VELVETS VIEW

“ANOTHER VIEW.” The Velvet Underground. Verve/PolyGram. Not quite the mindbust that was last year’s collection of unreleased Velvet Underground tracks (“V.U.”), this all-too-brief LP is still a must for serious Velvets fans. Paced by a studio version of “We’re Gonna Have a Goodtime Together”--one of the warmest and greatest songs Lou Reed has ever written--and a loosey-goosey alternate studio take of the Velvets’ perennial third-person anthem “Rock and Roll,” this not-for-the-curious-consumer disc also contains three instrumentals (two of which fairly scream for vocals), two versions of the vaguely folk-rock slice of vintage viola violence “Hey Mr. Rain,” the oft-bootlegged one-joke “Ferryboat Bill” and a prototypal Velvets sweet little rock ‘n’ roll number (“Coney Island Steeplechase”) that sounds as if its lead vocal was intended strictly as a guideline. The next sound you hear is the bottom of the barrel scraping. . . .