Velvet Arcade

I started out with these two albums thinking, "How could Funeral beat The Velvet Underground and Nico?" even though I've never been a big Velvet Underground fan, while Funeral was one of my faves of the early part of this Millenium. Then I listened to The Velvet Underground and Nico, which I'm not sure I'd ever listened to all the way through, and was kind of anxious for it to be over. I was pretty bored, except for Heroin which made me want to try it. Then I put on Funeral, and thought, "what was the big deal about this album?" Then I kept listening and realized that the second half of the album, which I hardly knew because of my habit at the time of listening to half an album in the car on the way to work, was really good. So I went back to The Velvet Underground and Nico and listened to some tracks again. Well, now it made sense how this album is part of pretty much all of rock 'n' roll since then and there's no way it came out in 1967. I'd put it in the same category as that moon landing hoax. Then I went back to Funeral and started to enjoy the first half again and everything started getting jumbled up in my head like this:



Okay, Girl Talk I ain't.

So, now I'm really enjoying both of these albums, but I think there's more depth to The Velvet Underground and Nico and their huge influence weighs heavily in their favor.
At the same time, I'm probably going to listen to Funeral more often than The Velvet Underground and Nico and they were part part of a group of bands that shaped up everyone's beats and has had a pretty major effect on much of what I really like in music today. I don't know if this was a music press-acknowledged trend or just one in my head, but between 2004 and 06 I spent a lot of time with The Arcade Fire, Do Make Say Think, Broken Social Scene, and other associated awesomeness from Canada.

Okay. I guess what I'm saying is that I thought I didn't really have a preference just from listening, so I would argue from influence, but for ME these albums are equally influential, so I'm back to square one. Which one do I like more? I'm going to go do something else and think a bit...

(eating lunch and listening some more)

Here's the deal: When I listen to Funeral I feel a kind of good that makes me want to create something. When I listen to The Velvet Underground and Nico I feel a kind of good that makes me want to destroy something creatively. Crap. This is hard. Funeral wins.