The project here is strictly random. It's not my favorite albums of all time and it's not the rest of the world's favorite albums. It's just a free-form exploration of the music I've collected over the past 25 years or so.
The Velvet Underground & Nico ("The Banana Album") is of course one of those albums that is heralded as way ahead of its time, groundbreaking, revolutionary, etc. and so forth. However it seems odd that an album with such accolades seems to be absent from the "classic rock" canon. In fact is wasn't until the late 1970's that anyone influential was saying this was a great album. I didn't even hear the album (except for "Heroin") until about ten years ago and only added the album to my library a couple years ago. I think it's an acquired taste, but one well worth being patient enough to acquire. Well, in all fairness, I'm still trying to figure out Nico.
The combination of Lou Reed's chugging rhythm, John Cale's avant-garde tendencies and the mysterious role of Andy Warhol led to a combination too unstable to last. After this album, Warhol was out (along with Nico), and John Cale was gone after the following album, White Light/White Heat. Eventually the band lost all of its original membership (track down the album Squeeze if you dare), then evaporated entirely.
There are a few versions floating around out there, so I spent most of my Saturday exploring the Deluxe edition, which gives you both the stereo and mono mixes of the original 11 track album, plus the five tracks of Nico's EP Chelsea Girl, plus four single edits of the most radio-friendly tracks, which I'm sure were about as alien as Frank Zappa tracks on 1967 radio. But it never hurts to try!
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