For a kid from the suburbs, or rural fringe, moving into the city in the 1970s or 1980s, maybe still, the Velvets were a talismanic transitional object, a direct hit of the demimonde telling you that you have arrived, you are now a city dweller, the city like something living and dying at the same time, the beauty and ugliness all mixed up, and you now an anonymous denizen of its streets and neighborhoods, and you like it.
Sorry to be boring, but just for the record, the band continued after Lou Reed left in August 1970. Sterling Morrison left a year later to the month, and Moe Tucker three months after that, but Doug Yule kept some version of "The Velvet Underground" going, for better or worse, until the spring of 1973.
From your eyewitnesses' accounts, it sounds like the 1993 shows in Germany and Scotland were a lot better than the gawdawful Paris dates captured for posterity on CD and video.
I had a similar reaction upon first hearing Heroin, at age 16, shortly after the album’s release. I was so terrified I was certain the police would shortly come through my bedroom door and haul me off to reform school. Venus In Furs elicited another reaction: nervous laughter. Black Angel’s Death Song, was the track that locked me in, as it matched up with my willful adolescent weirdness. I hated Nico.
For a kid from the suburbs, or rural fringe, moving into the city in the 1970s or 1980s, maybe still, the Velvets were a talismanic transitional object, a direct hit of the demimonde telling you that you have arrived, you are now a city dweller, the city like something living and dying at the same time, the beauty and ugliness all mixed up, and you now an anonymous denizen of its streets and neighborhoods, and you like it.
Sorry to be boring, but just for the record, the band continued after Lou Reed left in August 1970. Sterling Morrison left a year later to the month, and Moe Tucker three months after that, but Doug Yule kept some version of "The Velvet Underground" going, for better or worse, until the spring of 1973.
From your eyewitnesses' accounts, it sounds like the 1993 shows in Germany and Scotland were a lot better than the gawdawful Paris dates captured for posterity on CD and video.
I had a similar reaction upon first hearing Heroin, at age 16, shortly after the album’s release. I was so terrified I was certain the police would shortly come through my bedroom door and haul me off to reform school. Venus In Furs elicited another reaction: nervous laughter. Black Angel’s Death Song, was the track that locked me in, as it matched up with my willful adolescent weirdness. I hated Nico.