![]() ![]() The documentary seems to ask, might Reed himself have caught Cale’s provocation on TV? Perhaps, between visits to gay bars and heroin dealers. So did everyone he would run with.Īs the game-show segment plays, Haynes intercuts video of Lou Reed, Velvet Underground’s singer, staring into a camera. This footage makes culture clash and generational change feel visceral: Cale, who fled a dreary Welsh upbringing via the New York avant-garde classical scene, twisted against postwar mass conformity. The show was called I’ve Got a Secret, and Cale’s secret, he tells some perplexed-looking contestants, was that he once performed a piano piece for more than 18 hours. ![]() Interviews serve more as texture than as narration, so that, as Haynes told Rolling Stone, “the music and the images lead us, not the words.”Īfter opening with squalling distortion set to a black screen, Haynes zaps far away from rock and roll to a peppy 1963 game show featuring the future Velvet Underground member John Cale. Told largely with archival footage presented in split-screen, it is a swirling, 110-minute collage with a consistent, humming rhythm. Haynes’s movies to date, including the queer costume drama Carol and the Bob Dylan non-biopic I’m Not There, have elegantly bridged entertainment and experimentation, and The Velvet Underground does that too. Read: HBO’s Woodstock ’99 documentary is a dark warning The seemingly straightforward title is a feint: While the group took its name from a 1963 book on sexual fetishes, the documentary subtly suggests that velvet underground could refer to a particular type of subculture-one in which the lowbrow and the highbrow, the outsider and the careerist, the hater and the pleaser, challenge society in a manner that succeeds in changing it. To understand the nature of the band’s endurance, and the nature of niche cool in any era, turn to Todd Haynes’s bewitching new documentary, The Velvet Underground, out now on Apple TV+. Wearing black and looking jaded never seems to go out of style-and you can hear echoes of the Velvet Underground’s hazy, lurid songs when exploring rebellious music scenes today. But the most obscure band to ever be called “iconic” still has a claim to coolness. The Velvet Underground has not entirely escaped aging into banality: Replications of the Andy Warhol image of a banana that graced the group’s debut album now grace junk at the mall. Everyone who wasn’t at Woodstock is all too aware that they’ll never go to Woodstock. The flower children’s children grew up in a world in which their elders’ revolutionary artworks had become wallpaper, trinkets, and ad fodder. A separate release of the two discs or so of truly new material would have been welcomed by the many fans who aren't interested in paying for a five-CD box of stuff when they already have well over half of it.Part of the backlash now facing Baby Boomers-seen in all those memes and essays blaming grandma for the state of capitalism-may simply stem from overexposure. The thing is, though, that virtually everyone who's interested in this material has already bought the four studio albums, sometimes several times over. And there are sundry other unreleased live and studio items, highlighted by a scorching live 1967 "Guess I'm Falling in Love" and the 1969 demo "Countess From Hong Kong." There are also highlights from VU and Another View, longer versions of Loaded's "Sweet Jane" and "New Age," and an 80-page booklet. Other big bonuses include no less than seven outtakes from Loaded and other songs re-done by Reed on his early solo albums. The entire first disc is devoted to a drummer-less 1965 rehearsal tape in John Cale's loft, with radically different, almost folky run-throughs of most of the important songs from their classic debut, as well as a song that only made it onto Nico's first LP ("Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams"), and one which makes its first appearance anywhere (the Dylanesque "Prominent Men"). ![]() Most serious Velvet fans have all four of the core studio albums already (although the third, self-titled LP is presented in its muffled, so-called "closet" mix), and will be most interested in the previously unavailable recordings, which do hold considerable fascination. Is it an essential purchase? That depends on your level of fanaticism. It has all four of the studio albums released by the Lou Reed-led lineup, and a wealth of previously unreleased goodies. Does this five-CD box set feature an abundance of essential material? Certainly. ![]()
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