Thursday 8 July 2010

The Velvet Underground - A Symphony of Sound (1966)

The Velvet Underground And Nico (A Symphony of Sound) is a portrait of the band, recorded during a practice session at the Factory in January 1966. The soundtrack is an instrumental.
"This was never meant even as an experiment. It was meant as an item of wallpaper made for use behind the musical group as they set up and tuned their instruments. I had been using five different prints of silent footage, mainly screen tests, for simultaneous projection behind them. This was extremely effective while the music was played but in the long stretches between numbers when there was no sound coming from the stage, it was very boring.

I thought of recording the Velvets just making up sounds as they went along to have on film so I could turn both soundtracks up at the same time along with the other three silent films being projected. The cacophonous noise added a lot of energy to these boring sections and sounded a lot like the group itself. The show put on for the group was certainly the first mixed media show of its kind, was extremely effective and I have never since seen such an interesting one even in this age of super-colossal rock concerts."

NB: This version is lacking the last 10 minutes or so when the police raid The Factory.
You are not really missing anything!
Get it

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