Originally broadcast in 1986 in the UK, The South Bank Show’s Velvet Underground documentary was directed by Kim Evans with the help of Mary Harron. It contains interviews with Lou, John, Sterling, Moe, Nico, Warhol and lots of early Velvet performance footage, including stuff shot by Jonas Mekas. For hardcore Velvet fans none of this will be new, but isn’t it nice to have it compiled in a visually pleasing package? And for the casual VU fan, this is essential.
John Cale: “The only reason we wore sunglasses on stage was because we couldn’t stand the sight of the audience.”
In June 1993, Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker kicked-off their official (sans Nico, who had died in 1988) Velvet Underground reunion tour with two nights at the Playhouse Theater, in Edinburgh. There had been rumors of a VU reunion for years, and these rumors slowly became real after Reed and Cale had successfully toured with Songs for Drella - their musical collaboration celebrating the life of Andy Warhol.
From their opening gig in Scotland, The Velvet Underground then played London, before taking their show to Holland, Germany, Czech Republic, France, Switzerland, and Italy, where the tour finished on 9 July. During the tour, they also gave a headline grabbing performance at the Glastonbury Festival, and had a WTF? moment when they supported U2 for five dates.
The VU reunion was so successful that an American tour was planned, and a showcase on MTV Unplugged… was all but booked. However, before any of this happened, Reed and Cale fell out and all plans were shelved. In 1995, Sterling Morrison died. The following year, the VU were inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Reed, Cale and Tucker reformed the Velvet Underground for the last time.
This footage is from the Velvet Underground’s performance at the L’Olympia, Paris, in June 1993.
More VU, ‘Femme Fatale’ and ‘Waiting for the Man’, after the jump…
Seldom heard early recording of a recently-out-of-college Lou Reed (with some uncredited musicians performing as “The Roughnecks”) during his pre-Velvet Underground days as a staff songwriter and performer at Pickwick International Records. This and three other tracks recorded in 1964, showed up on a 1979 Velvets bootleg called “the velvet underground, etc.” Obviously that’s his voice, and it most certainly sounds like Lou on guitar, too
This particular bootleg, which came from Australia, was once a record collector holy grail, along with its companion volume, “the velvet underground & so on.” Now you can easily find both of them on audio blogs.
Although many music fans were dismayed to see the clip of the Velvet Underground’s drummer, Maureen “Moe” Tucker, at a Tea party gathering in 2009 that made the rounds a few weeks ago, she remains unconcerned about their opinions (as she should be). The St. Louis Riverfront Times contacted Moe Tucker and she agreed to answer a few questions via email:
How did you get involved with the local Tea Party movement?
I’m not “involved” with the local movement. I went to the first Tea Party in June or July of 2009 because it was within striking distance and I wanted to be counted.
Are you still involved in Tea Party activities?
I do my own protesting via email and postcards. Anyone who thinks I’m crazy about Sarah Palin, Bush, etc. has made quite the presumption. I have voted Democrat all my life, until I started listening to what Obama was promising and started wondering how the hell will this utopian dream land be paid for? For those who actually believe that their taxes won’t go up in order to pay for all this insanity: good luck!
What are some misconceptions that people have about Tea Parties (and their attendants) in general?
That they’re all racists, they’re all religious nuts, they’re all uninformed, they’re all stupid, they want no taxes at all and no regulations whatsoever. Those “arguments” are presented by the Dems in order to keep their base of uninformed voters on their side. In my opinion, as soon as you start name-calling, your opinion is immediately deemed invalid!
Have you always had conservative views?
To be honest, I never paid attention to what the hell was going on. My always voting Democrat was the result of that. My philosophy was and is all politicians are liars, bums and cheats. I make decisions on an issue by issue basis. I’m far more of an independent than a conservative or liberal. I don’t agree with all of either side, and I think anyone who claims to is either a fool or a damn liar.
Did your experience working at Wal-Mart influence you?
I don’t think so. I did some protesting there, too!
When you consented to an interview with that television reporter, did you envision that your words would be spread online a year and a half later?
No. I’m amazed at this.
Interview: Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground Sets the Record Straight (Riverfront Times)
One of the oddest parcel post packages ever sent was “mailed” from Grangeville to Lewiston, Idaho on February 19, 1914. The 48 1/2 pound package was just short of the 50 pound limit. The name of the package was May Pierstorff, four years old.
May’s parents decided to send their daughter for a visit with her grandparents, but were reluctant to pay the train fare. Noticing that there were no provisions in the parcel post regulations specifically concerning sending a person through the mails, they decided to “mail” their daughter. The postage, 53-cents in parcel post stamps, was attached to May’s coat. This little girl traveled the entire distance to Lewiston in the train’s mail compartment and was delivered to her grandmother’s home by the mail clerk on duty, Leonard Mochel.
Now that’s what I call finding a loophole. At least they didn’t put her in a box.
Unavoidably, I am reminded of Lou Reed’s short story of poor Waldo Jeffers, hapless protagonist of “The Gift” by the Velvet Underground.
The sound synch is so cool on this and it’s particularly impressive considering that Darren Hacker made the video in a very lo-tech way. Hacker describes the process:
“I rigged up 2 ancient VCRs and a CD player across my living room floor, layed down on my stomach, cued everything up and then manually activated all 3 devices at precise intervals, live…in real time. One take, no edits…”
Terrific entry in the BBC series The Seven Ages Of Rock.
The story of how artistic and conceptual expression permeated rock. From the pop-art multi-media experiments of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground to the sinister gentility of Peter Gabriel’s Genesis, White Light, White Heat Place traces how rock became a vehicle for artistic ideas and theatrical performance. We follow Pink Floyd from the fated art school genius of Syd Barrett through the global success of Dark Side of the Moon to the ultimate rock theatre show, The Wall. Along the way, the film explores the retro-futurism of Roxy Music and the protean world of David Bowie.
Preeminent oldies reissue label Sundazed has released a box set containing all of the Velvet Underground’s 7-inch 45rpm singles, including two that were prepared for release, but canceled. and two radio advertisements.
The box includes exact reproduction of all of the first singles that VU issued, as well as two that were can celled and never went into production. It comes packaged in a fancy box with rare photos of the band and liner notes written by long-time fan and Rolling Stone writer David Fricke.
The records are mixed in mono sound, which adds to their vintage appeal. As Fricke explains in the press release, “The Velvet Underground were a great singles band?
It used to pain me to think that the only footage in existence of the Velvet Underground performing was silent. Think about it: Have you ever seen any sync-sound film of the Velvets in any of the various documentaries made about them, Lou Reed, Nico, John Cale or Andy Warhol for that matter? I didn’t think so, but thanks to the rather enterprising employee of either the Museum of Modern Art or else the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh who liberated Symphony in Sound you can now see the Velvets in action and actually hear them too! That’s the good part.
The bad part is that this film, made to be screened behind the band onstage during The Exploding Plastic Inevitable “happenings” is pretty boring. It goes on for a LONG time with not much happening besides a drony primitive jam and a frenetic camera zooming in and out. Nico is there (with her young son Ari) but she’s not singing, just hitting a tambourine. Lou doesn’t sing either. At one point the camera droops on its tripod and no one readjusts it for a while. So it’s boring, most Warhol films were boring—Warhol himself always said his movies were better discussed than actually seen—but it is the freaking Velvet Underground playing live on camera for what is probably the ONLY time during their original incarnation, so it’s worth looking at for that reason alone. If you can get over how dull it is, it’s actually pretty cool. There are several versions of this online, this one, from Google Video is merely the longest. I don’t know if this is the whole thing but in the later moments of the bootleg DVD I have, it gets better when the cops show up due to a noise complaint and Warhol has to deal with them himself.
