Velvet Underground's 50-Year Legacy Celebrated With Career-Spanning Vinyl Box Set Featuring Lost "1969" Album

VELVET UNDERGROUND’S 50th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATED WITH CAREER-SPANNING VINYL BOX SET
 
THE VELVET UNDEGROUND INCLUDES DEFINITIVE STEREO EDITIONS OF SIX CLASSIC ALBUMS INCLUDING ALL FOUR STUDIO RECORDS, THE “LOST” 1969 ALBUM AND NICO’S DEBUT LP

To celebrate the Velvet Underground’s 50th anniversary, Verve Records/UMe is releasing The Velvet Underground, a limited-edition career-spanning box that collects all four of the pioneering band’s studio albums, Velvets collaborator Nico’s debut LP, Chelsea Girl, and a reconstruction of the fabled “lost” 1969 album, making it available on vinyl for the first time. The six albums housed in a special black slipcase will be pressed on 180-gram black vinyl and feature stereo mixes and meticulously reproduced original cover art. The box will also include an exclusive 48-page booklet, featuring vintage photos, lyrics and a new foreword penned by founding member Maureen “Moe” Tucker. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, the box set, which will be released February 23, is available for pre-order now exclusively at uDiscover:  https://UMe.lnk.to/TVULPBox

Assembled by Grammy-winning reissue producer Bill Levenson, The Velvet Underground incorporates six classic records from the band's vintage heyday including 1967's The Velvet Underground and Nico, their landmark debut, produced by the band's mentor Andy Warhol and includes such Velvets classics as “Sunday Morning,” “I'm Waiting for the Man,” “Venus in Furs” and “Heroin;” Nico's 1967 full-length solo debut Chelsea Girl, featuring songwriting and instrumental contributions from Velvets members Reed, Cale and Morrison as well as a young Jackson Browne; 1968's explosive White Light/White Heat, the group's final album with co-founder Cale; 1969's relatively restrained, introspective The Velvet Underground; and 1970's Loaded, which was the band's commercial breakthrough as well as its final studio album, with such beloved Reed anthems as "Sweet Jane" and "Rock & Roll."

To honor the band’s half a century legacy, Levenson has loving recreated the Velvet Underground’s much-mythologized “lost” album, 1969, specially for this set. Nearly 50 years later, much remains unclear about these mysterious recordings. While there’s been reports that the album was intended to be the band’s fourth record only to be rejected by MGM, it’s also possible they were scrapped by the band or possibly shelved by them for being ahead of its time. Whatever the real story is, these songs, recorded just after their lauded self-titled album, which include many gems like “Foggy Notion,” “Ride Into The Sun,” and “I Can’t Stand It,” help to tell the band’s enigmatic story and shine a light on their creative restlessness and rapid evolution. For this new vinyl recreation, Levenson has assembled the album using 1969 and 2014 mixes. Although these recordings have been previously released, they’ve never been represented on vinyl in this expansive 2LP format. Side four of the second LP is rounded out with bonus tracks recorded in 1968 including “Hey Mr. Rain” and “Stephanie Says.”

The Velvet Underground's gritty, fearless creative vision remains unique and unmatched. Although the band met with little commercial acceptance during its existence, the seminal New York foursome of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker, along with Doug Yule, is now considered one of most important rock and roll bands of all time, laying the groundwork in the ‘60s for punk, alternative, avant-garde, psychedelic rock, post-punk and shoegaze. The Velvets' revolutionary body of work stands as a one of rock's most distinctive catalogs and today their influence looms larger than ever.

The Velvet Underground and Nico (March 1967)

Side One

1. Sunday Morning

2. I’m Waiting For The Man

3. Femme Fatale

4. Venus In Furs

5. Run Run Run

6. All Tomorrow’s Parties

Side Two

1. Heroin

2. There She Goes Again

3. I’ll Be Your Mirror

4. The Black Angel’s Death Song

5. European Son

Nico: Chelsea Girl (October 1967)

Side One

1. The Fairest of the Seasons

2. These Days

3. Little Sister

4. Winter Song

5. It Was A Pleasure Then

Side Two

1. Chelsea Girls

2. I’ll Keep It With Mine

3. Somewhere There’s a Feather

4. Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams

5. Eulogy To Lenny Bruce

White Light/White Heat (January 1968)

Side One

1. White Light/White Heat

2. The Gift

3. Lady Godiva’s Operation

4. There She Comes Now

Side Two

1. I Heard Her Call My Name

2. Sister Ray

The Velvet Underground (March 1969)

Side One

1. Candy Says

2. What Goes On

3. Some Kinda Love

4. Pale Blue Eyes

5. Jesus

Side Two

1. Beginning To See The Light

2. I’m Set Free

3. That’s The Story Of My Life

4. The Murder Mystery

5. After Hours

1969 (recorded May – October 1969)

Side One

1. Foggy Notion (original 1969 mix)

2. One Of The Days (2014 mix)

3. Lisa Says (2014 mix)

4. I’m Sticking With You (original 1969 mix)

5. Andy’s Chest (original 1969 mix)

Side Two

1. I Can’t Stand It (2014 mix)

2. She’s My Best Friend (original 1969 mix)

3. We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together (2014 mix)

4. I’m Gonna Move Right In (original 1969 mix)

5. Ferryboat Bill (original 1969 mix)

Side Three

1. Coney Island Steeplechase (2014 mix)

2. Ocean (original 1969 mix)

3. Rock & Roll (original 1969 mix)

4. Ride Into The Sun (2014 mix)

Side Four – Bonus Tracks

1. Hey Mr. Rain (version one)

2. Guess I’m Falling In Love instrumental version)

3. Temptation Inside Your Heart (original mix)

4. Stephanie Says (original mix)

5. Hey Mr. Rain (version two)

6. Beginning To See The Light (early version)

Loaded (November 1970)

Side One

1. Who Loves The Sun

2. Sweet Jane

3. Rock & Roll

4. Cool It Down

5. New Age

Side Two

1. Head Held High

2. Lonesome Cowboy Bill

3. I Found A Reason

4. Train Round The Bend

5. Oh! Sweet Nuthin’

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's "Source Tags & Codes" Expanded 15th Anniversary Vinyl Reissue Out On August 11

… AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD’S MODERN CLASSIC, SOURCE TAGS & CODES,RECEIVING EXPANDED 15TH ANNIVERARY VINYL REISSUE ON AUGUST 11

ALBUM TO BE RELEASED AS DOUBLE LP WITH GATEFOLD JACKET, 3 RARE TRACKS, ALTERNATE LP ART AND UNIQUE ETCHING

… And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead’s landmark album, Source Tags & Codes, will be released as an expanded vinyl edition on August 11 via Interscope/UMe to commemorate its 15th anniversary. Housed in a gatefold sleeve, the album, which will also be available digitally, will be pressed on black vinyl as a double LP for the first time ever and include three tracks previously only available on various rare and international releases (“Invocation,” “Life Is Elsewhere,” and “Blood Rites”). The back cover will be a replica of the Japanese version which features a drawing of a teenage boy while the iconic image of a cackling Henry Miller from the compact disc and North American back cover will be represented with a unique etching on Side D of the second LP. A very limited amount of 500 copies will be available on midnight navy vinyl exclusively via The Sound of Vinyl. The album is available for pre-order here: https://UMe.lnk.to/TODsource

 

Few albums in 2002 were as highly anticipated as Trail of Dead’s major label debut, Source Tags & Codes, which saw the band making the leap from venerable indie Merge Records to Interscope. Having already amassed a rabid fanbase off the strength of two acclaimed albums and their legendary, nihilistic live shows, the Austin, Texas-based band – fronted by dual vocal powerhouses and multi-instrumentalists Conrad Keely and Jason Reece and rounded out with Neil Busch and Kevin Allen – had many waiting with baited breath to see what their move to the majors would produce. Armed with the biggest recording budget of their career, the band teamed back up with producer Mike McCarthy who helmed their sophomore album, Madonna, and secluded themselves at Prairie Sun Recording Studio, in Cotati, Calif., a sleepy town located north of San Francisco in Sonoma County wine country. Free from financial and time constraints and the distractions of home they were able to focus, experiment and fully realize their distinctive sound.

 

“Source Tags & Codes was our moment to take a stab at creating a timeless album,” says founding member Reece. “We had the chance to have that freedom to experiment with new sonic possibilities while messing with the major label paradigm. It was truly a chaotic, strange and beautiful time in our young lives.”

 

Upon release on February 26, 2002, Source Tags & Codes thrust the band into the mainstream spotlight as it was met with glowing reviews from critics and fans alike who hailed the album as a masterpiece, lauding the band’s uncanny ability to create something at once beautiful and brutal, raw and refined. Pitchfork awarded the album a perfect 10 rating, putting it the rarefied company of such classic records as Radiohead’s OK Computer and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Writer Matt LeMay proclaimed: “Dense, beautiful, intricate, haunting, explosive, and dangerous, this is everything rock music aspires to be: intense, incredible songs arranged perfectly and performed with skill and passion. Source Tags & Codes will take you in, rip you to shreds, piece you together, lick your wounds clean, and send you back into the world with a concurrent sense of loss and hope. And you will never, ever be the same.” Entertainment Weekly declared, “Hardcore punk outbursts alternate with art-rock feedback flights and dreamy bits of melody that somehow fuse into a coherent, often spectacular album,” while NME remarked, “Accordingly, Source Tags & Codes comes with an albatross-like weight of expectation round its skinny neck – yet happily, it’s supported by a band who have grown to match it,” adding, “their smash-and-grab dynamic manages the neat trick of sounding simultaneously untutored and highly focused, following new twisted threads out from the early-90s underground labyrinth.” In its “A” review, The Onion’s AV Club wrote, “When …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead wraps the project with the clanging title track, with its images of ‘the ruined landscapes that I once called home,’ it’s concluded more than just a collection of songs. It’s provided an experience.”

 

The 15th anniversary vinyl edition provides fans an opportunity to hear the album with the addition of 3 tracks previously not included on the US release. The plaintive piano piece “Invocation” gently begins the LP before shifting into the driving “It Was There That I Saw You,” providing a unique alternate beginning. The sparse instrumental “Life Is Elsewhere” serves as an intermission to the first act and evokes feudal Japan with its sound effects and Japanese dialog. The pummeling “Blood Rites” follows the title track and closes things out with orchestral strings that give way to a piercing guitar, Keely’s blood curdling scream and the band’s controlled sonic chaos. 

 

A decade and a half later Source Tags & Codes has stood the test of time and sounds as urgent, challenging, enthralling and explosive as Trail Of Dead’s influential opus did when first released. In recent years, retrospective reviews have continued to heap on the praise with Pitchfork including it in their “Top 200 Albums Of The 2000s,” the BBC calling it “one of the finest rock albums of recent history,” and XPN hailing it as “an unparalleled masterpiece of its time, an unbloated orchestral record during a time when punk bands weren’t supposed to be so worldly or indulgent.”

 

TRACKLISTING

 

LP1

[A]

1. Invocation

2. It Was There That I Saw You

3. Another Morning Stoner

4. Baudelaire

5. Homage

 

[B]

1. How Near, How Far

2. Life Is Elsewhere

3. Heart In The Hand Of The Matter

4. Monsoon

5. Days Of Being Wild

 

LP2

[C]

1. Relative Ways

2. After The Laughter

3. Source Tags & Codes

4. Blood Rites

 

[D]

Etching