Customer Reviews

The Velvet Underground: New York Art

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wonderful book full of rare & well-reproduced photos, on heavy high quality pages. How about Lou Reed performing at Syracuse University for rare? How about the Falling Spikes (with Lou, Sterling, Sterling, & Angus, before Mo) on the streets of New York City, for rare? The photos are of every imaginable aspect of the group's history (including a contract with MGM Records, July 1966, signed by Christa Paffgen & the others). Probably more than a casual fan of the group would want, but a real goldmine for the most velvet of Underground fans. Includes several interviews with Velvet Underground members that are interspersed throughout the photos. A chronology, compositional music sheets (including "Heroin"), publicity photos, record labels/covers, are among the photos. My only complaint is the lack of an index.

When people speak of the work of New York's first underground art-rock band, the word that usually comes to mind is 'seminal' - after all this is the group that later influenced an entire NY rock scene from Television to Sonic Youth and many others (their influence extended well beyond these shores to most of Europe as well.)

In this new book, edited by Johan Kugelberg, the word that most comes to mind, is `art.' Kugelberg, in his love and devotion to this early NY rock ensemble, has assembled the first and only monograph of the band's formative years. This unique, coffee-table format art book compiles an impressive collection of rare photographs, handbills, press clippings, flyers, posters and handwritten lyrics from the beginning and early days of the Velvets journey.

Known in the beginning as `Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground,' (the book begins with a classified ad that Warhol placed offering to associate his name with products, bands, etc, in the New York area), the band made their name largely by playing `events' rather than mere concerts, that revolved around places like Warhol's loft parties and Steve Paul's NY club, The Scene.

While this volume's focus is primarily on the early days of the band, there is also an updated interview with the VU's Lou Reed and Maureen Tucker (the band's Sterling Morrison has since passed away while Reed and John Cale remain somewhat distant) as well as an extensive band chronology which adds the perspective of time to the mix. Several of the other reprinted articles and interviews (from Lester Bangs and others) provide a window into many of the thoughts of the band at the time of their ascent (Beatles, good - Zappa, bad.)

Kugelberg's research and rendering give way to a feeling that given the highly visual nature of rock'n'roll - and the notion of rock music as art, that there are many groups who would benefit from the almost catalog raisonne nature of this book. Hopefully, this will be a harbinger of things to come.

A delightfully dense coffee table book to pore over, documenting the development of the Velvet Underground as a band (and collection of performance artists), as well as a time capsule of the New York City arts scene in the early to late 1960s. Early on, the "Velvets" were a house band for Andy Warhol, but quickly carved out their own identity as proto-Punks and avant-garde rock and rollers.

Rizzoli has put together a great assemblage of contemporary and new interviews, criticism, photos, movie stills, manuscript lyrics and even a laudatory preface by playwright, former Czech President and rabid Velvet fan Vaclav Havel. The flow from text to images is impeccably laid out with the right amount of white space and interesting typography that gives the feel of being at a museum exhibition.

The highlight of the book is the visual feast of water-stained, tape-repaired artsy posters, handbills, album covers, set lists and other rare ephemera. Nostalgic Baby Boomers and Velvet Underground fans will treasure this compilation, but it is also an art, music and popular culture reference for a larger audience that effectively evokes the work of this highly influential group.