The Velvet Underground
Box Sets
Reviewed by Kate X Messer, Fri., Dec. 7, 2001
The Velvet Underground
Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes (Polydor/Universal) Moe Tucker's signature slappy 4/4 launches track four, disc one, "I Can't Stand It," her drum the righteous stand-in for the trash can in the first line: "It's hard bein' a man, if you're living in a garbage pail..." Blam! Blam! Blam! BLAM! Mesmerizing, hypnotizing, oh, so VU -- the primal lift-off barely hinting at the rich, dark mayhem to come. Suddenly, Lou Reed explodes into a wild guitar skronk, a deliciously vicious masturbation with a buzzsaw. Keep that aural yum-yum deep in your loins -- it's the only comfort you'll find in this so-called "bootleg." This 3-CD set, like much of the "officially released" post-mortem poo of the "biggest, loudest, hairiest group of all" smacks of major-label manhandling. Welcome to the Velvet Overground. All the post-lawsuits, even post-1993-reunion Velvet stuff is sooooo adult, so clean and tidy, so boring-old-fart-Lou-Reed-y, that it entirely misses the point of retrospect: that these were some seriously fucked-up kids -- enfants terrible in a world not ready for their particular sound and vision. Bottom line? The Quine Tapes don't do the music justice. The sound is acceptable, the results remarkably clear considering the technology; you can hear the rattle of Sterling Morrison's rhythm guitar, and the "gymnasium" atmospherics only add to the menace of Doug Yule's bass and organ boom. A young Robert Quine, who later guitar noodled for Eno, Bowie, Marianne Faithfull, and Lou himself, befriended this post-Cale version of the band back in 1969 during some not-too-well-attended tour stops in San Francisco and St. Louis, recording the shows on a primitive Sony recorder with hand-held mike. A bootlegger's dream, yes? Well, in this case, no. Major labels have no business in the business of bootlegs. Why? This project, for one. The packaging -- condescendingly lo-fi, with its tired typewriter font, brown paper plainness, housed in a stupid flip box that refuses to close properly once opened -- is a self-conscious mess. Then there's the lame-ass liner notes. Recommendation? You and 26 friends go in on one copy and then bootleg the fuck out of it.
