The Velvet Underground & Nico
Album: The Velvet Underground & Nico
Label: Universal
Tracks: 64
Website: http://www.universal-music.co.uk

A six-disc (count 'em!) super deluxe edition of one of rock's genuinely landmark albums comprising mono and stereo versions, rehearsal recordings, unreleased studio sessions, live tracks and Nico's Chelsea Girl album. Seriously, if there's anything more to be said about this album, is it really worth hearing?

As well as a nine-song 1966 live set (over two discs) recorded in the Valleydale Ballroom, Columbus, Ohio, the rarest cuts include Miss Joanie Lee (which had been due to appear on the 2002 edition) and Walk Alone, from a January 1966 rehearsal at Factory. The April 1966 Scepter Studios sessions acetate is here in full (minus There She Goes Again, which wasn't on the acetate but did make the record) to head off at least five years of bootlegging activity.

The music, of course, is instantly familiar and most of the alternative takes and sundry extras have been available to those determined enough to seek them out, but it's worth reiterating the impact this album made. Largely ignored at the time, overlooked and even savaged by critics, it was only later that its reverberations were properly felt as Bowie and Iggy made waves in the messy tail end of glam and The Ramones, Television and others stoked the fires that became punk.

Later still, a host of late 70s/early 80s post-punk acts from the Jesus and Mary Chain to Felt and Echo & the Bunnymen, made the record a must-have item on any self-respecting teenage raincoat-wearing kid's bedsit floor.

Equally true though is that only in their wildest flights of arrogant fancy (and they cold go pretty high with that stuff) could any of the participants have known what they were making with this record. Lou Reed had a bit of previous as an in-bouyse songwriter for Pickwick Records, Nico was a face on the scene (although the baroque folk of Chelsea Girl suggests she could have been almost anything she wanted at this time - a deeper, darker Marianne Faithfull perhaps) and John Cale had made a few (sound) waves in experimental music circles, but not even their mentor Andy Warhol could have foreseen just how influential their art-rock experiment would be.

For years it was the record that you heard more about that actually of. Hearing it for the first time was almost a disappointment - unless it changed your life in a moment it can't possibly have served up all it was supposed to. That was partly to do with its poor recording and weedy, smack-paced structure, but mostly to do with the weight of expectation.

It's a problem that's partly redressed by this reissue and the eagle-eared will doubtless thrill to the mono versions here - with good cause as the compression serves to beef up the music and filter out the sometimes twee sonic niceties that exist in the lighter stereo set.

But does the casual fan need a 28-minute live version of Melody of Laughter, or a 27-minute take on The Nothing Song? Probably not, although plenty will see the value in hearing what all the fuss was about, tapping into the development of songs like Heroin, European Son and All Tomorrow's Parties.

Not a release that'll necessarily win many new fans then, but certainly one to delight existing ones. Dear Santa…

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk