The Velvet Underground "The Velvet Underground"

I first heard this when I was 17 when my Economics teacher lent me the LP.  I already had the Banana debut LP.  I loved parts of it (Sunday Morning, Venus in Furs) but was kind of baffled by some of it.  The big thing for me was hearing the 3rd LP and 1969 Live.  I loved the simplicity of it, the groove in songs like "What Goes On" and mostly that it sounded fun.  They never sounded pretentious to me - on 1969 they sounded like they were having a ball.  I loved Lou Reed's mastery of simple chords and melody more than anything.  He doesn't sing in the conventional sense - I guess that gave me encouragement.  I think a lot of bands that tried to ape them missed that fun side of the band.  I thought Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers nailed it though. I saw them when they reformed in 1993 at the very nasty Wembley Arena.  They still had something special and loved that there were no session muso's.  I thought they should have had Doug Yule along though.  He's kind of been written out of their story but he's great on this LP and "Loaded"