Posted on 12/11/2006 2:16:32 PM PST by weegee
The fabled acetate of the Velvet Underground's famous first recording is still worth only 75 cents (U.S.).
This is because the highest bidder in a 10-day online auction for the fragile acetate that ended last Friday evening "has proved to be bogus," a disappointed Warren Hill said yesterday. He's the 30-year-old Montrealer who, in September 2002, innocently paid 75 cents for the 12-inch, nine-song acetate after finding it at a street sale in New York's Chelsea district. Later he determined the acetate was, in fact, a test-pressing of sorts, from 1966, of the Velvet Underground's first-ever recording session in a grungy New York studio.
Hill and a friend, Portland, Ore. record-store proprietor Eric Isaacson, arranged this fall to have Saturn Records of Oakland, Calif. oversee the sale of the acetate on eBay, starting Nov. 28. By around 11:30 p.m. ET Friday, the auction's closing, the winning bid seemed to be $155,401 (U.S.) from a buyer called "mechadaddy" apparently living in the Los Angeles area. Yesterday, the major news services, including Reuters and Associated Press, were in fact reporting that the disc sold for that sum. When the Globe reached Hill, though, the story was different.
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.
Related to this article Articles 75 cents to $100,000 Latest Comments I'm sure Warren took my advice and waited for the cheque to clear... Ebay is not the place to sell anything like this. It is full... 2 reader comments | Join the conversation Follow this writer Add JAMES ADAMS to my e-mail alerts The Hill acetate has attracted considerable attention in the last two years, largely because of its rarity.
There may be only one other one in existence. As well, the sequencing, arrangements and mixes of the material are different from what was eventually released, in 1967, as The Velvet Underground and Nico album. That recording, with a cover by Velvets' mentor Andy Warhol, was recently voted the 13th greatest rock record ever by the editors of Rolling Stone.
Speaking from Backdoor Records and Pastries, the business he owns in Montreal, Hill admitted he's "totally" disappointed by the turn of events. At the same time, "I kind of had my doubts early on . . . especially when the numbers started to jump more than we thought they would."
Hill, Isaacson and Saturn Records figured "realistically" the acetate might sell for between $10,000 and $30,000. Bidding, in fact, stayed within the low to mid-five figures for the first five or six days of the auction, but then leaped into the $100,000 realm on Dec. 3. By Wednesday last week, it had reached $130,000.
Asked what's next for the acetate, Hill said "there's a couple of different things that might happen," but he refused to specify what they are. One possibility might be to find -- or at least try to find -- a legitimate under-bidder among the 200-plus individuals who posted offers online. Another might be to sell the acetate at a live auction, possibly at one of the more reputable record conventions in the U.S.
Truth be told, Hill's not the most passionate of Velvet Underground fans. A recent graduate, in history, from Concordia University, he's president of the self-founded Irma Thomas and Minit Records Fan Club (Thomas is a New Orleans soul singer, Minit a now-defunct indie record label) and the publisher of a music fanzine called $2 (Comes with Mixtape).
"Right now I'm getting caught up in Christmas," he said. He'll be shutting up Backdoor Records and Pastries shortly to head out to Vancouver to visit his parents. Then early in the new year, he's off to Taiwan for a visit he describes as "part holiday, part scholarly."
What a bummer. I posted a thread about this on Friday night. Too bad the high bid was false. This happens a lot, especially on extremely rare stuff.
Punishment should be high for fraud at this level.
It happens with charity auctions too.
Then again, I believe in the death penalty for conspiracy to commit large scale vote fraud.
They were something else, back in the day. They created a real scene. Much more interesting and innocent than what kids do today. I'll bet Lou Reed was all of 22 years old. Will wiki that
Lewis Allen "Lou" Reed (born March 2, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York) is an ....
So he was 24 in 1966. When the Velvet Underground made this tape which is prolly awful
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