The story of how the Velvet Underground shows at The End in Cole Avenue, Dallas, were recorded has been recounted before. Suffice to say that he recorded 2 (almost) complete shows, on the 18th and 19th October 1969. The first show (or maybe only the 1st set of the first show?) was recorded from the back of the venue and as a result sounds slightly "muffled". He was then invited (by the band) to bring his equipment up to the front of the stage, and recorded the 2nd show, some songs from which would eventually be included on the official "Live 1969" release in 1974. (Which itself was probably only released at Steve Sesnick's instigation in order to "cash in" on Lou's early 1970s solo successes)
In the mid 1980s, I obtained a C90 cassette called "1969 AGAIN" - it contained a selection of the "End Cole Avenue" songs which had NOT been included on the "Live 1969" LP, along with 4 studio demos from a 1969 acetate. I do not know who compiled that cassette, but whoever it was obviously had access to a copy of the complete recordings (or possibly acetates made from them - there's a hint of vinyl noise on some tracks). In 1990, a dedicated Italian fan obtained a DAT copy of the 19 October show tape and passed it on to Aulica, who did a nice job packaging it into a 2CD set in a purple velvet pouch. (Those were the great "copyright protection gap" days when bootlegs had a semi-legal standing in Italy and Germany). The exercise was repeated a couple of years later and the 18 October show was issued in a red pouch. Unfortunately, mastering problems with the 2nd release resulted in digital "glitches" on some tracks. Both Aulica sets also contained additional "jam" tracks - most of these were extracted from a longer "instrumental jams" tape which (probably) featured the Velvets' road crew and possibly also Doug Yule (but probably didn't feature either Lou, Moe or Sterling).
The "1969 AGAIN" cassette also featured the truncated version of "Sister Ray" from the 19 October show which subsequently surfaced on the "Lou Reed - A True Rock'N Roller" bootleg CD.
In 2008, Scorpio included 4 of the songs from the 18 October show on their "Dispatches From The Dream Factory" 3CD set. The accompanying booklet credited these as being from an "original first generation transfer", but all suffered from distracting audio artefacts, and had a "muffled" sound. (One possibility is that these 4 tracks do indeed exist as an acetate, but the "1969 AGAIN" copy was made before the acetate had been played many times whereas the "Dispatches" copy was sourced from the same acetate, but after many many plays.....)
Whatever the reason, the tracks from the "1969 AGAIN" cassette sound much "brighter" and less processed than the "Dispatches" versions. There's a layer of hiss over everything, but at the very least, they do not exhibit the audio and digital processing artefacts that are present on both the Aulica and Scorpio releases.......
Lou Reed: guitar, vocals
Sterling Morrison: guitar
Doug Yule: bass, vocals
Moe Tucker: drums