Velvet Underground: an unreleased track surfaces. The mysterious recording revealed in a book

An unreleased recording by the Velvet Underground could bring to light a track never heard before. The revelation – as reported by Stereogum – comes from “Do What You Fear The Most”, the new book chronicling the band's history written by Richie Unterberger and published this week. Drawing attention to the discovery was Ryan H. Walsh, musician with Hallelujah The Hills and author of several music essays, who in a post published on Tumblr recounted his own involvement in tracking down an old tape attributed to the Velvet Underground.

In the book, Unterberger credits Walsh with tipping him off about “some exceptionally rare recordings” and reconstructs the story of an unreleased tape likely recorded in the Boston area in August 1967, shortly after Nico left the group. According to the author, the recording may have been made during a rehearsal, in the studio, or over the course of a concert. Despite its technical limitations, the document would offer a significant testimony to the band's repertoire in that period, including several tracks never released on official albums and one song that apparently doesn't exist in any other known version.
Walsh added further details on his own blog: “What if I told you that during the pandemic Phil Milstein, founder of the Velvet Underground Appreciation Society, contacted me to see if I wanted to team up with him on a Velvet Underground mystery he'd stumbled onto, and that this led to the discovery of an unreleased Velvet Underground recording and, even more astonishingly, a 'new' Velvet Underground song that no one had ever heard before and that is truly amazing?”. Walsh himself explains that he and Milstein had nicknamed the track “I Don’t Really Care About You”, while Unterberger prefers the title “I Don’t Much Care For The Things That You Do” in the book.

The author – according to Stereogum – describes the track as marked by a broken, irregular melody and a restless, almost chaotic instrumental section, reminiscent of certain passages from “Son Of European Son”. The song is said to build to a frenzied crescendo before cutting off abruptly. While not considering it as memorable as the band's classics, Unterberger highlights the harshness of its lyrics and identifies a theme that would go on to recur throughout Lou Reed's work: “Reed declares that his victim isn't good enough as a man and wouldn't even make it as a girl”, a reference to the ambivalent sexual identity that would later emerge more clearly in the Velvet Underground's later work and in the singer's solo career.
Walsh, together with Milstein, is said to have already handed over the recording to a party interested in officially releasing it. No concrete details have been announced at this time, but the prospect that this unknown track may finally see the light of day remains open.

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