Velvet Underground 1969 Boston Tea Party Birthday Concert Poster Signed by Bob Driscoll. ...

Description

THE VELVETS CELEBRATE LOU REED'S FAVORITE CONCERT VENUE

Velvet Underground 1969 Boston Tea Party Birthday Concert Poster Signed by Bob Driscoll. An original advertising/concert poster for the Boston Tea Party in Boston, Massachusetts announcing a free birthday party for reaching its second anniversary starring no less than the Velvet Underground. The date was Wednesday, January 22, 1969, and admission was free (we don't know if there was free food as well, but surely not an open bar!). This was still at the club's original location that had only a 550-person maximum capacity, so we're sure there was a long line outside to get in.

Velvets leader Lou Reed has made it quite clear in interviews that the Tea Party was the band's favorite venue in the world to play at, to the point where they were almost the honorary house band. And the audience felt the same. At this point in time the VU had just two albums out, on Verve... their self-titled debut with Nico and White Light/White Heat. But they had finished recording their eponymously titled third album, which would come out in a couple of months.

This specimen has been signed by poster artist Bob Driscoll on the verso. Measures 11" x 17" and grades to Near Mint condition. From the David Swartz Concert Poster Collection. COA from Heritage Auctions.

More Information: The Boston Tea Party was to Boston as the Fillmore & Avalon were to San Francisco, the Whisky-a-Go-Go to Los Angeles and the Grande Ballroom to Detroit. The capacity started off at only about 550 but that limit was often exceeded. It was the place to see & be seen in Beantown, and drew a cross-section of college students, hippies, fashion models, Brahmins, bikers, local celebrities, media people, professionals and local white and Black high school kids.

The BTP first opened in January 1967, changed locations to larger quarters in July 1969 and ran until December 1970, when it closed after a glorious four-year run when bands started requiring larger venues. Similar to the format that Bill Graham used, older blues, soul, R&B and jazz acts were often paired with contemporary rock bands. Posters and fliers used to promote the shows were generally minimalist in design... in sharp contrast to the dramatic psychedelic posters being produced on the West Coast.

BTP posters are also infinitely more scarce than the West Coast psych posters of the same era... they were run in extremely small quantities, with a goal of just getting the word out and no aftermarket sought or desired. Thus, most of them were discarded after the engagements. Decades later, they became highly collectible.

That's because the roster of musicians who played the Boston Tea Party is quite head-spinning. They included Led Zeppelin, The Who, the Grateful Dead, Velvet Underground, Chicago, Kinks, Small Faces, Elton John, Jethro Tull, Neil Young, the J. Geils Band, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, the Allman Bros. Band, the Yardbirds, Van Morrison and Jeff Beck.

In 1968, the legendary WBCN-FM, the first FM rock station in Boston, began broadcasting from a dressing room in the club, as the station was owned by the same owners as the BTP. Peter Wolf, the frontman for the popular local group the Hallucinations, was also a late-night DJ at 'BCN. He would later front the J. Geils Band, who broke through nationally. The Boston Tea Party was first managed by Steve Nelson, who booked the bands, and then by Don Law, who went on to become a major concert promoter in the 70's and onwards.

The Tea Party was founded by lawyer Ray Riepen and MIT grad David Hann at 53 Berkeley St. in the south end of Boston, again with a typical club capacity of around 550. Then in July '69 it moved to 15 Lansdowne St. in Kenmore Square behind Fenway Park, with the expanded capacity measuring more like 2,000. That held them over for another year & a half, but the exploding rock-concert business of the early seventies was needing even more capacity. So the club was simply outgrown by the end of 1970.

Condition details: Just a couple of instances of infinitely unimportant, subtle finger bends to the yellow background on the glossy paper.


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