Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

I don't think it was one of the incarnations of Delmonico's restaurant, seems to have been the Hotel Delmonico, now named after someone else.

Think that article neglects to mention Barbara Rubin and comoany going around the room shoving microphones at the shrinks to harass them with invasive questions about their love lives before the VU performance.

And

The event is also covered by the New York Herald Tribune, for whom Seymour Krim writes: “The neo-Jungians, Harry Black Sullivanites, existentialists and just plain bread-and-butter head doctors got an electric shock treatment they’ll never forget…While blinding sun-gun lights bombed the dress-suited psychiatrists as they attacked roast beef and red wine, movie cameras ground away, the Velvet Underground rock outfit began pounding the beat as if it were fire-engine time, and underground film star Edie Sedgwick began to shake it while poet Gerard Malanga went into his Whip Dance. The first five Freudians left in a huff. Dr. Marcel Heiman, as striking-looking as any underground actor but very much a street-level gent with an office on Fifth Avenue, said, ‘I’m ready to vomit.’” The performance even gets a mention in Newsweek later in the month.

Oddly, Seymour Krim’s story suggests there are currently several vocalists involved with the Velvets. “Inside the ballroom,” he writes, “singers Nico, Jane Odin, and Chic Cicarelli added to the unaccustomed spire in the hardworking analysts’ lives by dishing up Bob Dylan-negro-blues-bossa-nova-type material while the Velvet Underground blasted the room with high-decibel sounds.” It seems most likely, however, that Odin and Cicarelli have joined in informally, as their names will not pop up again in the VU saga.

Unterberger, Richie; Unterberger, Richie. White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day (Revised & Expanded Ebook Edition) (pp. 208-209)

Bob Dylan-negro-blues-bossa-nova-type material while the Velvet Underground blasted the room with high-decibel sounds.” AKA what shrinks used to call BREAKTHROUGH--thanks James! And thanks, Seymour KRIM!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Krim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3WMbxheyaQ

Just read this whole thread off the back of watching the doc - excellent use of a Sunday fyi. Now diving into all the live material which somehow I mostly haven't listened to.

VUare Bizarro World Beatles

Yes! Underrated/band-defining drummer; career trajectory converging to dashed-off stories about Sweet Loretta Jane, Lonesome Cowboy Bill, Rocky Raccoon, Sweet Jane, etc; person called John. Basically the same band.

Thought the doc did a great job of illustrating the context for the band: how these people found themselves in this place at this time, making this music. Less good at what happened once they were doing actual band stuff imo.

xp definitely give a listen to "Sweet Sister Ray", imo a key piece of history that remains unreleased:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFaOyQbDTKs

I thought it was on the big White Light/ White Heat box set?

no, the La Cave version is the one people want

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/309-invisible-hits-the-velvet-undergrounds-elusive-sweet-sister-ray/

Thought the doc did a great job of illustrating the context for the band: how these people found themselves in this place at this time, making this music. Less good at what happened once they were doing actual band stuff imo.

it would have been 100% less-marketable as a band doc, but would have been cool if the movie had been all about the buildup to VU and ended with the release of the 1st album

Yes indeed.

There are a few rock biographies like that. Re-make/Re-model: Becoming Roxy Music by Michael Bracewell has lots of information about the band members' artistic and cultural environments as young men (and about 5 pages on Bryan Ferry's hairdresser) but ends with the recording of the first album. In Joe Jackson's memoir, he gets to 1978 about 15 pages from the end of the book.

Feel like there is a thing in any kind of biography of the Before and the After. The Before is the kind of interesting part of how the person forms their identity, the After is all the "And then I wrote" etc. Anthony Burgess was kind enough to split his autobiography into two volumes along that fault line.

not that you could have done a miniseries but the whole trajectory of the members lives is so fascinating for the superfan, so unlike Roxy or Joe Jackson settling into steady and comfortable careers; Lit PhDd, Wal-mart and Tea Party rally, methadone goth, midwifing "Hallelujah" to singing competitions, etc.

Heh

you forgot "tugboat captain"!

Ferryboat Sterl.

And that’s the short and long of it

you forgot "tugboat captain"!

"Sweet Sister Ray" is a groovy jam, but I guess I don't really don't hear the magick that others seem to hear in it...

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-new-york-earth-room-new-york-new-york

What’s the link? Is that the End of Cole Ave venue?

No. Walter De Maria was the drummer for The Primitives.

The Velvet Ground

They're gonna tell you that everything is just dirt.

Ha, exactly.

xxxp oh! I was looking for Maclise or Powers and concluded it must be the venue itself

"worth a million dollars" lol

You're just dirt
You're just dirt
The only word for you is dirt
That's the only word that hurt, you're just dirt
That's all you're worth - cheap, cheap dirt
You know they call it cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, uptown dirt

Not so cheap, actually.

Ha, was thinking of that one too.

Gearhead tells all:
The Kent Copa that Sterling and Lou were playing was from the 1964–’66 range, since theirs had the more angular, rectangle-shaped pickups. These were low-output pickups with a strong DC resistance rating, but they were rather gnarly with a hint of overdrive, even at calm control settings. The real magic happens when the Copa is paired with a raunchy amp (à la the Danelectro-made Silvertone 1484) and a primitive fuzz like the early Vox Tone Bender.

Two other quirks to note: The bridge was a non-adjustable plastic job that did not help with intonation. So, if your guitar was off from day one, it would be off forever. Second, the tremolo on the Kent Copa is actually very good! The spring is recessed into the body and the darn unit just works amazingly and has a great feel.
https://www.premierguitar.com/pro-advice/wizard-of-odd/kent-copa-guitar

!!!! don't think this was posted before?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVxkWnwcFYw

News to me, thanks.

wow!

I think it's in the documentary?

Guess I must have been focusing on the wrong corner of the split screen.

I don't know if it had audio though.

I was about to say it sounds and looks like Moe wasn't there and that is indeed the case:

"Candy Says" live at the Paramount Theatre, Springfield MA, April 17, 1970

Video shot by Steve Nelson on monochrome soundless videotape. The audio was captured separately by unknown source

The Velvet's performed this night as a three piece (Lou, Sterling, and Doug) Moe had just gone on maternity leave

Wow that looks like a transmission that slipped out of the ether

Right, exactly. It’s kind of a triptych version of a Warhol Screen Test.

She went on maternity leave but they still set her drums up? Or maybe they belonged to the opening or closing band?

Most likely. The Tots or The Sundowners or whoever it was.

audio for the whole show is here: https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/615656049044848640/the-velvet-underground-paramount-theater

doug plays drums on a few tracks.

I was six days old!

Yeah, I remember it from the documentary.

One of those daft Facebook articles mentioned The Muppets doing the Velvet Underground on one of their "number" songs on Sesame Street or some such.

Did you remember this?

"Shiny, shiny, shiny number seven ..."

Nope, not found it..

I'd've thought it was a wind up somewhere along the way either something misunderstood by the writer or a joke on their part.
Would be very surprised to find they were overground enough to register in that way.

THough maybe it was a windup on the part of a hip production team. Some kind of irony in knowing the source vs the usage and thinkikng that the audience would never make the connection.