The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground & Nico

THE REVIEW

I'm talking about 1968.
Now, please put away those joints, stash away the ridiculous necklaces and bell-bottom pants.
And then stop with those slogans, you know they will never come true.
I'm talking about 1968, but not the utopian and hippie version of the West Coast or Paris; we are in New York.
Amidst prostitutes, junkies, drunks, dealers, and swindlers just waiting for you to get distracted so they can stick two fingers up your ass, there are no hippies here.
Tonight a band is playing at Andy Warhol's Factory: the Velvet Underground.

"because it makes me feel like a man
when I stick a needle in my vein
and I tell you things aren’t the same anymore
when I launch into my race
and I feel just like the son of Jesus
and I think I don’t even know"

It is said that only a hundred people bought the first Velvet Underground album, but each of them is now a music critic or a rock artist.

The Velvet Underground invented paranoia in music,
the sickness,
the degradation of modern life,
urban alienation,
existential despair,
chronic loneliness,
moral violence,
physical violence,
Hell and Heaven together.

The Velvet Underground invented the second-degree revolution, rebelling against the '68 hippies who in turn were rebelling against the pre-existing prohibitive-hypocritical system.
Like two railroad tracks that never cross, touch, or look at each other, so are the Velvet Underground and Flower Power.
And while the merchandising advanced, with Jim Morrison printed on millions of freaking copies, portrayed as Christ on the cross, the Velvet Underground appeared dressed in black, backs to the audience.
You didn’t know what they looked like.
And while Jefferson Airplane sang of free love, the Velvet Underground shouted sadomasochism in your face ("taste the whip, hit me sweet mistress, kiss the boot").
And while Simon & Garfunkel plucked the strings of the soul with their acoustic guitar, European Son scratches you with those nails, blood splattering, covered by the noise that doesn’t let you breathe, from which you pray to escape, press stop and throw that CD out the window that is just hurting you.

And do you know why?

Because it's reminding you that life is not those Mulino Bianco commercials or the Boccasana family, and so on.
A better world does not exist.
A better world has never existed.

The Velvet Underground were pessimists.
Pasolini was a pessimist.
The Velvet Underground played once for every venue in the city.
After the first time, no one invited them back.
They were completely out of tune with the audience, slowed by various cannabis derivatives, who didn’t understand.
They were moving a hundred times faster than the audience due to the effect of amphetamines.
In the last venue, however, there was Andy Warhol, the king of Pop Art, who, followed by street artists, wanted the Velvet Underground for his magnificent idea: the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.
The Exploding Plastic Inevitable is a multimedia show with a devastating sonic and visual impact.
The protagonists parade on stage with whips and leather boots, huge flashlights, hypodermic syringes, weights, and wooden crosses.
Gelatin filters of different colors transform images of old films into colorful kaleidoscopes. Everything is fused together in an ecstasy of collective hysteria, in a hedonistic ritual where the ghosts of pain are transfigured into art and then exorcised.

The Velvet Underground disbanded two years later, but no one noticed. About a decade later, Lou Reed (the frontman of the Velvet Underground) released an album that sold well enough. The hundred people mentioned earlier said: "Hey, isn’t that the singer from that band that..."

From here, the myth of the Velvet Underground began.

Peace.