Velvet Nico

Forty-fifth anniversary box set release from The Velvet Underground & Nico featuring the latest remastering. Set consists of 6 discs includes 29 unreleased tracks in a 92-page hardcover book packaging with a sticker of banana. Japanese edition features the high-fidelity SHM-CD format (compatible with standard CD player). The set includes both stereo and mono versions of the album "The Velvet Underground & Nico" (Disc 1-2), as well as Nico's 1967 solo debut CD "Chelsea Girl" (Disc 3), a studio session at Scepter Studio recorded to acetate, and unreleased recording footage from rehearsal at Andy Warhol's Factory in January 1966 (Disc 4), and a live show from Columbus, Ohio (Disc 5-6).

Few rock groups can claim to have broken so much new territory, and maintain such consistent brilliance on record, as the Velvet Underground during their brief lifespan…

The Velvet Underground & Nico documents a concert of the famous band with the typical style of Warhol: long sequences, ‘dirty’ images, etc. It was Warhol who had the idea to create the band in 1966 which was formed by Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale and Maureen Tucker. Warhol himself strengthened the band by calling German actress and singer Christa Paffgen, aka Nico, who also starred in other films of Warhol’s among which, the Chelsea Girls. The Velvet Underground & Nico is also the title of the band's first album which, apart from becoming one of the symbols of the Factory, also took part in the experience of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable Show, a show made of lights, performances and multiple projections in which the Velvet Underground had the function of creating a live sound track…

When the Velvets recorded this debut, they were best known as the protégés of Andy Warhol (who designed the sleeve), and as a grating, combustive live band. Fueled by drummer Moe Tucker's no-nonsense wham and John Cale's howling viola, some of the straight-up rock & roll and arty noise extravaganzas here bear that out…

One would be hard-pressed to name a rock album whose influence has been as broad and pervasive as The Velvet Underground & Nico. While it reportedly took over a decade for the album's sales to crack six figures, glam, punk, new wave, goth, noise, and nearly every other left-of-center rock movement owes an audible debt to this set…

Few rock groups can claim to have broken so much new territory, and maintain such consistent brilliance on record, as the Velvet Underground during their brief lifespan. It was the group's lot to be ahead of, or at least out of step with, their time. The mid- to late '60s was an era of explosive growth and experimentation in rock, but the Velvets' innovations which blended the energy of rock with the sonic adventurism of the avant-garde, and introduced a new degree of social realism and sexual kinkiness into rock lyrics were too abrasive for the mainstream to handle.