there might have been a thread on this on old-ilm, i was away for a week.
high bidder is “forest gnome” with no feedback. i wonder if it’s reed or cale.
YSI?
But why didn’t the deal with Universal (who were going to buy it and release it as a CD) happen?
will he ship media mail without the sleeve in a flattened, inside-out priority mail box? and i don’t feel like paying for insurance.
according to the eBay listing, that Universal rumour wasn’t true.
Recording corporations are a bit funny about buying stuff they ‘own the rights’ to.
I smell another VU & Nico reissue with bonus tracks. If we can just dig up some alternate mixes from the Chelsea Girl sessions.
it seems a little insane to just sell to highest bidder without any guarantee it will be taken care of
What, in a “Godfather 2” kind of way?
smashmyvuacetate.com
hahaha,
(in the questions):
“Does ownership of the acetate come with a copyright to manufacture?”
answer:
“I do not know the answer to this question. Any intellectual copyright attorney should be able to assess this for you once they learn of the situation. The facts are straighforward: this acetate contains unreleased performances and/or mixes of songs which, as compositions, are otherwise held property and for which only alternative published commercial performance recordings have been available for 40 years. As to whether the tracks which are primarily alternative mixes (and thus the same performances with perhaps the odd overdub) are covered under the publishing of the released mixes of those particular recordings, I do not know. Your attorney and those of the publishing holders will likely know best.”
i.e. “uh, NO”
it seems a little insane to just sell to highest bidder without any guarantee it will be taken care of
Exactly. I also found it curious in reading the accompanying article that it seemed like the first thing on this guy’s mind after he got it was the idea of selling it. I mean sure, plenty of money will be had, but that would not have been the first thing on my mind.
It should be.
where do we think the bidding will stop?
Yeah, I’d definitely sell it over the possibility of never hearing some alternative versions of songs I’ve already heard a billion times and don’t really need to hear again.
whenever i think of this story i think of the poor dude who sold it for 50 cents or however much the collector scum found it for.
75 cents, duh
Haha I am the current highest bidder.
i can only assume that someone with a spare $16000 to buy this piece of crap can also afford a cedar box to make it listenable
I can’t afford $16,000. I only bid that much so I could say so on this thread.
someone on here should bid $50,000 now to make it more spectacular more quickly
Yeah but it wouldn’t go up to $50,000 until someone else bid $49,900 or something.
Oh, I have been outbid already. Some fucker’s put in $17,000.
warren, from what i understand, is by no means “collector scum”.
collector scum normally hang on to their records
‘Winning’ again now with a max bid of $17,187.63.
How in the world were they making that sound?
jesus, 17 grand and there’s 8 friggin’ days left. this will be interesting.
warren, from what i understand, is by no means “collector scum”.
— sean gramophone (sea...), December 1st, 2006. (later)
otm
i was with the dude tonight we were kind of boggling at how high it had gotten... earlier in the day he said he’d be unhappy if it didn’t top 10 Gs
Yeah, I’d definitely sell it over the possibility of never hearing some alternative versions of songs I’ve already heard a billion times and don’t really need to hear again.
— ... (noemai...), November 30th, 2006 10:31 PM. (later)
Presumably he’s saved it to mp3?
ysi?
you’d think by looking at their bidding histories you’d see that the guys willing to put 18 grand on the table for this would be some h-core mystical collectors steep’d in lore or whatever, but no, not rly. the marksurface01 guy should totally win! he has recently purchased, in the run up to this titanic struggle:
some bowling shoes
an old 12 on rap-a-lot
couple of dollarbin smiths singles
and 2x attache cases (hmmmm!)
yeah we were looking at his prior purchases and the metal attache cases were a real eyebrow-raiser! my theory is they’re for the cash.
Were those acetate bowling shoes?
i hope this doesn’t just disappear into some asshole’s archives. like the early black sabbath bootleg that i think wound up being bought by ozzy’s people and most likely will never see the light of day.
It doesn’t include the copyright, what else can happen with it? As soon as the new owner makes any of this music public, he’ll be in court! (and they’ll know it’s him, since this is the only known copy)
the high bidder now is from the u.k. and only buys screamo singles.
oh wait, he only SELLS screamo singles.
stanM: he could be cool about it and make everyone on earth a tape on the DL. bogarting the acetate isn’t cool.
20Gs = they r entitled to bogart, clearly.
why arent u accusing 75 cent guy (and s1ocki even!) of the same?
screamo dude is obv planning to listen to this while he’s playing megaman
kudos
So basically S1ocki is saying “Hi dere I can ask this fellow to make ILX an mp3 of this thing.” Surely.
Who isnt?
i’ll see! he’s a cool guy. and not scum at all; this guy loves & is dedicated to vinyl in a wonderful, really pure way. he runs a record store / cake shop out of the back room of his apartment.
a record store / cake shop
This makes me so damn happy.
mmmm, record cakes...
it is my favourite store.
Didn’t the acetate already leak?
the description on the item says the songs did, but they were much lower quality and perhaps made from a cassette that was made of this acetate or another one many many years ago
High quality VU acetate... DOES NOT COMPUTE
ok sorry for the ‘scum’ bit i guess, but i hope he gives a piece to the dude he bought the record from just as a gesture. assuming he can track him down.
he bought it from a ghost
not THE ghost
okay, now there is ANOTHER screamo dude who is high bidder. these dudes are just having fun like eyeball kicks i bet.
I don’t understand who else would bid with eight days to go.
I don’t think a rare VU acetate lures out all the accomplished eBay snipers.
the junkie punx have already beat the beatles by a long shot:
http://www.popsike.com/php/detaildatar.php?itemnr=4874863840
These people are dumb. They could make a LOT more money if they broke it up in little pieces and sold those, Berlin Wall style. Who wouldn’t want a piece of the rarest record in rock & roll history?
“The computer does start. Seller Lied regarding condition of computer.”
Nabisco is the highest bidder now!?
It’s gone up past 50k.
so if a real person wins this, think they’ll be pissed that so many of the bids are from fake accounts?
so if a real person wins this, think they’ll be pissed that so many of the bids are from fake accounts?
Personally, I would be. I’m surprised this wasn’t done through some big auction house or something that vets bidders....
the only thing the current high bidder has won in the last three months is a chicago house bootleg for $16.
strike that.
we’re in six didgits now.
high bidder bought some home-gym and a violent femmes cd latley.
Something about this is sickening to me.
“To place a bid of US $15,000.00 or more, you’ll need to provide a valid credit card or complete the ID Verify process ($5).”
My friend Eric is the dude who’s brokering the record for his pal, the guy in Montreal who found the thing at the Chelsea market, I forget his name — but they’re selling it through the SF dude, as he’s super well respected as a big eBay guy, and I think Eric used to work for him or soemthing/
My understanding is that Eric and his friend *wanted* it to sell to a record label and give it a good home. As they early articles about the acetate surfaced and interest mounted, they shopped it to several labels and I think they were in last minute negotiations with one excellent reissue label, when that fell apart due to the sudden appearance of that crummy sounding Japanese bootleg. The idea being that the material had hit the marketplace and was then not something the hardcore fans would never have heard, even if in inferior quality.
Eric doesn’t have a computer; he has to go to the co-op bike shop down the block and use theirs. I was in his shop yesterday and he was clearly really bummed out by the whole “eBay chicken” thing — he is one of the raddest people and has immaculate cred. in the record buying/ selling community (not to mention his vinyl only record label is fucking ACES — and as a caveat or whatever, we’re doing an Anglin Bros. reissue together and getting started on a of Tony Schwartz collection). Dude is old school but not ridiculous about it; he never checks popsike or gemm before pricing his records, as far as I know.
Anyway, I guess my point is that I’m sure that no one would have guessedd this thing would get so out of hand. I think they thought this would be the most fair way to sell this thing, to just let the market decide or whatever. Eric’s getting bombarded with hate mail over this thing and he can’t figure why — he’s just helping his friend sell this record that the dude found, you know?
Now it’s over a hundred thousand?! I guess it’s more eBay chicken? Fucking bummer.
Crazy. Five days, seven hours to go.
I think they thought this would be the most fair way to sell this thing, to just let the market decide or whatever.
fair would have been to approach libraries / colleges / other cultural institutions, if selling it to a record label didnt pan out! at the very least, the record could be properly preserved, archived and made available to the public for educational purposes. right now, that’s certainly not the case.
MTS, please get off the VU’s dick and tell us what good a “cultural institution” would do by preserving said recording? What fucking educational purposes does this recording serve more than any of the other numerous VU recordings or recordings by any other artist? Don’t you think that spending $10k on some assistant professor to study oh.... say mp3 mashup culture, rave keyboard or grime... be a better use of resources than more ass-kissing of your precious indie-canon bands?
PS- I found a picture of Maria blogging about this record:
What weirds me out is that instead of getting this record, the winner could finance someone going through a college, masters, and PhD program.
or buy a luxury car!
I’m wondering if the sellers should donate some of the money to charity. I’m also hoping we get some kind of psuedo-justification from the winner on why someone would spend six figures for a single piece of vinyl. Also, plz link to the youtube video of the winner calling his parents/spouse to tell them what he/she just won.
i find it strange that the andy warhol museum in pittsburgh didn’t buy it, they have a lot of vu stuff. unfortunately most of it is not available to the public at all.
I’m wondering if the sellers should donate some of the money to charity.
What makes this money any different?
MTS, please get off the VU’s dick and tell us what good a “cultural institution” would do by preserving said recording? What fucking educational purposes does this recording serve more than any of the other numerous VU recordings or recordings by any other artist? Don’t you think that spending $10k on some assistant professor to study oh.... say mp3 mashup culture, rave keyboard or grime... be a better use of resources than more ass-kissing of your precious indie-canon bands?
Dude, what kind of argument is this? Oh wait, it’s not — it’s just you attacking me for the hell of it.
Do you want music to be researchable or not? ’Cause if you don’t, there’s no sense in universities spending the money on research about grime, mashups, rave or anything else. I never said that VU’s recordings were any more or less important — those are your implications/hangups. I think it would be great if artifacts from those genres/etc were preserved similarly.
Do you want music to be researchable or not?
what i meant was: if you wanted any music available for academic / scholarly use. unfortunately, i was interrupted by a phone call.
It doesn’t make it any different Jon, I’d just feel guilty I were the seller.
Don’t you think that spending $10k on some assistant professor to study oh.... say mp3 mashup culture, rave keyboard or grime... be a better use of resources than more ass-kissing of your precious indie-canon bands?
if my university spent $10k on studying mp3 fucking mashup culture i would demand my tuition back. what the hell is wrong with you?
not that any university should spend $10k on a “precious indie-canon band” either.
why should you feel guilty about selling a record to someone? how is that different from selling someone an MRI machine or a yacht?
good thing you’re not a yacht salesman. the guilt would be terrible :-/
also, wtf: What weirds me out is that instead of getting this record, the winner could finance someone going through a college, masters, and PhD program.
have you even been to college before??
otm on both points
US $105,600.74
US $105,600 and 75 cents was too much, was it?
So when is this going to stop? It can’t be for real anymore, right?
xpost: double agreed, thanks for saying that stuff, gorbachev — i really do not get the rancor this sale has produced at all.
legislating what other people ‘should’ do with stuff they are lucky enough to find, and to know what it is when they do, seems a tad crazy to me, and reeks to me of jealousy/ sour grapes.
sound quality issues aside, it’s not like you can’t hear these version if you want to, on the japanese bootleg.
c’mon, let a hater hate!
They are cancelling bids from people who have low feedback scores, apparently (scroll down) : http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=300054910309
So... this is really happening? I still think it’s some kind of board invasion thing, but I haven’t found the originating forum yet. (googling a couple of bidder names did lead to a forum the last time something big like this went down, but now, not yet)
I would have thought that having to give credit card details might be something of a detterent, though?
http://www.gigwise.com/news.asp?contentid=25547
“the only one of its kind”
What’s the story of that Japanese bootleg, by the way? I know there’s a leaked recording out there, with lots of hiss and vinyl crackles, so is that from another copy of this “one of its kind” album?
Yeah, me too, but still, none of the high bidders look like the kind of people you’d expect. No rarealbumcollectorsdotcom or largecompanyCEOagency.com , all these people ever bought were fitness machines and camera filters and cheap cds and a shoe and a bike.
(er, that was an xpost to toby)
“sound quality issues aside” bahahaha
it just seems weird that they wouldn’t even grab the audio from the record first, in a mastering studio or whatever. and THEN sell it. would that be “illegal” maybe? i mean there’s nothing stopping the weiner winner from using it as a coaster for his collection of rare german beer steins.
i’m just surprised reed didn’t buy it from the guy. was he approached? I know when artists get this stuff half the time you never hear it again (mccartney and those quarrymen tapes) but I’d trust reed with it more than joe schmo
although, actually, I don’t really care
Lou Reed probably doesn’t give a shit.
From the people trying to be all ethical about this guy trying to cash in you would think he was trying to sell Hitler’s aborted love child on the open market.
That’s on the flip.
He better not be planning to pay with pennies.
What is the most expensive record ever sold? Anyone know offhand? I know those Hank Ballard & The Midnighters 10“s can get up there
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_collecting#Most_Valuable_Records
ew, creepy John Lennon necrophilia makes it 10x anything else I guess.
Woah, way to go John’s Children. I had no idea. I think Midsummer Nights Scene is probably worth 11k.
Haha, you can get that Lennon album for $4.26 at Amazon! :-)
haha scott that is incredible!!
Some notes on what I heard:
That European son: When the big crash happens, the music continues as before on this one. The LP version is therefore an edit and I KNEW IT!!!
A Similar “I Knew it” was the chorus drop-in on “RunRunRun” which masks a tentative first “run” as can be heard on this version.
if i found this i’d spend about 24 hrs straight with my demo copy of wave editor and some headphones and get it all perfect.
Hasn’t anyone tried to do this with the Japanese bootleg yet?
“all perfect” would certainly help. As it is, I just want to listen to the finished album again. Maybe I would feel differently if I had spent 130 large on it.
the current high bidder recently bought “10 Coupons FREE Hollywood Video Rental w/u/ rent 1 LOOK”
Actually, the sound on those mp3s from Stan M’s link are really good. A couple of tracks are almost crackle-free!
If that’s a mono mix, surely ‘crackle remove’ would just be a matter of removing sound sources that are purely on one or other channel but not both.
The current high bidder ($146K)—another (or is it the same?) coin collector: http://myworld.ebay.com/petsalad/
not to mention some gnarly Spiderman temporary tatoos.
End time: 12 hours 27 mins ( Dec-08–06 20:27:23 PST)
place your bets
Current high bidder is currently selling:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200053059428
I have had many requests for this piece in a 69’. So, I finally found one. This 69 will make a great gift for you and your lover to curl up to. One might even bend over backwards for a good 69’ like this one. Give the gift of 69 this year. Photo represents actual coin winner will receive. Thanks for looking.
So I gave this a good once-through on the train this morning, and kinda got caught up in VU FEVER. There was something positively delightful about hearing a version of Heroin I’d never heard, especially knowing where it came from.
petsalad, skisumo, oddditty83, mtoy1, bignastase
Dear people with $150k to blow,
I always imagined you guys would have cooler nicknames.
(xpost) Me, too! I’ve been all about the different mix of “Run,Run,Run”. The drums on that are mixed louder, it seems, and just give it this real dirty push.
so the fakers pushed it up past 2 million. Current high-bidder had no negative comments. Will be sure to get one now. Seriously, are their more serious punishments for doing this? At least losing your account.
Only one guy found a velvet underground acetate for 75 cents, but everyone who did. . .
it’s still only listed at 155? two million? when was that?
Current high bidder recently bought himself a pair of corduroy pants for 50 cents and Fiddy said he aint wearing that shit.
I don’t know why, but my prediction is it sells for $297,000.
Half an hour.
Oh my god, the calm before the storm. You could hear a pin drop. This is about as exciting to me as watching a football game must be to some people.
Haha
Should’ve had an ILX sweepstake.
uh, this has already been leaked (sorry didn’t read the thread to see if someone already posted about that). i don’t get how that coulda happened
extra-sensory perception
I recognise a few of those names that have had their bids cancelled.
Winning bid: US $155,401.00
Winning bidder: mechadaddy( 68
)
no recent feedback =(
Surprised at lack of last minute duking-it-out.
That’s it then?! $155,4-Oh-One? We’re done? Girls just want to have fun? On the run? With a nun? I cry foul. NOT a real ebay auction. Watch the guy tell his wife, etc.
This is about as exciting to me as watching a football game must be to some people.
haha OTM indeed. Guys in the office talk about the bears. I come in today talking about the VU record. They think I’m really, really weird.
Yeah, I, albeit I have a lack of experience with it, thought in ebay, no one seriously bids untill the last half hour or so and the price just skyrockets. I must say, this last week has been quite a spectacle, otm in regards to the watching sports analogies indeed. Ha, I bet that the bid that raised it from $50,000 to $100,000 was fake, if that was true I couldn’t imagine how pissed off I’d be.
ain’t no half steppin’
i have no idea what that meant.
the “leaked” version is not from the same recording, as i understand it; rather, it’s from a shitty japanese bootleg.
I doubt that. It’s not shitty enough. Besides, what I’m hearing is exactly what is described on ebay and elsewhere.
mechadaddy Wesley Sniped them all
did you mean: Macdaddy
I really hope it’s not the guy in that first link.
I hope we’ll find out what happens. Is this mechadaddy serious? Will the item go to the first actual bidder they find (if any), will they relist it if none were for real?
no answers in that article sadly
re: cnn article
surprised chelsea market dude looks that young, my mental image of him was +300 pounds, heartburn of psoriasis, and a ponytail laden with half a pound of dandruff.
Jeez, he could look a bit happier seeing as he just flogged a record and made over 200,000% profit on it.
doesn’t have the money in his hand yet
Hopefully he hasn’t already posted the record then.
Course not. Ebay rules.
The story’s not over yet:
http://www.obner.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=26921
“Ish” says:
Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:08 pm
I was at the auctioner’s store today and apparently the sale ended up being bogus.
.. dude!
excellent!
Yeah, scuttlebutt is that record has not been sold.
they’ll just go down the list shooting out second chance offers. it will be interesting to see if there will be an actual paying customer willing to go above $100k.
yep, the $155K bid aint happening:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061211.UNDERGROUND11/TPStory
On the weekend Saturn received an e-mail from the supposed winner who said a friend, unbeknownst to him, had, as a lark, bid on the acetate using his (the supposed winner’s) computer at work and account number. “Ohmigod, I’m so sorry,” the e-mail read in part. “I can barely afford gas for my car” let alone more than $150,000 for a 40-year-old disc of acetone-covered aluminum.
A “friend”? Yeah, right.
http://www.nme.com/news/velvet-underground/25419
Here’s a confused account of it!
‘the definitive version’
Everyone at the NME is drunk just copy pastes superlatives haphazardly into AP newswire stories and press blurbs.
The mystery buyer has only been identified as mechadaddy.
What kills me is the “related” news item on that page that says Weezer have “become” the Velvet Underground.
http://www.nme.com/news/velvet-underground/25444
OK, the final bid was fake.
The acetate contained the only definitive version, even.
You watch—all of those bids were fake, and the guy will end up selling it at a loss for 50 cents.
http://www.music-news.com/ShowNews.asp?nItemID=12754
(with a picture of Iggy Pop at the moment)
“Ish” posted this link:
It’s back (from Pitchfork):
Oh boy, here we go again. As previously reported, Sunset Rubdown merch guy Warren Hill scored the supreme rock’n’roll artifact, an acetate test-pressing of an early version of the first Velvet Underground record, for $0.75. He put it on eBay, somebody named “mechadaddy” won it last Friday, and as mentioned in our year-end news wrap-up, “mechadaddy” turned out to be just some schmo whose buddy hacked into his eBay account. A deadbeat, as they call them on the wild frontiers of eBaynia.
But Warren’s not daunted by one chump bidder, no no! He re-listed the acetate for auction today, but here’s the catch: only pre-approved eBay users can bid, which means you have to e-mail Hill first. Info here.
And hot golly, it’s only $0.99 right now! The best part: Dude’s already making a profit.
this shit is so last week
when are they going to auction the cylinder recording of thriller pressed on michael jackson’s dick??
i would definitely be willing to break into my friend’s account to bid $150,000 for that
Why is he using eBay instead of some big auction haus?
this is still the crux of his dementia. can’t you just shill it to the hard rock cafe?
Yikes! This is all too much for me.
Maybe I ought to put on George Harrison.
I did a little noise reduction on the acetate version of “I’m Waiting For The Man”...
Ah, are you making them all shiny shiny?
Like boots of leather?
Shiny’s the wrong word methinks... how about borderline listenable? It’s tough to get rid of that much surface noise without warping the music a bit.
I wasn’t planning to do them all but if there’s a particular track you’d like to hear I’ll give it a whirl.
I might have a bash at European Son later if I can find the time.
Bump
13 hours to go, current high bid approx. $25K, bidder ID kept private
http://cgi.ebay.com/VELVET-UNDERGROUND-NICO-1966-Acetate-LP-ANDY-WARHOL_W0QQitemZ300060897304
Done!
US $25,200.00—0.75 = $25,199.25 for Mr. Hill! Sold for 33,599 times the amount he paid for it.
Which would have gotten a lot of headlines if only that fake crap hadn’t happened last week. Now, it’s “only 25,200”
PAYPAL FEES ARE A BITCH
Did anyone else have a bash at other tracks?
Oops. I forgot I was going to do that. No, not yet, although I may get around to it sometime.
HAHAHAHAH! I DID THE SAME THING!!!! Hahahahahah
This is amazing: http://open.spotify.com/user/andyzax/playlist/7Gk5LAmxjb92qrJtnwTueK
“I Couldn’t Hit It Sideways: 12 Excruciatingly Bad Velvet Underground Covers”—a Spotify playlist
haha
dave navarro—venus in furs
yeeeeeeeeeeecchh
Best part of that list is that one of my favorite albums from 2010 in on it: The Voices Factory. Dude who made the list (and those who hear it) can think what they want, but I’ve been saying for a while that this Italian group has made the best Velvets tribute ever. So, um, fuck you Spotify Playlist idiot.
Sometimes they’re better than the originals:
...and have the good sense to cover some of the best VU songs that nobody ever bothers with:
Seriously, I played this album more than anything but Fucked Up in 2011. So there.
The Bettie Serveert all-VU covers album is worth tracking down too.
I’m pretty passionate about the Voices Factory thing, actually. Like it’s allowed me to genuinely enjoy the VU catalog for the first time in years. I think at this point it’s almost impossible for an American male to cover VU and do anything distinctive. Voices Factory hit it from this almost 1st-album-Slapp-Happy perspective that really kills. The band is far from perfunctory, and you never get a sense that they don’t get it, or that they’re being condescending. Song selection is generally perfect. They even do something worth hearing with Sister Ray. They ought to be getting awards, rather than snark...
I couldn’t listen to it sideways
Forgot about that Bettie Serveert album
They ought to be getting awards, rather than snark...
Anyway, this reminded me that I had a great album with some cool covers cued up on spotify Count’s Rock Band: Do Not Listen If You Hate Coltrane or Maggot Brain
doug yule’s tide
i don’t think there’s anything else i once liked that looking back brings me more shame than that dave navarro album. ta be fair to me i was 16 and a slow developer. can’t remember if i liked the venus in furs cover in particular, but i did think it was cool he was covering the vu.