The Velvet Underground
Live At The Gymnasium

THE REVIEW

I'm not someone who trusts all this modernity that chokes me (us) more every day. I don't even feel too good amidst all this progress, but what progress is it if Berluska is still in Rome and still has the right to speak?

Maybe it's because I've never particularly loved that little white box that's the iPod.
Maybe it's because I wouldn't know what to do with a hard drive full of mp3 files.
Maybe it's because if I don't have the record I'm listening to in front of me, I feel like I'm wasting time. I'm made this way: if I can find it on vinyl, I end up directly among the clouds. If it goes bad, at most I have a friend make a copy on a compact disc (how I hate that small piece of plastic) that I then put on tape.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning with a terrible headache and too many rewinds to press. My head really spins, as if it were a reel. Side A, side B. A nice 90-minute cassette, 45 per side, on which I had recorded Unknown Pleasures, and on the other side the White Light/White Heat by the Velvet. I was in love with that cassette, it had accompanied me everywhere, Waldo Jeffers even to the bathroom.

But, like all things you care about, it got lost.

I feel the need to climb the dusty stairs that lead me to the attic every time I need to dive back into the past, a bit like Machiavelli who, after drinking and playing cards in a tavern, goes to read Dante or some Latin author dear to him.

In the boxes, I found what I was unconsciously looking for: a '67 live of Reed and the gang, which I bought in 2008 at a market in Barcelona. A vinyl copy. Never seen this bootleg before. Listened to it. I remembered nothing.

I went back down, put the blessed LP on the turntable, and I'm Not A Young Man Anymore started:

Hey, I'm not a young man anymore
Hey, I'm not a young man anymore
I got five nickels in my pocket
You know that I can get me some more

Acid. It would have been nice to see the faces of the audience, at Monterey in '67 they were all bewildered, but when the Velvets started The Black Angel's Death Song, what happened? Unfortunately, there's no version of the song here, but to compensate there's the debut of Sister Ray...

Reed whispers, shouts, hollers, Tucker performs the miracle of making her lousy technique go unnoticed in exchange for a primitive and sick energy, Cale is superb, the true architect of the Velvet's sound. Morrison is hardly heard, or almost. A Run Run Run stretched to 6 minutes that makes you want to go back to '67 and become part of the 100 that bought The Velvet Underground & Nico.

Well, but these things aren't called experimental, post, punk, or any of that stuff: it's pure Rock and Roll. Read this review, and you'll understand.