The Rough Guide to the Velvet Underground (Rough Guide Reference) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)What a neat notion! A 300-page, square book that gives the history of one of rock's most influential bands, then runs down all their albums PLUS all the solo albums the band members made since the VU broke up. Killer idea, but my god, what lousy execution!

Hogan's prose is of a high school-newspaper caliber at best, and is downright laughable in many places...like when he calls Lou Reed's song "The Day John Kennedy Dies" "Slow, but evocative and compelling." Because slow things aren't USUALLY compelling??? Because slow is bad and fast is good because fast means it rocks harder, Beavis? Seriously. The book is filled with awkward phrases, dubious critical analysis, and some statements that are purely conjecture.

It's notable too that, from reading this, it seems like Hogan did little work himself, choosing rather to rely on scholarship and interviews that others have conducted.

As inept as Hogan is, a good editor could have slapped this together, patched it up with some tape and glue, and probably made a half decent volume out of it. As such it looks like it was barely edited at all. There are some really laughable moments here, editorially...to pick a few:

- on page 203, instead of a photo of the cover of Nico's album "Camera Obscura," there is a photo of the album "Let's Get Out of this Country" by the BAND Camera Obscura! C'mon! Did no one see that?? It's made even funnier by Hogan's caption: "Possibly Nico's most enigmatic cover..." indeed!

- on page 238, concluding his wrap-up of Moe Tucker solo projects, Hogan writes "There are no Tucker compilations available." But if you look over one column to the left, you see a review of a Belgian compilation called "Waiting for My Men," that begins "Belgian compilation album..." Ha ha ha ha ha ha...

I should probably stop harping, but the book is full of moments like these, moments a good editor would have red-flagged.

Hogan also doesn't rundown any Velvet Underground bootlegs, which would have been helpful, and, in his rundown of the VU in print, forgets entirely about "Feedback," the Spanish book that was really the first great history of the band.

On the plus side, there are some great photos throughout (especially the Camera Obscura album cover), and the layout is very crisp and clean as we've come to expect from the Rough Guides. But shakey scholarship, ham-fisted criticism, and soggy (or non-existent) editing make this a book that is more worth flipping through on a store shelf than bringing home.

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Product Description:

Sporting shades and a feedback-heavy sounds, the Velvets straddled art and rock, changing popular music forever, and sowing the seeds for punk, grunge and thousands of countercultural four-chord wonders. The Rough Guide to The Velvet Underground explores: The Velvet Story: How Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale and the others emerged from the New York scene, their successes and excesses and what happened to each in their solo years. Velvet Music: From their 1967 debut with Nico to their 1993 reunion with all the tales behind the tunes. Velvet Universe: Everybody who was anybody in the Velvet's world, taking in Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, David Bowie, Delmore, Schwaretsz and Brian Eno. Velvet Goldmine: The "Underground" on screen, the Velvets' New York, clubs, influences, covers, websites and more.

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