Vinyl Spins - Peel Slowly

The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1967

Listening to some Velvet Underground up on the 3rd floor today. This was another high school record. I got this album at a head shop in Philly just after the 1967 summer of love. The contents of this album were not really that kind of love. 

 I saw the Velvet Underground perform in a park "be-in" in 1968 a few months after I had bought this record. I had made my way to the stage but was very disappointed when there was no Nico performing. The sound was terrible and I wandered off not realizing what a rare event I had been witnessing. They were also playing mostly songs from what I would later realize was their new album White Light White Heat and in retrospect I should have stayed as close to the stage as possible. A few years later I saw Lou Reed at the Main Point in Philly when I was home for Christmas right after Transformer was released in 1972 and then again the following May in Norfolk with that great touring band from Rock 'n' Roll Animal. RIP Lou Reed.

BTW, I am still pissed off at my stoned friend who peeled the banana during a party at my house in 1974. I also later learned that only the first pressings of the original LP had the actual peel me banana cover like this one.