Friday, March 12, 2010

2 comments:

  1. Was that really "Venus in Furs"? You could barely tell, but that's still completely awesome. Thanks for these past two posts Jack. VU and the Sab are quite possibly the two greatest rock bands of all time.

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  2. I agree it's pretty hard to hear but the, ahm, noise is what makes this film clip interesting.

    Here's some info about the video from the YouTube uploader:

    Video: The Velvet Underground filmed on 16mm by Jonas Mekas at the Annual Dinner of the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry, Delmonico's Hotel, New York City, January 13, 1966. Also featuring Edie Sedgewick, Gerard Malanga and Andy Warhol. Originally included in the film 'Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol'.

    Music: recorded by WNET TV at The Factory, New York City. First broadcast on 'USA Artists', February 7, 1966.

    This piece of footage has been released many times over the years, but always in drastically sped-up form, and with the video in mirror image - ie back to front.

    This version has been flipped and slowed down to half speed, which I think brings it back to roughly the original speed, using Windows Movie Maker. As the original footage is silent, I've dubbed a rendition of Venus in Furs from a contemporary TV appearance. It's clear from Malanga's whip-dancing and the Cale on viola/Sterl on bass line-up shown in the film that Venus in Furs is the song that they're playing here. For the sake of my sanity I've made no attempt to sync it up with what's going on in the footage!

    The footage is sourced from a high-quality .mov file available as a paid download from Jonas Mekas' site. The file also includes footage of the Velvets playing at the Dom and of Nico and Gerard Malanga dancing at Stephen Shore's party. I'd advise anyone who has enjoyed this Youtube clip to go to Jonas Mekas' site and download the original version. The link is here: http://www.jonasmekas.com/Merchant2/m...

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