China's Underground Historians

Tensions were growing within the Velvet Underground following the release of their sophomore album, White Light, White Heat: the group was tired of receiving little recognition for its work, and Lou Reed and John Cale were pulling the group in different directions. The differences showed in the last recording sessions the band had with Cale in 1968: three pop-like songs in Reedx27s direction (Temptation Inside Your Heart, Stephanie Says and x27Beginning to See the Light) and a viola-driven drone in Calex27s direction (Hey Mr. Rain)n Reed told Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker that Cale was out, and while neither was happy with the idea, faced with a choice of either no Cale or no band at all, the pair reluctantly sided with Reed. Cale played his last show with the Velvets at the Boston Tea Party in September 1968, and was fired shortly afterwards.Before work on their third album started, Cale was replaced by musician Doug Yule, formerly of the Boston group the Grass Menagerie, who had been a close associate of the band.

On January 10th, 1969, the band took to the stage and looked out across a crowd of misfits and mischief-makers. One notable attendee of the event was none other than soon-to-be Modern Lover, Jonathan Richman.

This very collectable Italian psychedelic/progressive/garage instrumental album was originally released in 1970 by Radio Records and then licensed to British Pan-Tonic label and German and French Vogue Records. Behind that name hid (for contractual reasons) the musicians of very fine progressive rock band Nuova Idea. But the real mastermind behind that LP was composer Gian Piero Reverberi (also the producer of Le Orme albums) who wrote all of the songs under the nickname Ninety. On their debut LP The Underground Set delivered a shot of psychedelic sounds that wouldn't be out of place at late 60’s European psychedelic club or one of many exploito movies. Lovers of mad organs and swirling fuzz psychedelic guitars will have hours of enjoyment with that CD!

The world of pop music was hardly ready for The Velvet Underground's first album when it appeared in the spring of 1967, but while The Velvet Underground and Nico sounded like an open challenge to conventional notions of what rock music could sound like (or what it could discuss), 1968's White Light/White Heat was a no-holds-barred frontal assault on cultural and aesthetic propriety…