What Goes On (album) - Recording and Collection

Recording and Collection

After The Velvet Underground's back catalogue had been re-issued, thanks to their rising popularity among the New Wave community, on vinyl and compact disc during the 1980s, the next logical steps were to issue a best-of album and a box set. Verve Records released The Best of The Velvet Underground: Words and Music of Lou Reed (1989) and the latter by compiling a box set simply called The Velvet Underground (1986). This box set came with an entire album's worth of unreleased material but quickly became inessential when that bonus album was issued separately later that same year as Another View.

The independent record company Raven Records requested and received permission from both Polygram and Atlantic Records to compile their own box set for the Australian market. Compiler Dominic Molumby took a documentary-like approach to the project, interspersing original album cuts with rarities and spoken word intermezzos. Because of the many rarities, the box set was a favourite on import of the Velvet Underground fan community.

Although largely superseded by 1995's Polydor box set, Peel Slowly and See, What Goes On still houses tracks unique to this set (the documentary bits, the acetate version of "Ride into the Sun" and two 1969 live tracks, "After Hours" and "I'm Sticking with You").