The Velvet Forum

A new (to me, at least) audience recording just showed up on Dimeadozen. Haven't listened to it yet... Here is the info:

Velvet Underground: The Exploding Plastic Inevitable 1966-09 Provincetown audience recordings

Chrysler Art Museum
Provincetown
1966-08-31 to 1966-09-04
(exact date unknown)

Be aware that these are VERY poor quality recordings!

I have removed those segments which appeared to contain film soundtrack material since they have arguably been "officially released".

set 1 (?)
S101: I'll Be Your Mirror (cut) 0.53
S102: I'm Not A Young Man Anymore (cut) 3.26
S103: Little Sister (cut)/All Tommorrow's Parties 8.21
S104: Venus In Furs 5.33
S105: Black Angel's Death Song 3.55
S106: Heroin 6.01

set 2 (?)
S201: intro 1.21
S202: I'll Be Your Mirror 2.15
S203: unknown 0.33
S204: I'm Not A Young Man Anymore 3.00
S205: unknown 1.30
S206: Little Sister 2.14


Original recordings by Dorothy Gees Seckler on what seems to have been 2 x C60 cassettes. Contemporary ads for the shows offer 2 shows nightly, at 9pm and 10.30pm.

Any chance of moving this to a place that would be easier to access for a technically-challenged fan? I don't have a dimeadozen account and it seems to be a multi-step process to get there

This is probably sourced from the Smithsonian. It is publicly available, I posted the links here:
Sound excerpts from interview with John Cale, 1966 September

jonas wrote: ↑21 Mar 2024 15:29 mads.si.edu/mads/id/AAA-AAA_seckdoro_1999_a/AAA-AAA_seckdoro_1999_a.mp3
mads.si.edu/mads/id/AAA-AAA_seckdoro_2000_a/AAA-AAA_seckdoro_2000_a.mp3
mads.si.edu/mads/id/AAA-AAA_seckdoro_2001_a/AAA-AAA_seckdoro_2001_a.mp3
mads.si.edu/mads/id/AAA-AAA_seckdoro_2002_a/AAA-AAA_seckdoro_2002_a.mp3

I kept the links unclickable so your browser doesn't send the smithsonian a referer header that can trace them back to this thread

This is huge upgrade over lossy copies out there. Shame it's incomplete tapes

I'ver not heard this copy but with poor quality recordings from nearly 60 years ago is it really a "huge upgrade" just because it's lossless?

If it's true lossless then yeah, it should be a significant upgrade over Mp3. But has anyone checked whether that's actually what it is, or is it just MP3 files converted to Flac?

Mark wrote: ↑11 Dec 2025 09:18 If it's true lossless then yeah, it should be a significant upgrade over Mp3. But has anyone checked whether that's actually what it is, or is it just MP3 files converted to Flac?

It is not and Dime won't allow it.

FLAC from Dime:


MP3 from the Smithsonian:


The MP3 cuts off at 14khz but I can't hear a difference

Mark wrote: ↑11 Dec 2025 09:18 If it's true lossless then yeah, it should be a significant upgrade over Mp3.

I get that if we are talking about a well recorded and well mastered track then yeah, clearly a lossless copy would sound significantly better than MP3. But these tracks are really rough, distorted recordings, some of them barely listenable (which I love regardless). My point is, does lossless really represent a "huge" or "significant" upgrade in this case? It's not going to make them any less distorted, is it?

Maybe it's just my old ears but I think we're in danger of kidding ourselves that things automatically sound better just because they are FLAC.

I think mp3 is probably more than enough to represent a badly recorded cassette from 1966. Is unlikely the flacs are any closer to the source tape than the mo3

And I don’t get why sometimes these dimeadozen shares remove tracks that have been shared elsewhere. I’d think better to keep a document like that intact.