Feast your eyes on the now-famous (at least 15,300 Google hits and counting) test acetate of The Velvet Underground’s first album as mixed by jobber engineer Norman Dolph, and purchased by one Warren Hill of Montreal for a mere 75 cents at a yard sale in Chelsea, NY in 2002.

The acetate was auctioned on eBay for the final price of $25,200. That was actually the second eBay auction of the record. The first auction ended at the mind-boggling price of $155,401.00. However, that winner of that auction (make that “ultimate loser ever”) ‘fessed up that he “can’t even afford gas for [his] car.” Dick. This led to the second auction. The name of the winner has not, at this writing, been disclosed.

Mr. Hill, proprietor of the Backroom Records and Pastries shop and member of the band Wolf Parade, made a 3,359,900 percent profit on the sale.

The VU acetate is much more than a test pressing, though. Not only are the songs in a completely different order than the final release on Verve, most are different mixes, and many are completely different takes. The master tapes of these mixes were lost long, long ago, forever amen. The acetate was submitted to Columbia Records for consideration. They, of course, declined. Mr. Dolph has kept the response, which reportedly read in part, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding” (or words to that precise effect).

Now feast your ears, for there are MP3 downloads out there. (Did I mention I really love the Internet?)

The FM SHADES music blog (which is very worthwhile even without the VU prize) has a zip for download with the whole thing, plus pix and a text file of the whole tale bundled right in. (Jump directly to the download page, via quickshare.com.)

Also, the WFMU Blog has posted the same MP3s as individual downloads, though you’ll need to add the track numbers to the file names to keep them in the correct order — which is odd cuz they’re usually better about that and they had to actually rename the files.

There’s also at least one bit torrent out there, with more undoubtedly seeding out even as you read this.

However, the true provenance of these particular recordings is suspect. A “high-quality digital back-up” of Hill’s copy was indeed made with the help of his friend Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records in Portland, OR. But the FM SHADES blogger claims to be in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and while he strongly implies his MP3s are of Hill’s copy, he does not state that is the case (or explain how he came by them).

What’s more, there are rumors — probably true but not quite substantiated at this writing — that there is in fact a second copy of the same acetate that has been in the possession of VU drummer Moe Tucker. An individual claiming to be M.C. Kostek (perhaps Mike Kostek, author of The Velvet Underground Handbook) posted a “question” (time-sensitive link, login required) to the first eBay auction that stated:

The ‘rumor’ about Moe’s acetate is true! I have worked with her and Sterling on projects in the past, and they both mentioned how the band played it several times to see how the NY sessions had gone. I’ve seen it, with Sterling’s handwritten ‘featuring Moe Tucker’ on the front of the white cover. This ‘legend’ is true — there definitely is another copy.

And as noted on Olivier Landemaine’s fine web page, The Velvet Underground: Studio and home recordings (last updated in Dec. 2005):

An incomplete ‘edited’ version [of the acetate] was released as [a] bonus CDR with the 100 first copies of [the] At The Factory: Warhol Tapes bootleg CD [released circa 2005]. Another (more scratchy) copy which was used for the Ultimate Mono And Acetates Album bootleg [also released circa 2005] which offers the complete recording.

Another anonymous individual posted another “question” to the second Hill eBay auction, saying “For sure your copy is in better conditions than the Moe’s,” more than implying that s/he has heard both versions. This was accepted as implied fact by the seller’s response: “That Warren’s copy is far superior in sound to the bootleg is noteworthy, however, and would lend credibility to the notion that there could be another copy extant.”

Neither Hill nor Isaacson are saying, but the reported discrepancy in sound quality coupled with the anonymous eBay questioner’s claim that Hill’s copy is “for sure” in better condition suggests they may have been the source for the selections on the At the Factory bonus CDR.

Listening to the above MP3s, there’s a good deal of surface noise and they definitely represent the entire record, and given the unlikelihood (tho not impossibility) that some stray cat (supposedly) in Buenos Aires is the only guy in the world to post MP3s of the thing it seems pretty certain those MP3s are in fact of the Ultimate Mono And Acetates Album, which was probably mastered from Moe Tucker’s copy (which, given all the yadda yadda, I’m assuming does actually exist). …Then again, maybe “mister Buenos Aires” is really “hundred-thousandaire Montrealian,” eh wot?

Well, no big deal. It’s still a great listen and, for the record nerd if no one else, a real revelation.

Related Links

“Velvet Underground acetate sells for $25k in second auction,” Goldmine magazine, Dec. 8, 2006.

“The Vinyl Frontier,” Montreal Mirror, Dec. 14-20, 2006. Local boy makes history.

“The Velvet Underground Play Portland,” The Portland Mercury, Nov. 25 – Dec. 1, 2004. More about the PNW connection.

Metafilter: “Velvet Underground Acetate Breaks Record”, Dec. 5, 2006.

Wikipedia: “The Velvet Underground”

“Velvet Underground Rarity Sells on eBay”, Washington Post, Dec. 10, 2006.

The [unofficial] Velvet Underground Web Page, maintained by Olivier Landemaine.

The Inside Story

As written by Eric Isaacson and originally published in the Dec. 8, 2006 issue of Goldmine magazine:

In September 2002 Hill, a Kenny Rogers Roasters employee in Montreal, Canada, was perusing a box of records at a Chelsea, N.Y., street sale when he happened upon a nice Lead Belly 10-inch on Folkways, a water-damaged copy of the first Modern Lovers LP on Beserkely, and a brittle 12-inch piece of acetone-covered aluminum with the words “Velvet Underground. 4-25-66. Att N. Dolph” written on the label. He purchased the three records for 75 cents each.

As I have a small knowledge of records and am an old friend of Hill’s, I got a call from him the next day, and he described the acetate. Because of the date and the unique type of pressing, we both agreed that it was probably an in-studio acetate made during the recording of the first Velvet Underground LP back in 1966 (I had heard that they occasionally would have a vinyl cutting lathe in the studio to cut records of the day’s recordings for the artists and/or producers to take home for review). Warren didn’t want to play the mysterious platter due to the fragile nature of acetates and the cheap nature of his stereo needle, so we agreed that the next time he was visiting me in Portland we would check it out together. If it turned out to be what we thought it was, maybe we could sell it at Mississippi Records, the small neighborhood record store in Portland where I work. Sight unseen I estimated its likely artifact value to be around $800.

When Hill visited we cued up the acetate and were stunned — the first song was not “Sunday Morning” as on the Velvet Underground & Nico Verve LP, but rather “European Son,” the last song on that LP, and it was a version neither of us had ever heard before! It was less bombastic and had a more bluesy feel than the released version, and it clocked in at a full two minutes longer. Realizing that we had something special, I immediately took the needle off the record. Between the two of us we had heard many Velvets outtakes on official and less than-official releases, but the present material had never been heard by either of us.

The next few days found us scrambling for clues about what to make of this find, calling every record collector/historian we knew and reading everything we could find concerning the early recordings of the VU. We pieced together that this was probably a surviving copy of the legendary Scepter Studios recordings, which had been regarded as lost (hence the application of the moniker “the lost Scepter Studios recordings” to these unheard sessions over the years). The recording is composed of the primitive first “finished” version of the LP that Andy Warhol had shopped to Columbia as a ready-to-release debut album by his protégé collective.

Though the same compositions and even a few of the same takes (albeit in different mixes) were used on the subsequent commercial release, The Velvet Underground & Nico is a significantly different creation. I had heard of these nascent recordings before — it was said by some that the master tapes had burned in a fire, by others that all of those recordings ended up being on the released album, and still by others that the only existing copy of that material was on an acetate owned by David Bowie and that he was known to tout it as his most prized possession. The truth about what we held was fuzzy until Hill managed to track down the N. Dolph referred to on the label for an interview.

Norman Dolph was a perennial in the New York art and music scene of the 1960s. He worked as a sales representative at Columbia Records through 1967 and was deeply involved with different facets of the independent music world on the side. Warhol, who was managing the Velvets at the time, contacted Dolph and offered him a painting in exchange for services as ghost (uncredited) producer for the Velvets’ first recording session. Warhol wanted to record a Velvets album before they had a record company behind them, as this would tend to minimize meddling label executives in compromising the musical arrangements’ distraught primal force, not to mention the unprecedented taboo lyrics, which openly address sex, drugs and depravity. Warhol’s plan was to have Dolph record it and then shop it around to labels (first and foremost Columbia) as a finished recording. So Dolph rented out Scepter Studios, and with an engineer named John Licata by his side, they recorded the Velvets for four days. At the time, Scepter Studios was between reconstruction and demolition, with walls falling over and holes in the floor. The Velvets’ bass and viola player, John Cale, would later recall the environment as “Post-apocalyptic.”

Dolph took the master tapes made during this session to the Columbia building, which still had an in-house pressing plant, and cut the acetate “after hours” with people he knew on the inside. Dolph then sent the acetate to Columbia to see if they were interested in releasing it. It was returned promptly with a note that said something akin to “Do you think we’re out of our f***ing minds?” Dolph then gave the acetate to Warhol or Cale; he said he cannot remember which. Six of the songs recorded during the Scepter session made it on to the Velvet Underground & Nico LP, albeit with radically different mixes. The other four songs were re-recorded in Los Angeles by Tom Wilson. As far as we know, the only listenable copy of the original versions of “Heroin,” “Venus In Furs,” “I’m Waiting For The Man,” and “European Son” exist on the acetate that Hill found. (A Japanese bootleg of the same material did appear but in poor, arguably “unlistenable” sound quality.) We have since realized that we are in possession of a likely one-of-a-kind artifact, the first recordings by one of the most influential rock bands of all time!

“It seems to have gone badly at the end,” Hill told CBC Arts Online Monday afternoon.
After establishing the authenticity of Hill’s find we photographed the item and made a high-quality digital backup copy of the material. A media frenzy ensued. Calls started flooding in from people interested in buying the acetate, as well as record companies interested in releasing the songs on it. After much consideration, we decided that it would be best to release it to the highest bidder through an auction done by our good friends at Saturn Records in Oakland, Calif. (a store that has a well established presence in the international vinyl-collecting community and an excellent reputation on the Internet).

As to the most interesting mystery brought up by the appearance of this item — how did such an important artifact disappear for 37 years and end up at a Chelsea New York yard sale priced at 25 [sic: 75] cents — we have no answer.

What’s on the acetate? A Track-By-Track look…

The track differences between the acetate versions and the commercial recordings on The Velvet Underground & Nico are detailed as follows:

“European Son.”
Completely different version. Guitar solo is much bluesier. Less noisy and experimental. Longer by two minutes or so.

“Black Angel’s Death Song.”
Same take as released version. Different mix.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties.”
Same take as released version. Different mix.

“I’ll Be Your Mirror.”
Same take as released version. Radically different mix. No echo on Nico’s vocals. Background vocals on end of song are more subdued.

“Heroin.”
Completely different take than released version. Guitar line is different. Vocal inflections different and a few different lyrics. Drumming is more primitive and off kilter. There is a tambourine dragging throughout the song.

“Femme Fatale.”
Same take as released version. Radically different mix. Percussion more prominent. Alternate take on background vocals. Much more poppy.

“Venus In Furs.”
Different take than released version. Vocal inflections completely different. Instrumentation more based around Cale’s violin than the guitar, as in the released version.

“I’m Waiting For The Man.”
Different take than released version. Guitar line is completely different. Vocal inflections different and a few different lyrics. No drums, just tambourine. Bluesy guitar solo.

“Run Run Run.”
Same take as released version. Different mix.

Lucky bastard Warren Hill, in his Montreal record shop, Backroom Records and Pastries, looking understandably disconcerted by all the hubbub.