[Mortte Jousimo]

Originally Posted by Severian

No that was a good piece. I also think Yule's kind of a villain by default among VU fans. Somebody's got to be to blame, right?

But he made some incredible contributions to the band. Without him, the Velvets would have died with White Light. And that would Fucking SUCK.

I think you go too far with Yule. Of course he was great singer and also musician, but Squeeze is really not a Velvet album. And also I don´t believe Velvet would have died without him after White Light, Reed was still the main creative force. I really love all the Reed Velvet albums, also V.U. and Another View.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by Mortte Jousimo

I think you go too far with Yule. Of course he was great singer and also musician, but Squeeze is really not a Velvet album. And also I don´t believe Velvet would have died without him after White Light, Reed was still the main creative force. I really love all the Reed Velvet albums, also V.U. and Another View.

I'm not saying Squeeze is a VU album. (Well, technically it is, but it's very obviously not)... I won't even go as far as NR, who said it sounds like it could pass for the band's follow-up to Loaded. It couldn't. It's not the band. It's Doug Yule. And fuck him for releasing it as a VU release.

That said, I agree with Mr. Pitchfork Writer guy that if it had been dropped as a Doug Yule solo effort, it would have been totally fine.

All I'm saying is this: the chances of the Velvets continuing on after Cale's departure and making better music than self-titled and Loaded with someone other than Doug Yule seem pretty low. I love Velvet Underground & Loaded almost as much as I love the first two. (Another View is kind of a different animal)... anyway, if those albums hadn't been completed exactly as they were, my life would suck a little bit more, and Yule was part of what made them so good.

That's all I'm saying.

[Mortte Jousimo]

Originally Posted by Severian

I'm not saying Squeeze is a VU album. (Well, technically it is, but it's very obviously not)... I won't even go as far as NR, who said it sounds like it could pass for the band's follow-up to Loaded. It couldn't. It's not the band. It's Doug Yule. And fuck him for releasing it as a VU release.

That said, I agree with Mr. Pitchfork Writer guy that if it had been dropped as a Doug Yule solo effort, it would have been totally fine.

All I'm saying is this: the chances of the Velvets continuing on after Cale's departure and making better music than self-titled and Loaded with someone other than Doug Yule seem pretty low. I love Velvet Underground & Loaded almost as much as I love the first two. (Another View is kind of a different animal)... anyway, if those albums hadn't been completed exactly as they were, my life would suck a little bit more, and Yule was part of what made them so good.

That's all I'm saying.

I understood what you´re saying. I mention Squeeze as an example what Yule could do without Lou. I think those first two albums are the greatest Velvet-albums and really ever want to underrate the importance of Cale to Velvet. But according to book I read about Lou he just told to Yule what he had to do in third album (anyway for example Candy Says is Reed song). Maybe Yule spent more time in the studio with Loaded than Lou, but I have also read Yule took much more credits of the songs he really compose. I believe there would have beem also some other great musician helping Velvet in that time if there hadn´t been Yule. Velvet just had then quite great reputation at least in art music circles. Of course we never know. And again, both V.U. & Another View are as great Velvet albums as third and loaded.

And I am not saying Squeeze is totally shit album, but it really isn´t the greatest 70 albums. And really has nothing to do with the Velvet. I believe no-one would remember it if it hadn´t made under the Velvet name.

[Mortte Jousimo]

Originally Posted by pepper_green

Loaded is an excellent album. it's a goddamn good record. I have the reissue one with the outtakes and demos. doug yule was ok I guess.

I love Loaded too. One thing I really miss both third and Loaded is that artistic genius of Cale. Yule is ok, but he was just a good musician. Candy Says is of course really great, I agree about that I don´t think anyone else could have sung it so great. Also really much liked Yule´s vocal in New Age (it´s my favourite song in Loaded).

[Mortte Jousimo]

Have to take my words back. Just listened Squeeze and I remembered it was better than it really is. It´s not shit, it´s horrible (even shit can sometimes be good). These are only listenable songs in album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2uL13KDffw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY_g6FT794o

And I don´t think I will listen even these.

The most horrible thing is that I remembered Squeeze to be something totally different than Velvet. But you can hear easily how Yule tried to make Velvet-album. This album is just a great example of that how some musicians should be just musicians and not a creative force of a band. This kind of musicians just make lame copies from something real.

Even the cover is horrible. And what´s also unbelievable, Squeeze is under the name of Velvet in Spotify, but there are no V.U. or Another View!

[noisereductions]

Originally Posted by Mortte Jousimo

Squeeze is under the name of Velvet in Spotify, but there are no V.U. or Another View!

yeah that is weird.

[Mortte Jousimo]

Originally Posted by pepper_green

haha Mort^^

never have heard Squeeze before and don't care too so chill ya"ll(if I can spell right). it can't be as cool as Loaded right?.

NO! Not even near. If you listen "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" 10 times non-stop, you have a picture what is Squeeze.

[Severian]

Nope, Squeeze is nowhere near Loaded. Compared to the true VU albums, Squeeze is absolute fucking horseshit. But if Yule had dropped it as a solo album, I think it would be easier to tolerate, and might find its "place" in pop music.

[Mortte Jousimo]

Originally Posted by Severian

Nope, Squeeze is nowhere near Loaded. Compared to the true VU albums, Squeeze is absolute fucking horseshit. But if Yule had dropped it as a solo album, I think it would be easier to tolerate, and might find its "place" in pop music.

No. It´s just horseshit and deserves to become forgotten. There are just so many lot greater albums in the seventies. As you can see from Wiki, Yule never made a huge solo career. Suprisingly he played as a session musician in Reed´s Sally Can´t Dance & Coney Island Baby. Then joined into (neverheard) country band American Flyer. His only solo is Live In Seattle from 2002 (I don´t want to hear that).

[Severian]

Yeah, I know... But he still should have released Squeeze under his own name. Calling it a VU album was moronic.

He's responsible for tarnishing the discography of one of my favorite bands ever, so I'm no major supporter. But I do think he's contributed more to the band than he's been given credit for.

If Lou had done studio vocals for "Candy Says" the effect would have been totally different. I love Lou Reed, but that performance by Yule is iconic.

I'm not trying to argue with you, I just see the whole thing from two sides. That's all.

[Mortte Jousimo]

I agree with Candy Says totally (I already said earlier I don´t think no-one could have sung it better). Also I think too Yule made good work in Velvet. My main point has been his importance to Velvet hasn´t been even near of the importance of Reed & Cale, not also Morrison & Tucker. I think Yule was the person who could be the most easily replaced in Velvet.

I believe the record company would have ever released Squeeze under the name of Yule. It didn´t sell well under the name of Velvet, but I think it sold better as if it would have sold as a solo record.

[noisereductions]

and don't forget "Oh Sweet Nothing" - that vocal is fantastic.

Personally it never bothered me that Squeeze was called Velvets. We all know the personnel. We know it's not a real Velvets album. But I find these sort of 'sort thumbs' interesting in any bands' discography.

[Mortte Jousimo]

Yes. There are those two Doors albums that didn´t sound very Doors to me (Other Voices & Full Circle).

[Severian]

I didn't mean to imply that Yule was anywhere near the level of Lou Reed or John Cale. Lou Reed was like a god to me. The world is a much less interesting place without him, and I think about my first time seeing him perform all the time.

I have the Rolling Stone cover devoted to his passing framed and hanging on my living room wall. No question, Yule was no Reed or Cale. He still did some amazing things with the band, however.

[Mortte Jousimo]

Only amazing things Yule did to me is vocals in Candy Says and New Age. Of course he did also good vocals for example Who Loves the sun & Sweet Nuthin. But when Tucker drum playing is unique (also you should never forget her amazing vocals in After Hours & I am sticking with you) also I find Morrison guitar playing unique, Yule´s instrument playing is just common playing every good musician can do.

[Severian]

Yeah, Tucker's vocals on After Hours have always felt extremely influential to countless bands that would follow, including White Stripes.

I kinda feel like Jack and Meg derived their entire playground-chic style from Maureen Tucker's work on the third album and just mixed it with Stooges and MC5.

[noisereductions]

word, word. Tucker's vox were great.

We can blah blah blah all we want but bottom line is that in 4 (or 5 haha) albums this band explored a lot of sound. And had a lot of personnel shifts. In a way the band feels more like an ever-morphing collective during their short run.

[Severian]

Four albums. Four proper albums. Two high-quality outtakes comps that could pass for proper albums if they had to. Live stuff, and one completely non-VU release that isn't terrible, but sounds more like Grateful Dead playing honky tonk with a pre-disco Doctor Hook.

So, let's just say four albums.

VU and Another View are both simply excellent. I think I'm quoted somewhere as saying that Jesus & Mary Chain's Barbed Wire Kisses is my favorite non-album b-sides/rarities/outtakes compilation of all time, but that has a lot to do with how JAMC embodied the spirit of the Velvet Underground. If Psychocandy ad somehow merged with Bad Moon Rising, Reed and Cale would have probably sued.

[Mortte Jousimo]

Yes. It´s quite amazing they release only four albums that very little people that time wanted to listen but then influenced almost alone the whole new generation ten years later and still influences many. Of course there were also 13th Floor Elevators, Red Crayola, even I find something same Pink Floyd´s two first albums, then Stooges & MC5 little later but I think Velvets were the most important.

I like JAMC, but it has always felt to me somekind poor man´s Velvet.

I think there has been very little to add after Velvet into popular culture if thinking kind of "punk" rock.

[Severian]

I understand what you're sayin Mortte, but JAMC were not a poor man's VU. Honestly, there's no band I can really think of that could claim that title. VU were the poor man's VU. The only bands from anywhere near their era that had the same kind of vibe were bands like the Stooges, and a little later Can.... then Television (who came so much later that they were more followers than peers.)

JAMC definitely used the Velvet's formula, specifically the more simple songs that appeared on 3rd and Loaded, but they added a great deal to the sound to make it exciting for college pseudo punks in the early '80s. But they never pretended that wasn't the case. They mixed NYC art drone with Beach Boys melodies and covered it all in fuzz, and they created something new. Honestly, for a long time they were second only to Sonic Youth in my mind. Now I am a little bit less obsessed with them, but they were definitely influential and powerful in their own right. Without them, I don't think there would be any Dinosaur Jr, or Ride, or MBV. They really kicked open the doors for noise rock, along with Sonic Youth and Spacemen 3 and Husker Du.

Spacemen 3 are probably the most direct and unabashed disciples of the VU, but calling them or JAMC a "poor man's VU" is kind of missing the point. If anything, most of the music world probably considers SY to be more of a poor man's VU than JAMC.

I'm not trying to argue, it's just that I think the Velvets (like the Beatles) inspired SO many bands that it's hard to find good musicians that haven't ripped them off in some way, shape or form. But the same is true of JAMC, Spacemen 3 and Sonic Youth. All of those bands picked up where the Velvets left off to some extent. And they influenced generations of underground bands on their own.

The Velvets are probably the second most influential rock band of all time. They created a diaspora in the underground just as the Beatles did in the mainstream. You couldn't really BE a rock band after those two groups without ripping one or both of them off.

Sorry to wank on and on, but I really do crush hard on the Velvet Underground. For me, great rock music pretty much began in 1967.