Velvet Underground 1969 Washington University, St. Louis Large Silkscreened Concert Poster. ...

Description

A VELVET UNDERGROUND POSTER SUITED FOR A MUSEUM

Velvet Underground 1969 Washington University, St. Louis Large Silkscreened Concert Poster. An original first-printing concert poster for Lou Reed & the Velvet Underground appearing at a "Beaux Arts Ball" on campus at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri on Sunday evening, May 11, 1969. Also on the bill were Taj Mahal and White Lightning. Heritage has previously auctioned off the red, blue & silver version of this very scarce poster, but never this black, gold & red version. It's just as rare as the red one. The handful of either color that are out there came from the poster artist who happened to have saved a few. Aren't we lucky they did.

Measures 35" x 18" and grades to Near Mint condition. From the David Swartz Concert Poster Collection. COA from Heritage Auctions.

More Information: As any good music historian knows, VU became a seminal influence on later bands in the punk, new wave and alternative rock genres. In four albums, the band's songs explored both urban decadence and the life-affirming sound of rock 'n' roll.

More detail from Washington University magazine: "While introducing their closer, 'Sister Ray,' singer Lou Reed quipped to the crowd: 'This song is about what happens down in the street ... which I'm sure you're all familiar with.' The song then reverberated in the Field House for a propulsive 28 minutes before the Velvets left the stage.

"This VU concert is distinctive in that the late Robert Quine, JD '68, recorded it. Barry Silverblatt, JD '69, a retired legal administrator and musician in the Bay Area, was Quine's classmate, bandmate and one of his closest friends during law school. The two went to the VU show together. Although the acoustics were less than optimal, Silverblatt thought the band was excellent. "Those were different days. There wasn't a lot of hand-clapping and stuff, it was more like being zoned out," he recalls. "After the concert, Quine was in seventh heaven. He thought it was great." Quine moved to California later that year, where he taped additional VU shows. His recordings, including a half-hour of the Washington University concert, were commercially released in 2003 as The Quine Tapes.

"There's an old saying that only a few people ever really listened to the Velvet Underground, but nearly all of them started a band. Quine was no exception. He would go on to a successful career as a rock guitarist, known for his stinging, incendiary style.

"Quine, who died in 2004, is listed as one of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine, having played with seminal punk band Richard Hell and the Voidoids among others. And in a remarkable twist of fate, in the 1980s he joined the band of former VU leader Lou Reed, whom he had seen perform at the university so many years before."


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