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The Velvet Underground / Loaded: Reloaded 45th anniversary set

By Paul Sinclair

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56

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The Velvet Underground‘s fourth album Loaded will be reissued by Rhino as a six disc 45th anniversary edition in October.

The set will contain a remastered version of the 1970 album (in both stereo and mono) as well as a newly remastered version of 1972’s Live At Max’s Kansas City. A second, much bootlegged concert recording, Live At Second Fret, Philadelphia, 1970, gets its first commercial release part of this new set.

There is a wealth of demos, working versions, alternative B-sides and mixes included, although much of it has been out before, and a DVD is the sixth and final disc containing hi-res stereo and surround mixes. The 5.1 mix was undertaken by Kevin Reeves with guidance from Bill Levenson. Rhino have also confirmed to this blog that the packaging will reflect the other anniversary editions, so expect the same ‘book’ presentation.

Loaded: Reloaded 45th Anniversary set will be released on 30 October 2015.

Price watch: The French price of €52 equates to about £38 which appears to be a very good deal since I paid £66 for the similar six disc Velvet Underground & Nico set back in 2012 and the US price for the new Loaded is £51 (or $80)

pre-order

track_listing

Disc One: Loaded Remastered

  • 1.  Who Loves The Sun
  • 2. Sweet Jane – Full Length Version
  • 3. Rock & Roll – Full Length Version
  • 4. Cool It Down
  • 5. New Age
  • 6. Head Held High
  • 7. Lonesome Cowboy Bill
  • 8. I Found A Reason
  • 9. Train Round The Bend
  • 10. Oh! Sweet Nuthin’

Session Outtakes:

  • 11. I’m Sticking With You – New Remix
  • 12. Ocean
  • 13. Love You
  • 14. Ride Into The Sun

Disc Two: Loaded Remastered: Promotional Mono Version

  • 1.  Who Loves The Sun
  • 2. Sweet Jane – Full Length Version
  • 3. Rock & Roll – Full Length Version
  • 4. Cool It Down
  • 5.  New Age
  • 6. Head Held High
  • 7. Lonesome Cowboy Bill
  • 8. I Found A Reason
  • 9. Train Round The Bend
  • 10. Oh! Sweet Nuthin’

Singles and B-Sides

  • 11. Who Loves The Sun
  • 12. Oh! Sweet Nuthin’
  • 13. Rock & Roll *
  • 14. Lonesome Cowboy Bill *

Disc Three: Demos, Early Versions and Alternate Mixes

Demos

  • 1. Rock & Roll – Demo
  • 2. Sad Song – Demo
  • 3. Satellite Of Love – Demo
  • 4. Walk And Talk – Demo
  • 5. Oh Gin – Demo
  • 6. Ocean – Demo
  • 7. I Love You – Demo
  • 8. Love Makes You Feel Ten Feet Tall – Demo Remix
  • 9. I Found A Reason – Demo

Early Versions

  • 10. Cool It Down – Early Version, Remix
  • 11. Sweet Jane – Early Version, Remix
  • 12. Lonesome Cowboy Bill – Early Version, Remix
  • 13. Head Held High – Early Version, Remix
  • 14. Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ – Early Version, Remix

Alternate Mixes

  • 15. Who Loves The Sun – Alternate Mix
  • 16. Sweet Jane – Alternate Mix
  • 17. Cool It Down – Alternate Mix
  • 18. Lonesome Cowboy Bill – Alternate Mix
  • 19. Train Round The Bend – Alternate Mix
  • 20. Head Held High – Alternate Mix
  • 21. Rock & Roll – Alternate Mix

Disc Four: Live At Max’s Kansas City Remastered

  • 1. I’m Waiting For The Man
  • 2. White Light/White Heat
  • 3. I’m Set Free
  • 4. Sweet Jane
  • 5. Lonesome Cowboy Bill
  • 6. New Age
  • 7. Beginning To See The Light
  • 8. I’ll Be Your Mirror
  • 9. Pale Blue Eyes
  • 10. Candy Says
  • 11. Sunday Morning
  • 12. After Hours
  • 13. Femme Fatale
  • 14. Some Kinda Love
  • 15. Lonesome Cowboy Bil” – Version 2

Disc Five: Live At Second Fret, Philadelphia, 1970* 

  • 1. I’m Waiting For The Man
  • 2. What Goes On
  • 3. Cool It Down
  • 4. Sweet Jane
  • 5. Rock & Roll
  • 6. Some Kinda Love
  • 7. New Age
  • 8. Candy Says
  • 9. Head Held High
  • 10. Train Round The Bend
  • 11. Oh! Sweet Nuthin’

*previously unreleased

Disc Six: Audio DVD

  • 96/24 Hi-Resolution Surround Sound Remix
  • 96/24 Hi-Resolution Stereo Downmix
  • 96/24 Hi-Resolution Original Stereo Mix

pre-order

 

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56 Comments

56 thoughts on “The Velvet Underground / Loaded: Reloaded 45th anniversary set”

  2. WARNING DON’T BUY THIS UNLESS YOU REAAAALLY NEED THE NON TORRENT VERSION OF THE 5.1 DISC!!!!!

    disc 4 and 5 are useless

    4 : you have probably the 2cd edition of live at Max…

    5 : pure unlistenable sh*t because the sound is
    P.O.O.R.L.Y. R.E.C.O.R.D.E.D. !!
    the Max show sounds like crystal compared this thing

    stop fooling the customers please !!!!

  3. Well, I received an email from Amazon.fr telling me that this had been dispatched last Thursday. Today (the day when I was told it would be delivered), I received another email telling me that it had been returned and I have been issued with a refund! No explanation given when I contacted customer service. Have lodged a complaint but they don’t seem interested. Annoying as I had placed the pre-order at the end of August. Never again.

  5. I agree with Mr. Harris . When I see “Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll” full length versions that just makes me cringe. While Lou may have wanted the “days of wine and roses” part in there, it wasn’t there on release in 1970. Same goes for that extra part of Rock and Roll. I think the edits make much better songs. It’s what I heard when I was growing up, it’s what I want to hear in the flow of the original album. Whatever fans may think about the “full length versions”, they should be added as bonus tracks, not be included in the original track listing because whatever you think of the original released 1970 versions, those were the ones released in 1970 on the original album.

  7. Hey Paul. Amazon France are offering 10 euros of 50 euro plus purchases today (1st Oct). Since they also have the cheap Euro 50.99 Velvet Underground Loaded SD price, it is a great opportunity to pick it up for about £33 via the promotion.

  10. Find this on musictap.net
    On October 30, Polydor Records will release a 4CD The Matrix Tapes set with over 40 live performance tracks. Some have been heard on various prior releases including the Quine Tapes Box Set, the Super Deluxe Edition of The Velvet Underground, and 1969: The Velvet Underground Live.
    Is Xmas on October 30 ?

  11. Pre ordered at Amazon.fr yesterday :)) Thanks for the info. Annoying that 2 tracks are missing from Max’s show. Why did they do that? Having said that can’t I wait for it. I loved the book artwork on the previous three.

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  17. Am I the only one who actually prefers the edited versions of Sweet Jane and New Age? I know Lou moaned about them from 1970 on but they’re the versions I knew and loved from the original album. The longer Sweet Jane is horrible to my ears with the “new” parts sounding like they’ve been mixed in from a completely different recording. Maybe this has been improved for this edition but I’d rather the original vinyl mixes were included than not.

  18. Erik – I would love a “Squeeze” box set, or even a decent official remaster. (Keyhole or some other equally legally dubious label bootlegged it a couple years ago, so the demand must be there). It’s doubtful the “official” VU Organisation Ltd. Wwould allow this though (they’re as “careful” with their legacy as Pink Floyd – STILL no official release for Syd’s “Vegetable Man” or “Scream Thy Last Scream”!)

    Doug Yule’s vocal and instrumental talents feature prominently on the “Third”, “Lost (1969)” and “Loaded” albums (and numerous amazing live recordings) and Lou Reed didn’t pick him as John Cale’s replacement JUST because he would be easier to dominate than JC.

    And didn’t Bowie see the Yule led VU and assume he was Lou?!

    He deserves a lot more recognition and a lot less derision.

    1. i know somebody who has been trying for the best part of 10 years to get squeeze re-issued. The label is ok with it, but Yule is not, he will not grant permission. It won’t be released while he is still alive.

      1. Hmm. that is interesting. It makes sense, though. He seems a bit embarrassed in interviews about how that all went down. Someone sells the album on Itunes now, though.

  19. I would do a 2 cd version of this. I just don’t want this giant box. But I would like a remastered version in a smaller CD package with the disc 2. They did this for the others why not this one?

  20. £43.33 pre-order on Amazon.co.uk. All the Universal VU Box Sets came with AutoRip which is always handy and worth an extra couple quid (at least to me).

    Shame about the missing tracks from “Peel Slowly And See” and the “Max’s” 2CD. That kind of stuff really doesn’t make any logical sense for such a vast box set (but I’ve got those earlier sets anyway, I s’pose).

  21. Hey Paul –

    You wouldn’t happen to know who created the 5.1 mix, would you? It’s the only thing in the box I really want. I’d hate to shell out all that cash only to get a poor surround mix. (This happened with Station to Station. The only reason why I bought the big box was to get the 5.1 mix, otherwise the 3CD would have sufficed. Turned out to be the worst surround mix I’ve ever heard!)

  23. So…thanks Paul! Now i’m officially bankrupt – the 80CD dead box set (not your fauly that one admittedly – mine for being a lifelong deadhead), the Steve Hackett set, the Macca sets, the Jam live box set, this one, the Bill Hicks box set, Paul Young, A-ha, Bowie…please no more or I’ll have to rob a bank and that means go to jail :(

  26. all we need now is to get rhino/universal to reduce the price of the WLWH super deluxe to a sensible price. how they justify $85 for a 3cd set, which most fans will have at least half of is beyond me.

    1. The WLWH is overpriced. I got the 2 disc set when it came out. I couldn’t justify paying so much more just to get the mono disc and a bigger version of the book. But I wish I had the book to complete the set… still, an extra $50 just seems like too much considering how little more you get over the 2 disc version on that one.

  27. @Charles – re: 2nd Fret Show, following taken from the Steve Hoffman forums…

    “The guy who recorded the Second Fret tape posted here a while about his negotiations with Rhino for licensing the tape. Think his posts were deleted by the mods, but the essence was he wasn’t letting them use the tape. So the source on this set is probably from a torrent site or boot.”

    “No, I changed my mind. Rhino had a new transfer to digital done by Kevin Reeves. They had done a transfer in 1998 but technology is better now so they did it again.”

  30. As I wrote elsewhere, for some reason they decided to fit the “complete” (2004) Max’s onto 1 cd (don’t ask me why) so they ”re-edited” it, i.e. they left out “Who Loves the Sun” and the second version of “Sweet Jane”.
    So the “Deluxe Loaded” is actually going to feature an incomplete Max’s show. Which by the way was recorded on a mono cassette recorder, and does sound like a mediocre bootleg… I really don’t know if and how much its sound can be improved…
    I’d really like to know more about the quality of the Phliadelphia set. Because, unless it’s spectacular, there’s very little here to justify a “deluxe” edition.

  31. Idiots at Rhino and connected with the VU partnership who refused to release Friends/She’ll Make You Cry demo single, recorded by Yule, Morrison and Tucker in November 1970. You can rewrite history all you want, but 3/4’s of the band carried on as the Velvet Underground. They were more than Lou’s backing band.

    1. I’d love to hear that, Markus. I know that Yule released a box set in Japan of bootlegged shows from his time leading the so-called VU, but I’ve always wanted to hear something of that brief window from after Reed left and before Morrison left. I wonder if there are any concert recordings of that time, too. Perhaps this will all come to light on the 45th anniversary box for Squeeze… which I know, is a big joke, but I am curious about that time between when Reed left and the reduction of the band to just Yule’s solo project.

  33. And if you’re in the US, the VAT at Amazon France gets lopped off, bringing the price down to €44, essentially covering the €8.50 cost of shipping. Why, yes, I did pre-order at that price!

  35. There is unfortunately stuff not on this that was previously released. As far as I can tell, it’s as follows:
    New Age – Long Version (Peel Slowly and See box)
    Satellite Of Love – Demo 1 (Peel Slowly and See box)
    Sweet Jane – Original Edit Version from original LP
    Sweet Jane Version 2 – Live At Max’s Kansas City 2004 deluxe
    Who Loves The Sun – Live At Max’s Kansas City 2004 deluxe
    New Age – Full Version
    Rock ‘N Roll – Original Edit Version from original LP

    That said, I’ve already ordered it. Good to see it will keep same format as the previous anniversary issues.

    1. As much as they’ve included on these lovely 45th anniversary sets, it is true that they are not “complete” in compiling everything. Personally, I’m fine with that. I just want the best stuff. I don’t feel a need to have all versions of everything if some are inferior. To that end, I like the first album set better for the fact that those early acoustic demos from the Peel Slowly box are not part of it. I never listened to those. That said, I’m a bit torn on this one. The sound of the re-releases so far has surpassed all of my expectations, so I’m anticipating this again will sound great. I don’t know if it is possible to make “Max’s Kansas City” sound great, though.

    1. No info, but my guess is that VU’s management/representatives will have insisted on consistency with the others. If they haven’t they should have!

  38. Good news, particularly on the first official release of the Second Fret show. Hope they sourced the original tape from the owner (instead of just “bootlegging the bootlegs” like they did for the Valleydale 1966 show).

    The Joseph Freeman tapes of a different Max’s night will have to wait I suppose.

    Where does this leave the remaining “1969 Live With Lou Reed” / Matrix recordings from the superior tapes source (premiered on the Third Album box set) though? Are Universal likely to announce something about that anytime soon?

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