Band Information and Clips

I've decided to post some of the brief research I'm doing to help visitors better understand the subculture under investigation. This is not a research entry, just a post that identifies the more important bands, a brief biography obtained from the Grove Music online database, and a simple clip from youtube.com.
There will be proper academic entries shortly. Until then, I hope this will suffice.

The Velvet Underground

Velvet Underground, the.
American rock band. Its founder members were lou Reed (b 1942; guitar and lead vocals), John Cale (b 1940; electric viola, bass guitar, keyboards and vocals) and Sterling Morrison (1942–95; guitar and vocals); drummer Angus MacLise was replaced early on by Maureen Tucker (b 1945; drums and vocals). Influences on the band ranged from rhythm and blues and rock and roll to the avant-garde music of John Cage and La Monte Young, the poetry of Delmore Schwartz, the novels of William Burroughs and the pop art of Andy Warhol, who became their first manager. With the vocalist Nico (Christa Päffgen; b Cologne, 16 Oct 1938; d 1988) they became the house band at Warhol’s arts collective, the Factory, and an integral part of his multi-media show ‘The Exploding Plastic Inevitable’ (1966). That year they also signed a contract with MGM’s Verve label and recorded their first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967), which had little commercial success, although its long-term influence was considerable. With songs such as ‘Heroin’ and ‘European Son’ it exhibited an intense and abrasive minimalism new to rock music, the sound distinguished by the drones of Cale’s electric viola, the metronomic precision of Tucker’s drumming and Morrison’s rhythm guitar, and the dark irony of Reed’s delivery of his own lyrics together with Nico’s tomb-like and detached interpretation of his songs. Nico left the group in 1967 and Reed effectively took control. Much of the material for the second album, the savage White Light/White Heat (1967), was developed while Reed was ill and owes most to Cale and the other members of the band. The music is groundbreaking in its use of densely layered textures, distortion, white noise and feed-back, and with Reed’s lyrics graphically explicit in their references to drugs, sex and drag queens, it is probably the most disturbing rock album ever produced.
In March 1968 friction between Reed and Cale forced the latter to leave the band, his place taken by Doug Yule. The third album, The Velvet Underground (MGM, 1969), is very different to its precursors, with mainly restrained and quiet songs. An exception is ‘The Murder Mystery’, an extended piece characterized by Burroughs-style cut-up techniques, simultaneous spoken texts, obsessive minimalist chord patterns and anarchic piano clusters. In 1970 the group moved record label to Cotillion/Atlantic, and released Loaded (1970), the band now functioning largely as a backing to Reed’s vocals. By 1971 all the founder members had left the group, but in 1993 they re-formed temporarily; a European tour followed, and a live album, Live MCMXCIII (Sire, 1993), was released. After further brief reunions in 1994 and the death of Morrison in August 1995, the group disbanded for a second time.
Despite contempt for the music industry, lack of commercial success, lack of sales promotion and the absence of recognition beyond the avant garde of the time, the Velvet Underground has become one of the most influential bands in the history of rock music. At odds with the prevailing atmosphere in popular music of the late 1960s, the group developed a distinctively hard-edged urban sound, polarized between stripped-back rock and roll and avant garde. The Punk rebellion, the New Wave music of the 1970s, art-rock and the phenomenon of ‘cross-over’ can all trace their origins to the radical experimentalism of the group’s first three albums.



The Fugs

American avant-garde folk group. Formed in 1964 and disbanded in 1969, its core personnel were Ed Sanders (b Kansas City, MO, 17 Aug 1939; guitar and vocals) and Tuli [Naphtali] Kupferberg (b New York, 28 Sept 1923; percussion and vocals), with a number of other New York musicians, especially Ken Weaver, Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber. They were arguably the clearest link between the styles and subcultures of the beatniks and the punks. Sanders and Kupferberg were poets and activists, and their lyrics were often obscene, satirical and politically charged. The Fugs were among the first counter-cultural bands to sing openly about drugs, sex and rebellion. Their music was brazenly and happily amateurish; some of them could barely play their instruments, a few of which, such as the erectophone, were newly invented. Musically, they drew upon such diverse precedents as folk songs, Sacred Harp singing, Jewish melodies and rock and roll. The Fugs appeared at anti-war demonstrations and promoted greater freedom of speech and action through their concerts and their recordings, the first of which was issued by Folkways. They established precedents that were important for psychedelic rock and punk, and were significant influences on later musicians such as the Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa. They reunited several times during the 1980s and 90s.



New York Dolls

American punk rock group. Its principal members were David Johansen (b Staten Island, New York, 9 Jan 1950; vocals), Johnny Thunders (John Anthony Genzale; b New York, 15 July 1952; d New Orleans, 23 April 1991; electric guitar) and Sylvain Sylvain (Sil Mizrahi; electric guitar). In a brief and commercially unsuccessful career, the New York Dolls introduced several of the motifs that would characterize both the glam rock and punk rock movements of the 1970s. Like the more successful Kiss, the group members adopted ‘trashy transvestite’ stage clothing and make-up, with Johansen dressed as a parody of Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. Musically their sound was a regression to an imagined rock and roll simplicity based around the buzzsaw tone of the twin guitars played by Thunders and Sylvain. Johansen's hoarse vocalizing was buried in the recorded mix designed by Todd Rundgren, the producer of the group's debut album, New York Dolls (Mer., 1973). The group's original compositions veered thematically from conventional romance (Looking for a Kiss) to psychotic states (Personality Crisis). They recorded a second album, Too Much Too Soon (Mer., 1974), before splitting up. Thunders became an erratic participant in the punk scene of the late 1970s, while Johansen re-emerged in the late 1980s as Buster Poindexter, and convincingly recreated the jump band sounds of the 1940s on a series of entertaining recordings.



The Modern Lovers (Note: no biography was available on Grove Music. The Modern Lovers were another band who recorded their debut album with John Cale, forming not long after the demise of the Velvet Underground. Interesting trivia: the Shins are currently incorporationg a cover of the Modern Lovers's track 'Someone I Care About' into their live set).



Blue Oyster Cult (Note: Once again, no biography was found on Grove Music. More information will be discovered in further research no doubt. Once again, formed in New York City not long after the Velvet Underground. Jon Stratton mentions them several times in his that I reviewed in my annotated bibliography).



Holy Modal Rounders (Note: no biography available again, however, are said to have had a similar genesis as the Fugs according to Steven Weber in 'False Prophet.' This is the only decent clip I could find of the band - don't ask me why someone decided to film their record player, just shut your eyes and listen).



Iggy Pop (Note: Iggy was not from New York, however, has cited the above bands as major influences. The Stooges's debut album was recorded in New York with John Cale of the Velvet Underground).

(b 21 April 1947). American punk, rock and pop vocalist. He played the drums in blues bands (gaining his nickname in an act called The Iguanas) before forming the Psychedelic Stooges in 1967 with the brothers Ron Asheton (guitar) and Scott Asheton (drums), along with the bass player Dave Alexander, changing the band's name to the Stooges in 1969. He became known as an intense and transgressive performer who sometimes went so far as to roll in broken glass or otherwise wound himself. With albums such as Raw Power (Col., 1973), he made some of the harshest music heard during the late 1960s and early 70s, for which he is sometimes called the father of punk rock. In contrast to the peace-and-love messages of much psychedelic rock, his lyrics were bleak and perverse in their challenge to the status quo, and his music was unapologetically raucous and amateurish. The Stooges broke up in 1974 and Pop released a series of solo albums beginning in 1976, often working in collaboration with David Bowie. Pop's later work, such as Blah-Blah-Blah (A&M, 1986), was less noisy and closer to mainstream pop in its tone and techniques. (I. Pop: I Need More, Los Angeles, 1982)