velvet underground question

whiterob81

Have to ask this, everytime I read an article about the velvet underground and/or their first album the writer at some point generally says something about how everyone who's heard or bought this album went out and formed a band.
i've been playing in various bands since I was a teenager, and playing guitar for over 15 years, maybe it has something to do with the people I'm hanging out with but I have NEVER met anyone who has formed a band because of that album. Has anyone here? i couldn't even really pinpoint anyone in current popular music who are wearing their VU influences on their sleeve (the kills maybe)
i think it's a really good album and all but it's never had a major influence on my style of playing or anything like that. I just wonder why journalists feel the need to trot that opinion out everytime they talk about that album. Does it just show the yawning gap between what music journalists think they know about music and musicians and the reality? Or is it just a certain amount of laziness and perhaps cowardice on their parts? ("I've heard this album's amazing and influential, who am i to disagree?")

Icaras

yea i know a few musicians who would say its a major influance and I learnt the guitar because of listening to them and lou reeds transformer album....he/they just make it sound so simple to make good music

DerekD Goldfish

The often mentioned

ow everyone who's heard or bought this album went out and formed a band.

was in reference to its original Issue which only sold a few thousand.
As for new bands starting up because of VU while many would not cliam to be influenced by them and may not have even heard of them you can be sure a hell of a lot of bands from the past where influenced by them and a lot of the newer generation are influenced by VU by virtue of the fact the band they are influenced by where influced by them.

Most pre velvets rock music is muck there was good music before them but I wouldn't consider most of it rock

Anyway White Light White Heat is a far better record than thier debut

Hardrain

Fantastic band, I do get sick of the constant cut and paste articles about them in some of the monthly music mags. that being said if it wasn't for one of those articles I wouldn't have discovered them all those years back!

damonjewel

VU were a major inflluence on a lot of Dublin bands in the late 80's, but so were The Doors. If you went to the underground, the baggot or slatterys you would find a band covering a VU song in some shape or form. My own band covered sweet nothing and rock'n'roll off the Loaded album. If I had a viola player maybe I would have gone for something off the first album. For me to get into them initially, there was a South Bank show special about them (circa 1986-7) and I was blown away, then I bought the albums!

ZakAttak

The 'Nico' album is the one album most people seem to reference. Much like Fema Kuti, The Stone Roses and the Smyths they have become a band thats 'cool' to name drop.
They had a very original sound and it sounded as though they were mixing sounds together to create songs, rather than playing the instruments. It sounded like the type of thing anyone could do (but thats never the case).
If you listened to Jimi Hendrix you might think 'This is cool- I wish I could play guitar like that!', if you listened to the velvet underground you would be more inclined to think 'This is cool- I reckon I could do something like this!'. So maybe thats why people say they were inspired to form bands on the back of listening to it.

Most importantly though- it was probably the most original sounding record people had heard in years, the original art-rock record.

Unfortunately it spawned the skinny-i-don't-care-because-i'm-too-strung-out look, this the industry standard for indie bands at the moment; regardless of wether their on gear or not.

Why do rock n' roll junkies look nothing like normal junkies?

One of these days Lou reed will come on stage in a one-piece adidas tracksuit, smoking John player 100's and eating wedges he bought out of spar; drugs will have fully consumed him by then, but at least he'll be honest.

whiterob81

DerekD Goldfish wrote: »

The often mentioned was in reference to its original Issue which only sold a few thousand.
As for new bands starting up because of VU while many would not cliam to be influenced by them and may not have even heard of them you can be sure a hell of a lot of bands from the past where influenced by them and a lot of the newer generation are influenced by VU by virtue of the fact the band they are influenced by where influced by them.

Most pre velvets rock music is muck there was good music before them but I wouldn't consider most of it rock

Anyway White Light White Heat is a far better record than thier debut

i get what you're saying, but it could easily be argued that these bands are influenced by the bands and music that influenced velvet underground too.
i think it would be fairer to say that a lot of modern rock bands would be more influenced by nirvana, the pixies, the smiths, oasis, radiohead, slint, jeff buckley etc. any velvet underground influences that are coming through are very much diluted. i think they're a really good band but i would question their influence on modern rock.
i think a more honest summation of the velvet underground nowadays is that they're a band that young people get into after they've been in a band for a while and had an interest in music for several years. i don't think they're most people's first port of call when they get into music nowadays.

whiterob81

Icaras wrote: »

yea i know a few musicians who would say its a major influance and I learnt the guitar because of listening to them and lou reeds transformer album....he/they just make it sound so simple to make good music

that is true,

whiterob81

Hardrain wrote: »

Fantastic band, I do get sick of the constant cut and paste articles about them in some of the monthly music mags. that being said if it wasn't for one of those articles I wouldn't have discovered them all those years back!

that's why i posted this thread. it was named the most influential album of all time in the sunday times recently. that's why i had my previous rant about music journalists here. i can concede that it was an influential album for a time, but the most influential album ever? hardly.

also, you say you discovered it through an article, that brings me back to what i was saying earlier, if you were looking through one of those articles, chances are you were a fairly avid music fan already, i think nowadays it's an album that people discover after a few years of listening to different music rather than most people's introduction to rock music.

whiterob81

damonjewel wrote: »

VU were a major inflluence on a lot of Dublin bands in the late 80's, but so were The Doors. If you went to the underground, the baggot or slatterys you would find a band covering a VU song in some shape or form. My own band covered sweet nothing and rock'n'roll off the Loaded album. If I had a viola player maybe I would have gone for something off the first album. For me to get into them initially, there was a South Bank show special about them (circa 1986-7) and I was blown away, then I bought the albums!

that's cool. sadly nowadays a lot of dublin bands nowadays are fairly heavily britpop influenced:(