Jonas Mekas of the Village Voice once said that The Velvet Underground's musical exploration remains the most dramatic expression of the contempory generation.

He was right.

Thanks to Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevtiable, The Velvet Underground was introduced into a  a somewhat mainstream music enviroment. They opened and toured in both New York and Canada. Jonas Mekas and many other critics were blown away.

When The Velvet Underground and Nico, the album produced by Warhol and on which he insisted Nico sing, was released in March of 1967 the critics went absolutely insane.

Variety Magazine said it was "a three-ring psychosis that assaults the senses with the sights and sounds of the total enviroment syndrome... Discordant music, throbbing cadences, pulsating tempo."

Andy Warhol did his job...

The Velvet Underground and all their dial-twiddling glory had a sound hard to describe and even harder to duplicate. It is a line of atonal and uncommon drips mixed with so much feedback you begin to wonder if you are even listening to a song at all. Songs like 'Heroin' prove this statement true, and there is something magical about how this band operates. They mix sado-masochism with a open and free imagination. Songs like 'Sunday Morning' and 'Femme Fatale' can be contrasted very well.

The topics of this album are as just as exciting as Warhol's own artwork; Politics, sex, drugs, and adventure meet in a of cataclysmic piece of genius.

The Velvet Underground may not necessarily have defined an entire generation and this may not have been one of the best albums of all time, but one Lost Angeles Times reporter wrote the shattering summation of the band, and in doing so defined them brilliantly:

"Screeching rock 'n roll- reminded viewers of nothing so much as Berlin in the decadent 30's"

Posted In Classic Albums, Sep 16 2009. Words - Andrew