Product Description
Super Rare First New Zealand Pressing ~ Vinyl Still In Top Condition! Flipback Cover, Labels Are Clean. The Groundbreaking, Highly Influential Debut LP From The Velvet Underground Resonates Just As Strongly Today, Nearly 60 Years After It Was Recorded!
Released in U.S. in 1966, ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’ wasn’t issued in New Zealand until 1971, making this the original pressing! What was the back cover of the U.S. LP, became the front cover for this unique NZ edition!
Condition – Vinyl: NEAR MINT! Incredibly well preserved.
Condition – Cover: VERY GOOD PLUS! Some wear, mainly down opening edge and tear on back flap. Still remarkably good condition for over 53 years old!
Side 1:
Sunday Morning
I’m Waiting For The Man
Femme Fatale
Venus In Furs
Run, Run, Run
All Tomorrow’s Parties
Side 2:
Heroin
There She Goes Again
I’ll Be Your Mirror
Black Angel’s Death Song
European Son
AMG –
The bracing discord of "European Son," the troubling beauty of "All Tomorrow's Parties," and the expressive dynamics of "Heroin" all remain as compelling as the day they were recorded. One would be hard-pressed to name a rock album whose influence has been as broad and pervasive as The Velvet Underground & Nico. While it reportedly took over a decade for the album's sales to crack six figures, glam, punk, new wave, goth, noise, and nearly every other left-of-center rock movement owes an audible debt to this set. While The Velvet Underground had as distinctive a sound as any band, what's most surprising about this album is its diversity. Here, the Velvets dipped their toes into dreamy pop ("Sunday Morning"), tough garage rock ("Waiting for the Man"), stripped-down R&B ("There She Goes Again"), and understated love songs ("I'll Be Your Mirror") when they weren't busy creating sounds without pop precedent. Lou Reed's lyrical exploration of drugs and kinky sex (then risky stuff in film and literature, let alone "teen music") always received the most press attention, but the music Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker played was as radical as the words they accompanied. The bracing discord of "European Son," the troubling beauty of "All Tomorrow's Parties," and the expressive dynamics of "Heroin" all remain as compelling as the day they were recorded. While the significance of Nico's contributions have been debated over the years, she meshes with the band's outlook in that she hardly sounds like a typical rock vocalist, and if Andy Warhol's presence as producer was primarily a matter of signing the checks, his notoriety allowed The Velvet Underground to record their material without compromise, which would have been impossible under most other circumstances. Few rock albums are as important as The Velvet Underground & Nico, and fewer still have lost so little of their power to surprise and intrigue more 50 years after first hitting the racks.