Customer Reviews

Live 2

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Why they didn't just pack it together as one double CD is beyond me, as the original record was all one set. This just means I have to write two ***** reviews instead of one. But yes, Volume 2 is just as good as Volume 1, and they both are classics. In fact, I like a lot of the songs on this one ("Herion", "Sweet Bonnie Brown", "Pale Blue Eyes", "White Light/White Heat") better than the originals. In the case of "White Light...", it's probably because you get a longer version of a good thing.

This makes it the rarest of live albums, in that the material here is at least as good or better than the original. I also like that you can hear the band really get down and rock on a few numbers, just to show they are a ROCK band, and not the toys of the art crowd.

I thank those who released this, as it was a very hard to find work for awhile.

This is one of the rare cases when volume 2 is better than the first. Of course, it would be best to buy both but if you have to pick one, pick this volume.

This is the album that made me really appreciate the Velvets. I love live music and this album really captures the band as they were meant to be heard -- Jamming, Moody, Rock and Roll. The first 3 songs especially (Ocean, Pale Blue Eyes, and Heroin) have reverberated in my musical memory for a very long time.

A GREAT FIRST VU ALBUM! If you know the Velvets or even just think you might like them, you can't go wrong with these live concerts.

Volume 2 picks up where the first one leaves off, opening with a ten minute version of OCEAN, complete with Crashing waves of cymbals. This also has rare gems you cant find anywhere else like the short but sweet OVER YOU, and the 50's rockabilly, speed freak sounding combo of SWEET BONNIE BROWN/IT'S JUST TOO MUCH.
Then there is the extended noise drone of WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT.

Just more evidence that the VU were a real loose dirty rock band who were more at home playing in dive bars than the early Warhol era trendy art crowd.

When I was about 17, Edwyn Collins of the then-magnificent Orange Juice told the New Musical Express that this was the best album ever made. He may be right.

69 Live was the gorgeous, glamorous oddity with the rude cover in my record collection even before Edwyn's solemn declaration (I think we were all pretty solemn in 1980). It's a double album and, if you want to buy it now, you have to shell out for two separately-packaged CDs, which is a horrible thing to do to such a powerful unity.

This is the Velvet Underground after John Cale's departure--less arty, out of Warhol's shadow--but no less melancholy or gloriously nasty for all that. It's a long, grubby recording made on cassette in Texas during one of the Velvets' long tours of college campuses. The quality is, by digital standards, so poor it would never make it to release these days. This is such a defiantly analogue recording that, if you could still buy it, I'd recommend that you buy the cassette and play it too loud on your car stereo.

There's a sequence of songs on this album which so perfectly captures the low-life glamour, the elegiac beauty and the kinetic force of the Velvets at their best that it ought to be a compulsory listen for students of rock and roll. Waiting For My Man, Lisa Says, What Goes On, Sweet Jane and We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together--a twenty minute wall of sound unbettered in popular music. This means, that if you're going to buy just one of these CDs, it should be volume one.

This was where I first heard "Ocean"-- and that ten minute version that opens this disc is reason alone to buy it. "Ocean" is now available in several versions- but despite the poor, hissy audio this is probably my favorite version of one of VU's masterpieces. Oh yeah, I haven't mentioned the other 8 tracks-- terrific versions of some better known songs as well as a couple obscurities. It's been said many times but this combined with Vol. 1 makes up one of the truly great live rock albums.

Basically, if you're into the vu, you'll be into them live. There's almost no other way of looking at it. Their live performances are the most innate I've ever heard. So, if you're having some sort of dilemma regarding which live albums to spend your hard earned currency on, here's a suggestion: 1969: The Velvet Underground Live Vol.'s 1 & 2, Live at MKC, and the Quine Tapes. Those are the best live performances I've heard from the band. My personal favorite is the 1969: The VU Live Volume 1, but it's all personal preference.
I suppose I've gone off on a bit of a tangent - forgetting this was a review for 1969 Vol. 2. Well, the album is amazing. You're really doing yourself an injustice by not buying it. Trust me, the technicalities don't need to be described: just buy it, listen to it, and be inspired by it.

The version of "Ocean" on this album is mind-blowing. You have to buy the CDs just for that. The rest of the Vol. 2 CD is excellent, as is Vol. 1, but that recording of "Ocean"...oh, it's impossible to do any justice to it here.

These two discs rank right up there with the Heartbreakers' "Live at Max's Kansas City" as some of the best live music ever recorded. The band is loose, John Cale is gone, and the VU sound comfortable being a rock and roll band. The flawed sound just makes it all the more poignant. I agree that some of these versions are better than the originals. One difference from the original LP is "I Can't Stand It", which isn't much of an addition. However, that's a minor complaint. These might be the albums I'd take on a desert island.

this is still a great album. The sound quality adds to the edge both intimate and intense. What Goes On has such rhythmic power unequalled elsewhere for me . Lou Reed is archetypal sexy laid back sunglass icon, he chats about football games and it sounds like there are twelve people in the room and yet then they deliver such an awesome body of work. It's a great record. Sweet Jane What goes on and we're gonna...love it

To break up this ONE concert from ONE night in 69 is stupid. You gotta own both. This one features the best versions of pale blue eyes and herion ever recorded. And when lou and the gang send you on your way with a rockin white light/ white heat - well consider yourself lucky you were able to listen to the most forward thinking and influential rock groups ever recorded live. THIS is the essential velvet underground.