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Rating: In 1967, the Psychedelic movement was at its Cerebral peak with the famous Summer of Love, with bands like Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Doors at the height of their creative splendor, driven to the limits by an excessive and uncontrolled use of hallucinogens.
It was the time of the "Leary" concept of life: Turn on, Tune in, Drop out. Memorized by the rebellious American and European generation. California was the Mecca, the epicenter where the Cultural movement gravitated. The Velvet Underground were not part of that world; they were a case apart, unknown to anyone, and their musical world thrived in the underbelly of an unhealthy, depraved New York.
They were noticed by Andy Warhol, who chose them as his group for his shows and designed the famous cover for the album I am about to review. "Velvet Underground and Nico" is the Ep that tells, with unbridled Anarchy, the New York urban universe where troubled people maneuvered and were trapped in the dark tunnels of the Artificial world of the Big Apple. Unlike their colleagues, they did not talk about pacifist utopias, about uniting free consciences, but they told the raw American reality without shame and filled with amphetamine rage that, after running its course, gives way to the slowing, imprisoning energy of the needle in Heroin, one of the most ambiguous and sinister songs about drugs ever written.
Another masterpiece of the album is Venus In Furs, where desolation and the conscious fury of pain bring the listener to the altar of vices, sadomasochism, and madness in a slow and hypnotic rhythm, a response to the music of that period focused on dreams. Lou Reed offers a modern and malevolently clumsy performance, pure sub-urban poetry.
No less significant is the duet with Nico in a song written especially for her, Femme Fatale, with her twilight and original singing, lightening the already primitive and protometallic sound of the album. Memorable remain I'm Waiting for the Man and Sunday Morning, and the contributions to the production and use of the electrified viola by John Cale, a super-talented musician.
In conclusion, I could also define this work as Psychedelic because nightmares are part of dreams, and with a poetic hyperrealist tendency, they narrated reality in the contours of a hallucination.
A must-have at any cost.
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