Velvet Underground Unripened
They say never to judge something by it’s cover. But when you chance upon a sleeve such as this, it’s hard to resist and think you have struck gold. This striking green “unripened” version of what would become the seminal “The Velvet Underground & Nico” LP, also has a very interesting back story. Found as a test pressing in a New York yard sale and purchased for 75 cents, the new owner discovered he’d bought a “lost” early version of the album (allegedly sent back by Columbia Records with a note saying “You have got to be kidding”) and then he sold it on eBay for $25k.
The version I discovered in a London record shop is a cleaned up CD pressing of this. And to be honest, you can perhaps see where Columbia could have been coming from. Stand outs from the studio version (“Venus In Furs” and “The Black Angel’s Death Song”) suffer, as it’s seemingly before John Cale mastered the use of jarring electric viola and the mixes lack the clarity of the famous version. “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and “Femme Fatal” are pleasing slightly altered from the original, with Nico’s trademark drone going different places to what you’d expect. But all in all, never judging something by it’s cover is sound advice (!)
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