Gymnasium 4-30-67 recording

[peppergomez]

Thanks for trying

[iaredatsun]

He has the tape, and yet doesn't know where the tape came from...?

The notes say the recording "fell into his hands".

In "What's Welsh For Zen" there's a quote from Paul Katz about the period when the VU were playing the Gymnasium. "They had a road manager then called David Faison who recorded most of their evenings." I don't know whether anyone's researched this avenue at all?

Interesting. But if it came from the road manager, you'd kind of think Cale'd know where it came from.

[Mark]

David Faison only worked with them up till the end of 1966, according to the Up-tight book. Sound engineer in 1967 was Lou's old Syracuse buddy Phil Schier. After that, Hans Onsanger took over.

Have any of those guys turned up in any of the books?

[searchin4mymainline]

David Faison only worked with them up till the end of 1966, according to the Up-tight book.

Is that the second edition of Up-tight?

Reading the quote from "What's Welsh for Zen?" again, it does start out by talking about the period when they were playing the Gymnasium and talks about Cale being ill and the band playing there without him, but follows on from that with "On the other hand I remember one night where Lou didn't make it [...] That night John and Sterling sang, mostly John, of course." It is in the context of this show that David Faison ("who recorded most of their evenings") is mentioned. It would be easy to assume, as I did, that this is still referring to the Gymnasium period, but it doesn't explicitly say so, so it's possible that it might be referring back to Poor Richards in '66 for example.

[peppergomez]

With that nice Wollenstock its a shame they didn't regularly record their shows.

[iaredatsun]

Odd that no shows turned up listed in the LR archive. Was it only Cale that had interest in keeping live tapes?

[falconwhit]

I too contacted him online in 2018, the first thing he said was "Yes... [I am the Hans Onsager who worked w the VU in the 60's] And NO, I don't give interviews.
He did add (please don't quote this outside of this forum since he said he didn't want to be interviewed): "Lou was a very complex, brilliant mind. He can not be defined. You either knew him or you did not."

My 2cents re the Gymnasium recording: I think Hans Onsager (or whoever did the sound for that show) must have taped the Gymnasium show. It sounds like a board recording based on how loud Lou's vocals are, and how low the drums are - indicating that the venue was not big enough to require the drums to be miked - the board mix simply augmented the sound from the stage (except for Sister Ray, where the balance of the mix is different - maybe another show or another set?)

[peppergomez]

Agreed re soundboard. There's no room ambience or acoustics either.

[Mark]

David Faison only worked with them up till the end of 1966, according to the Up-tight book.

Is that the second edition of Up-tight?

Reading the quote from "What's Welsh for Zen?" again, it does start out by talking about the period when they were playing the Gymnasium and talks about Cale being ill and the band playing there without him, but follows on from that with "On the other hand I remember one night where Lou didn't make it [...] That night John and Sterling sang, mostly John, of course." It is in the context of this show that David Faison ("who recorded most of their evenings") is mentioned. It would be easy to assume, as I did, that this is still referring to the Gymnasium period, but it doesn't explicitly say so, so it's possible that it might be referring back to Poor Richards in '66 for example.

To be honest I'm not sure which edition - I just googled "David Faison velvet underground" and one of the only results is some dodgy site which contains the entire text, in slightly garbled firm, from Up-tight. The quote from Sterling is as follows:

“Faison left late in 1966 because he needed more money. He later did well in sound systems and various rock music ventures on the West Coast. Next came Phil Schier in 1967. He was Lou’s room-mate for a while at Syracuse and played bass with him at times. He was a Formula 1 race driver, and general car freak. When he left late in 1967 or so, it was to open up a recording studio in LA, which became successful. Hans Onsager was our equipment manager from then on. His father won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 while at Yale. Hans is a New England Yankee, well brought up, and fun to be around.”

Interestingly perhaps, one of the other Google results is a tweet from Faison's nephew!

Falconwhit that's great. I guess it wasn't possible to get any sort of indication from Onsanger as to whether he had tapes...?

[searchin4mymainline]

Interestingly perhaps, one of the other Google results is a tweet from Faison's nephew!

David Faison's son has a youtube channel, as mentioned on here in the past.