I was working on a ponderously lengthy and needlessly detailed entry for this stupid blog about the first time I ever heard the Velvet Underground in college in 1985, and ended going down sort of a YouTube rabbit hole, only to discover the unlikely clip below.
Fifty-someodd years on from their active heyday, it’s easy to fancifully project that the Velvets were indeed this rarefied entity that only played a select handful of super-hip happenings exclusively attended by a furtive cabal of precocious urbanites and leather-clad nogoodnicks in downtown Manhattan. While that certainly sounds cool, it’s simply inaccurate.
Even at their most sonically inaccessible, the Velvet Underground was a functioning band hungry for exposure … and money, which found them playing all over the map for any venue that would have them.
While not at all the type of burg you might normally associate with the arty avant garde, the leafy byways of New Canaan, CT actually played host to the Velvet Underground in the summer of 1967 (a few short months before my birth). This groovy event went down at the Philip Johnson Glass House Museum, and -- quite amazingly -- parts of this performance were captured on film.
As excised from a longer German documentary called “498 Third Avenue” (I have no idea), here’s a snippet of the Velvets’ set. Unfortunately, you do not actually see the band within the clip – the camera focuses exclusively on the gathered throng of well-heeled, mid-sixties prepsters – frugging with endearing emphasis to “Waiting for the Man” and “Venus in Furs” (songs about scoring heroin and sado-masochism, respectively).
Here's a bit more information from the YouTube post:
Excerpt from a German documentary called '498 Third Avenue.' by Klaus Wildenhahn, showing an audience dancing to The Velvet Underground playing 'I'm Waiting For The Man' and 'Venus In Furs' live (off-camera) live during a Benefit for Merce Cunningham at The Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut, on June 3rd 1967. This clip is shortened to exclude the voiceover audio from the documentary and include only the VU audio, but if you go to the full documentary - - skip to 45:14, and look VERY closely, you can JUST about see the band playing on stage in the background as the camera pans over to the right during the voiceover section - it's difficult to make out, but it appears Sterling was on the left playing bass, Lou in the centre playing guitar and singing next to Maureen who is just behind/next to him (you can see her mallet whacking down on the bass drum a few times), and John on the far right (visible behind the tree in the foreground) playing his viola.
Check out some of these dance steps.
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