubbed notes. It's the little things like this that provide me with a lot to listen to and love, and just confirms why the VU are my favorite band...they are the band that keeps on giving. After the release of I'm Not a Young Man Anymore, we may have run out of previously-unheard songs, but the band never played the same song the same way twice, and even when we've heard some of these performances before, the new fidelity makes them sound brand new again.

[stooge]

I'm totally agree with you ,leamanc, the period going from Oct 68 through early 70, is my favorite as well.
I get in touch with Bob Kachnycz a few months back, the man who recorded the Second Fret shows, and it just amaze me
that he heard the VU play "sad song", "follow the leader" or "lonely saturday night". I always found the band so powerful and self-confident at the time. Bob told me they were very relax and friendly to the audience; that's how i imagine those Matrix shows: great songs, close to the audience and charming
My God! when i listen to the public reaction at the end of "rock and roll" on the Quine tapes, it blows my head off!
My box arrives tomorrow, I've been waiting for this for 10 years and I'm sure 2015 will be great as well on Matrix stuff

[iaredatsun]

Thanks for the low-down. Good to hear it from someone who is a known fan of this VU era.

The first disc seems to be based off of the remaster previously available at HQtracks

I thought this would be the case. No sound difference?

It does appear that part of The Quine Tapes are spliced in at 32:48 on Sister Ray, probably due to changing tapes as theorized above. Sweet Jane is the same performance as the one on 1969: LWLR, but has a few extra seconds at the beginning, including an audience member yelling "yeah!" which is totally awesome.

Interesting ? makes me wonder why they couldn't try and fix the problems with the Gymnasium tape on WL/WH S-Deluxe using an existing bootleg.

[Andre83]

Hello everyone. I'm a fan from Italy. I apologize for my lack of knowledge of English, use google translate, but I wanted to share with you the joy for the material of the matrix. For years, I was expecting a sound quality so high. I have many bootlegs of velvet and I missed a real live recording. And now I am very very happy because they deserved it. I do not know if it was the era of yule is better than the one with john because the sound of the first velvet was much more corrosive and strong but unfortunately live recordings from that period are few and of low quality. But I'm so happy to have this album in my hands and I hope it comes out of the other material matrix. I know that there is .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XubW2YGurbA
A big hug to all

[leamanc]

Bob told me they were very relax and friendly to the audience; that's how i imagine those Matrix shows: great songs, close to the audience and charming
My God! when i listen to the public reaction at the end of "rock and roll" on the Quine tapes, it blows my head off!
My box arrives tomorrow, I've been waiting for this for 10 years and I'm sure 2015 will be great as well on Matrix stuff

stooge, that is great to hear, because relaxed, friendly, confident and playing very tight is how I always imagine the '69 Velvets playing too.

I really hope we do see the Matrix stuff in 2015. After hearing the two discs in this set, I'm ready to hear the rest of what they've got. Lou's audience interaction is pure gold throughout! We previously got a little bit of it on 1969: LWLR ("you should give people just a little chance...in football anyway"; "this is a song called 'Femme Fatale' about somebody who was one"), but there's some even better Lou monologues on this set.

[leamanc]

I thought this would be the case. No sound difference?

Hi Simon, good to hear from you again.

I did expect the first disc to be the HQtracks remaster transcribed to CD, but was holding out hope for something slightly different. But it does seem to be the exact same remaster, just as the mono version seems to be exactly the same as the Sundazed mono vinyl.

So, good stuff all around, just not new if you are like me and buy up every variant when they release them. For someone who didn't buy the Sundazed box or the HQtracks remaster, they're in for a treat.

Good point about the WL/WH Gymnasium show. Maybe they decided to fix up Sister Ray here due to the criticism they got over the WL/WH set.

[alfredovu]

It does appear that part of The Quine Tapes are spliced in at 32:48 on Sister Ray, probably due to changing tapes as theorized above.

Correct. The original Tape missed a few secs of SR due chage of tapes. Quine and Matrix running speeds were slighly diferent so this also has been corrected and the missing part restored using Quine´s recording.

[nick257]

Ive just listened to sister ray - they did a great job with enhancing the sound of the quine tapes section that they spliced in, but why have they boosted sister ray so loud that there is significant clipping? It would sound so much more dynamic and clear if they hadn't done that - like the matrix sample of this does, which has no clipping. I don't understand why sound engineers do this.

[MJG196]

Down to $63 (new) on Amazon US from other sellers.

[iaredatsun]

I thought this would be the case. No sound difference?

Hi Simon, good to hear from you again.

I did expect the first disc to be the HQtracks remaster transcribed to CD, but was holding out hope for something slightly different. But it does seem to be the exact same remaster, just as the mono version seems to be exactly the same as the Sundazed mono vinyl.

So, good stuff all around, just not new if you are like me and buy up every variant when they release them. For someone who didn't buy the Sundazed box or the HQtracks remaster, they're in for a treat.

Good point about the WL/WH Gymnasium show. Maybe they decided to fix up Sister Ray here due to the criticism they got over the WL/WH set.

Hey Leaman, hope you're well! I'm interested that they might have used the same mono as the Sundazed set. I wonder who is the remaster engineer on the Sundazed? Does it say?