The Velvet Underground and Nico (Self Titled), Andy Warhol, and Underground New York At Its Finest

Lou Reed has never quite settled well with me. I've got to be blatantly honest: I just don't get him. Yes, OK, Walk On The Wild Side is a great track, as is Perfect Day. However, I find the man incredibly pretentious about his music - like he is out to oppose even his own fans. His gross unpredictability, in my eyes, is all too often mistaken as interesting. I meet very few people in life who have such an affinity with music as I have, but even I am completely lost when it comes to Lou Reed. I've tried and tried, I really have, but it doesn't work. The only record that I believe he has excelled with is this, The Velvet Underground & Nico, the first album Reed was involved making, along with John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker, and Nico.

It is very strange how the music industry pulls its punches. Upon release this album was a flop. A commercial and financial failure that was largely ignored. Controversies surrounding the thematic content of the record - drug abuse, prostitution, sadism, masochism, sexual deviancy and BDSM to name but a few - led to the record being banned from record stores and radio airplay alike. Over forty years later The Velvet Underground & Nico is one of the most revered and critically acclaimed records on the planet, reaching #13 in Rolling Stone Magazine's 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time. It was also added to the National Recording Registry by the Librarian of Congress in 2006. In other words, the fortune of this unique masterpiece has turned on its head tenfold. It is so influential that without it, it is widely considered, there would be no Punk, no Glam Rock, and certainly no Kraut Rock. Their blurring of Pop music with the avante gard inspired the likes of David Bowie, Roxy Music, Nirvana, REM and The Stooges.

Heroin, one of the most remarkably rough and ready, manic pieces of avante gard, underground music you are ever likely to hear, is a definite highlight of the record. So is the very 60's inspired There She Goes, which steals from Dylan in its jagged sincerity, but also nods to the classic R&B bands such as The Yardbirds and The Troggs. I'll Be Your Mirror, sang by the remarkable Nico, is a Mama's and the Papa's style ballad with a slightly more maudlin feel, The Black Angel's Death Song is a disturbing, frenetic experiment akin to something off Floyd's Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, and European Son a funky groove that takes the album into a spiralling new direction. Sunday Morning is an airy, spacious ballad with semi-sinister undertones - a fascinating track indeed. I'm Waiting For The Man, a rocky satire on prostitution, is delivered in typical, slightly tuneless, Lou Reed style - but for once it works! Femme Fatale is a glorious, bare recording with a somewhat tragic story; Nico's accent flows through the backbone of the song with such power, before the seriously hypnotic Venus In Furs marches through its mournful lament. Run Run Run is bluesy - a nod to The Doors in their Roadhouse glory, and All Tomorrow's Parties a feverish rumbling anchored by a repetitive piano hook. It is all rather bewitching to say the least.

Producer and musician extraordinaire Brian Eno very famously commented that despite very few people buying The Velvet Underground & Nico upon its release in 1967, those that did went on to form famous bands of their own. It really was that influential. Andy Warhol, who was credited with producing the album, and who also provided the mega-famous art work for the sleeve and paid for the studio time to record the album, has had obvious effects on The Velvets and that whole scene. It is a scene so unique - so one off - that this entire project will be forever shrouded in mystique and legend. The Velvet Underground & Nico is a piece of art in itself, not just a record. A remarkable, revolutionary piece of work that will penetrate the deepest annals of Rock history forever.