Okay, here's the story... you guys ready? ....yeah, go ahead and wet the tip of your pencil there...  In 2002, some guy in New York City bought an old beat-up record album at a flea market on the street with no cover for 75 cents!  The vinyl was all scratched up, like some chickens had done several square dances on it, many chickens, maybe even some roosters shaking their tail feathers!!  The white label said "VELVET UNDERGROUND", and the word "acetate" was also on the label.  Now, the rock group The Velvet Underground had in fact recorded in 1966, a demo acetate of their 1st album, 'The Velvet Underground & Nico", famously known as the banana album.  They only made 2 copies of it, and Maureen (or Moe, or just Mo) Tucker, the band's second drummer somehow wound up with a copy still in her possession, hopefully in pristine shape!  Wouldn't that be something?!  Anyway, the other copy  was peddled to Columbia Records in 1966 for a possible deal, a record contract, by that enterprising rascal known as Andy Warhol, yeah, in between painting cans of soup & Marilyn Monroe portraits!  The Columbia record execs laughed their pants off at the wild & crazy music and stories heard on the album sending the ground breaking music peddlers home, empty handed, but with the acetate in hand, mind you.  The music on the record is just  incredible!!!  At times superior, in my mind, to what was actually released on the 1967 1st pressing versions, and the dozens of pressings afterward!!  In the coming years and decades, this 2nd copy got lost somewhere, maybe stolen?  Forgotten for sure.  We were going to the moon!  And Woodstock, the Fillmores closed, and The Band, The Dead & The Allman Brothers played for 700,000 in a racetrack somewhere in upstate New York.   The E Street Band & their Boss became famous while the always prolific Zimmy gave us two wonderful Rolling Thunder tours!!  What a Ride!!!  Somehow, life went on, the 1966 acetate was forgotten, until 2002 when it was found again!  Oh, oh, the guy put the old  crapped out record on Ebay where the bids went all the way up to the moon almost, $155,401!!!  Not bad for an investment of less than a $1.  But it turned out the high bidder that won was unable to cough up the dough, or bread to pay for it!  So a different winning bidder was able to purchase it for only $25,200.  Still a good haul for less than a $1.  Anyways, the acetate was "cleaned up, somewhat" (still sounds horrible at times) and 5,000 vinyl copies were pressed up at a later date (2012)!  My Italian collector friend Gian Franco Giudici who probably loved the Velvets almost as much as me sent me a CDr copy of it from Milan years ago (as shown below) and I'm glad he did!!  The demo recordings are incredibly worth a listening, especially if you are a Velvets or Lou Reed fan!  Yep, a great record!  Shame on the stupid Columbia people who rejected the music and the band back in 1966!!!  It would have been a great release and Columbia Records could have scored BIG!  But naw, they had the brains of worms...