Velvet Underground: 45th Anniversary (Deluxe Edition)

Deluxe two CD edition includes a bonus CD The Velvet Underground's classic self-titled third album, released in March 1969, by MGM, was a departure from the band's first two albums in more ways than one. Gone was co-founding member John Cale, and in his place was a 21-year-old with Long Island roots named Doug Yule, who stepped right in. The record was also a stylistic leap, as Lou Reed describes it in Rolling Stone editor David Fricke's liner notes, 'I thought we had to demonstrate the other side of us. Fricke calls it 'a stunning turnaround 10 tracks of mostly warm, explicit sympathy and optimism, expressed with melodic clarity, set in gleaming double-guitar jangle and near-whispered balladry. Or as the late rock critic Lester Bangs put it, 'How do you define a group like this, who moved from 'Heroin' to 'Jesus' in two short years?' The remastered The Velvet Underground will also be made available as a two-CD Deluxe Edition version with a 12-track audio bonus disc featuring the best of Live At The Matrix, taped on November 26 & 27, 1969.