The Velvet Underground - Psychedelic Sounds From The Gymnasium (1967)

I thought that I had all the Velvets albums that I'd ever need, having vinyl copies of all their official releases, and numerous bootlegs, including a couple of different reconstructions of the legendary lost fourth album, but when I saw this online I just had to have it, not only for the astonishingly superb sound quality for a 1967 recording, but mainly for the fact that it included two songs that have very rarely made an appearance of the numerous bootlegs out there, namely 'I'm Not A Young Man Anymore' and 'I Guess I'm Falling In Love'. Add in an incendiary take of 'Run Run Run' and an eighteen-minute 'Sister Ray', and this album captures a moment in time of the band in their very earliest incarnation, when they were still Andy Warhol's plaything. The first track to surface from the Gymnasium tape was 'Guess I’m Falling In Love' (supposedly listed as 'Fever In My Pocket' on the original tape box), which was broadcast on WPIX FM by John Cale on June 3, 1979. After playing this version he clearly states that it is from a tape he stumbled across, saying it's from 'Gymnasium, April 1967', and you can hear that this version is different from the one that appeared on the 'And So On' album. 'Booker T.' originally appeared on John Cale's 'Paris 'S’Eveille' CDEP in 1991 and was reissued (unfortunately with 8 seconds amputated at the beginning) on the 'Peel Slowly And See' box set, but the version here is complete. This show also apparently contains the first live performance of 'Sister Ray', at the time still unreleased, and of course the highlight is the never before released 'I’m Not A Young Man Anymore'. Although this was a live concert there is a distinct lack of audience noise between the songs, so I thought that I'd edit out the tuning up between the tracks, as it's almost like a 'live in the studio' recording anyway. If Nico was at this concert, we didn’t hear a peep from her (but I left her on the cover), and if anyone wants to hear the unedited version then let me know, but you're really not missing anything.

Track listing

01 I'm Not A Young Man Anymore 
02 Guess I'm Falling In Love 
03 I'm Waiting For The Man 
04 Run Run Run 
05 Sister Ray 
06 Booker T. 

The Velvet Underground - The Scepter Studio Sessions (1969)

Forty years after it was made, the Velvet Underground's first recording was purchased for 75 cents at a Manhattan flea market, and has since become a financial success in cyberspace on eBay. Warren Hill, a collector from Montreal who discovered the 12-inch, bought the acetate LP seventeen years ago (2002) at a flea market in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood for 75 cents. The recording turned out to be an in-studio acetate made during Velvet Underground's first recording over four days in April 1966 at New York's Scepter Studios. The record reportedly is one of only two in existence; the other is privately owned, with rumors circulating around the world about who the owner is. The studio recording — considered lost — is the first version of an LP that the artist Andy Warhol shopped to Columbia Records as a ready-to-release debut album by his protégé band, according to Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records in Portland, Oregon. Isaacson helped Hill decipher the nature of his lucky find. "We cued it up and were stunned — the first song was not 'Sunday Morning' as on the 'Velvet Underground & Nico' Verve LP, but rather it was 'European Son' — the song that is last on that LP, and it was a version neither of us had ever heard before!" writes Isaacson. "It was less bombastic and more bluesy than the released version, and it clocked in at a full two minutes longer. I immediately took the needle off the record, and realized that we had something special." Columbia had rejected the album due to it's sexual and drug related themes, but the Velvet Underground went on to worldwide success, leaving its musical stamp on hundreds of other bands. How the LP got to the flea market is a mystery, but once Hill and Isaacson discovered what they had, they photographed the album and made a digital backup copy of the music. They also decided to put it up for auction through Saturn Records, of Oakland, California, which represented Hill for the 10-day eBay auction that began Nov. 28, with first online bids blazing to $20,000 (€15,000). Note: The first eBay auction went badly wrong - with the final $155,000 bid being a hoax. The album is now back in auction for a second time with pre-approved bidders.
Notes from the Zinhof blog where I found the album.

Track listing

01 European Son (9:04)
02 The Black Angel's Death Song (3:16)
03 All Tomorrow's Parties (5:54)
04 I'll Be Your Mirror (2:10)
05 Heroin (6:17)
06 Femme Fatale (2:36)
07 Venus In Furs (4:30)
08 Waiting For The Man (4:10)
09 Run Run Run (4:21)