Because three people (my Dad, Steve F. and Terri - thanks!) have forwarded me this story, I feel sort of obligated to link to it here:

First Velvet Underground acetate sells for $155,401

"We pieced together that this was probably a surviving copy of the legendary Scepter Studios recordings, which had been regarded as lost (hence the application of the moniker “the lost Scepter Studios recordings” to these unheard sessions over the years). The recording is composed of the primitive first “finished” version of the LP that Andy Warhol had shopped to Columbia as a ready-to-release debut album by his protégé collective."

I'm not sure HOW I feel about this, frankly. That record, as all of the VU releases, is firmly etched into my mind and is still opening itself to new and fresh interpretations on repeated listenings. I think it's safe to say that I get lots of different things from it now than when I was first listening to it as a pimply-faced teenager. My only previous knowledge of the VU was (look how cool I am!) from a copy of Loaded, which I remember convincing my Dad (when I was maybe seven or eight) to buy for me because I thought it's comic-book illustration cover was cool.

Well, that, and all the hushed reverence that I read the rockcrit intelligentsia spout fountains about - about some mystical artifacts that were then nigh-impossible to find - in my teens.

So do I want something new intruding into my shockingly still-forming opinions about the old?