The Velvet Underground – Live At Max's Kansas City

One of the first ever “bootleg tapes”, The Velvet Underground - Live at Max’s Kansas City is a fascinating artefact. As an album, the music itself has been regularly eclipsed by its backstory. The Velvet Underground played a gauntlet of shows, two per night, for nine weeks straight, at New York club Max’s Kansas City, and Brigid Berlin recorded one of them on a cassette recorder, and that show just so happened to be last show Lou Reed would play with the band for almost twenty years.

It makes sense that it barely resembles a traditional live album. It’s simply one mono recording taken in a crowded bar, so it lacks the professional sound quality of recordings taken properly at bigger concerts. The band sounds distant, as though they are on the other side of a room, and since it’s largely un-mixed, all the instruments have a habit of blurring together. The chatting and lively crowd are easily audible between and during recordings, and they even start clapping along in some songs.

An author named Jim Carroll frequently speaks to Berlin between songs, ordering drinks and asking about drugs. None of this is necessarily bad though, as it lends the album a very real and unpretentious feel, and adds elements of place and personality that wouldn’t be found in a more traditional recording.  
 
2 x LP,  Reissue, Remastered

Tracklist:
A1        I'm Waiting For The Man    4:44
A2        White Light/White Heat    5:15
A3        I'm Set Free    6:27
A4        Sweet Jane    6:17
B5        Lonesome Cowboy Bill    4:20
B6        New Age    6:38
B7        Beginning To See The Light    5:42
B8        I'll Be Your Mirror    3:27
C1        Pale Blue Eyes    6:01
C2        Candy Says    5:50
C3        Sunday Morning    3:39
C4        After Hours    2:58
D5        Femme Fatale    3:09
D6        Some Kinda Love    11:03
D7        Lonesome Cowboy Bill (Version 2) 4:17