Most of what the Velvet Underground represents to fans, nerds, fetishists, etcetera is nothing more than a buncha drug addled, pretendo artists, self indulging in the medium of rock music. And even for the punkers that guess at the genres genesis springing from somewhere around Lou Reed’s genitals they’re just missing what’s actually there.

Of course, Reed missed what was there as well. Amidst his cool, drug induced persona, the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the group just wanted the next big thing. It wasn’t any different than the Beatles racing the Beach Boys or Coltrane and Miles achieving various steps on the way to oblivion. But in Reed’s figuring that the Velvets refuted basic blues rock and consciously moving to some sort of contrived post modern compositional mole hill, he was working only to secure a legacy. I guess he did. But it’s mostly predicated on falsehoods.

If even a brief examination of the Velvets’ catalog of songs is undertaken, countless blues based pop songs spring out. And even if you dismiss Loaded from this academic pursuit, the band’s first album is rife with songs that could have been rendered as radio hits. That’s a thread throughout the band’s work. Even “Heroin,” at its head, has a pretty palatable pop hook affixed.

Wading through some of the forced vulgarity and purposefully inserted bacchanalia are a clutch of songs about relationships. And while most of them come in the form of a Lou Reed commentary, some are plaintively sweet. Of course, none of the aforementioned fanatics want to hear that as it detracts from the perpetually distorted vision of the Velvets as a group of dope sick art vampires, but it’s true. And on The Velvet Underground Live (Vol. 1 & 2), even as it closely predates Loaded, finds the band working out some of its love songs to good effect – and in almost hi-fidelity.

The second volume in the live collection has an extended version of “What Goes On,” which could be interpreted in any number of ways, but seeing as the Velvets are a rock band, it’s pretty easy to perceive this track as Reed recounting the ups and downs of a relationship. Yup, it could be about smack, but from all of the live recordings that I’ve come across of the band, the musicianship the springs forth doesn’t really point to a group of drug freaks. Have you heard latter day Johnny Thunders…

The first disc, though, finds the Velvets – during the Doug Yule period – working through an early track in “Pale Blue Eyes.” And regardless of other tracks being able to be picked apart and reassembled to fit the views of the fan/listener/smack heap, it’d be pretty difficult to figure this for anything other than a love ballad. In the lines “The fact that you are married/Only proves, you're my best friend/But it's truly, truly a sin” it seems rather obvious as to the topic being addressed. While I might consider this one of the high points of the Velvets’ catalog, it probably isn’t. It does, though, have an emotive quality that is frequently absent from much of Reed’s story telling. For that, alone, it stands as an indispensible portion of not just this band’s work, but of rock from the 1960s.