http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/37881758

Forty years after it was made, The Velvet Underground's first recording has become a financial hit — in cyberspace. Bought for 75 cents four years ago at a Manhattan flea market, the rare recording of music that ended up on the influential New York band's first album, "The Velvet Underground & Nico," sold on eBay for a closing bid of $155,401.

The buyer is a mystery, only identified by the eBay screen name: "mechadaddy."

But a greater mystery endures: How did the 12-inch, acetate LP end up buried in a box of records at a flea market?

Warren Hill, a collector from Montreal, bought the record in September 2002 at the flea market, according to an article written by his friend, Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records in Portland, Ore. in the current issue of Goldmine Magazine.

Isaacson helped Hill decipher the nature of the lucky find.

"We cued it up and were stunned — the first song was not 'Sunday Morning' as on the 'Velvet Underground & Nico' Verve LP, but rather it was 'European Son' — the song that is last on that LP, and it was a version neither of us had ever heard before!" Isaacson wrote.

The recording turned out to be an in-studio acetate made during Velvet Underground's first recording over four days in April 1966 at New York's Scepter Studios. The record reportedly is only one of two in existence; the other is privately owned, with rumors circulating about the owner's identity. Columbia Records rejected the album.

"I immediately took the needle off the record, and realized that we had something special," Isaacson wrote. Hill and Isaacson photographed the album, made a digital backup copy of the music, and decided to put it up for auction. The first bids, which began Nov. 28, rose $20,000.

Velvet Underground left its musical stamp on hundreds of other bands.

The band, named after a book about edgy sex practices in the 1960s, was fueled by Moe Tucker's hard-driving drumming, John Cale's anxious viola, and lead singer Lou Reed, whose lyrics spoke of drug-induced beauty and gritty Lower East Side realities.

The first album featured Nico, the European model-actress-singer in a first and last recorded appearance with the band.

False bid sinks Velvet Underground auction
BY: Actress Archives | Tuesday, December 12, 2006
ADVERTISEMENT
A Canadian man who discovered a rare acetate Velvet Underground album has been thwarted in his attempt to sell the collector's item on the Internet auction site eBay. Friday's final bid on the item, a staggering $155,406 US turned out to be too good to be true.


A Montreal man, Warren Hill, discovered the acetate, a temporary, in-studio medium preferred by musicians to record day to day work and to listen to at home, at a street sale in New York in 2002. Hill purchased the Velvet Underground acetate for 75 cents, and after waiting, he contacted his friend also fellow music collector, Portland's Erik Issacson, to verify its authenticity. Together, Issacson and Hill determined the acetate to be a draft of sorts of "Velvet Underground & Nico". The acetate is thought to be a "draft" of the album that Andy Warhol, one of the band's mentors, have tried to sell.


In an interview with the CBC, Warren Hill said that the auction "seems to have gone badly at the end." While the ruined auction was "not tearing [him] apart,", Hill said that "I just don't really feel like talking about it."


Warren Hill had been nervous as he watched the bidding price of the acetate skyrocket. At that time, Hill told the CBC that "Things have kind of fallen through before so I'm not gonna get too excited about it yet." Hill added that "I just want to wait until things actually happen before I get too excited."


It now seems that the sale, won by a user with the handle "mechadaddy" in the Los Angeles area, was debunked when a friend of "mechadaddy" bid on the item using his e-mail account. The Globe and Mail quoted part of the reply e-mail from "mechadaddy" that started with "Ohmigod, I'm so sorry." The e-mail offered an apology, which included "I can barely afford gas for my car," let along more than $150,000 for a 40-year-old musical collector's item.


Speaking from his business, Backdoor Records and Pastries, Hill told the Globe and Mail that "I kind of had my doubts early on . . . especially when the numbers started to jump more than we thought they would." Despite the let-down, Hill remained stoic. "That's the way things go."