When I couldn't decide what to get someone as a gift, I would give them a new factory cassette of Velvet Underground starting with "Candy Says" which was available inexpensively at the record store. Everyone I did this for disliked the album. Everyone I know who bought the album liked it.

I had a phase where I listened to Metal Machine Music almost every day, on CD. I would make it through a record side equivalent and a half, usually. I did make it all the way through a few times. It relaxed me. "..the all-time guaranteed lease breaker. Every tenant in America should own a copy of this album... MMM is Lou's soul.. the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum." 



In Croatia and Bosnia before the war the information ministry hanging on to Tito's Yugoslavia played "Dirty Boulevard" over and over as anti-capitalist propaganda, everywhere you went, grocery stores, post offices. I thought "Cool. Lou."

In an interview he said "There's nothing more boring than an ex-Catholic and an ex-drunk." I was trying to quit at the time (the latter) and was far from doing so. I recall only venting about the quote to one person once. It didn't actually delay my quitting so much as Pessoa's "Your poems are of interest to mankind; your liver isn't.. Bless your poems and be damned" may have added 4-5 months to the festivities. He returns to the Catholic theme vis a vis Warhol...



on that album I learned who Valerie Solanis was in perhaps her most unflattering introduction of all.

And he never did a "Ger..i..tol..It's the life of me.." commercial.