The Legendaly Guitar Amp Tapes

Sometimes a live recording becomes legendary for reasons not strictly related to how good the show was. The conventional wisdom is that The Velvet Underground’s studio albums didn’t tell the full story of how incredible they were as a band; you had to see them live to truly understand. The 1969 document of two of their shows at End of Cole Ave. in Dallas and the Matrix nightclub in San Francisco (as well as the complete set of Matrix tapes, issued much later) are essential, but acolytes of the Velvets often had to rely on bootlegs to get a better sense of how they worked a crowd. The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes, recorded at The Boston Tea Party on January 15, 1969, has a reputation for being a real blowout — but that might partially be due to how it was archived. A fan was permitted to record, but had to stand right next to Lou Reed’s amp. The result is an exaggerated spatial heatmap that puts Reed’s guitar front and center while the rest of the band lurks low in the mix, the vocals being almost imperceptible at times. It sounds like they blew the doors off the place, but maybe they only blew out one guy’s ears.