As many of you may or may not know - the Stark team is pretty well rooted in the East Village - in body or in spirit - and are addicted to learning about the way things used to be around here. We've been reminded on a daily basis over the past 5 years here of how wildly different things were, not that long ago. While a little off the usual Stark path here's a killer video... I visited the East Village in 1967 and when I moved there 10 years later not much had changed. The East Village, Tompkins [...]

Hello readers. I hope you're ready for something new because we're about to try something a little different. Starting tomorrow, we will begin about a month of content devoted to the Velvet Underground . Read on for more details.
Watch covers performed at Lollapalooza by Foo Fighters, Lykke Li, Coldplay, Foster the People, Ween, A Perfect Circle, The Vaccines, Lissie, Patrich Stump, and more!
Filed under: News , Exclusive , Book Club Steve Wood/Hulton Archive, Getty Images Before 1971, David Bowie 's career hadn't really taken off. Other than scoring a hit with 1969's 'Space Oddity,' Bowie had recorded three albums that weren't very popular. But 40 years ago, he recorded two unique albums that would set the stage for his superstardom: 'Hunky Dory' and 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.' [...]

Last year, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh set out to find musical accompaniment for 13 of the artist's most famous screen tests (including Nico, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick). They chose indie poppers Dean & Britta to provide an orchestral illustration to the roughly hour and a half of black and white films. The result a handful of covers and remixes called 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests . This song from the album, I'll Keep It With Mine, might sound familiar to you- it was originally written by Bob Dylan and popularized by [...]

While Dave's away I'm filling in with some stalker style posting. So while the review stalker soaks up the sun and catches those great big waves of the Pacific the NYC pavement soaks up the heat and humidity making it time for more songs inspired by the summer and the weather. Something Old: With 90-plus degree temperatures in most of the country this week I cant help feeling and singing this song. It's [...]
The Velvet Underground and Nico - Heroin Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful song!!! http://olivier.landemaine.free .fr/vu/index.html
That's right, I said mix TAPE. The days of sitting in front of a boombox waiting for a song to come on the radio may be over, but I refuse to say "Mix CD" or to refer to a "digital playlist." Too many syllables. Just doesn't roll off the tongue like "mix tape." Yeah, I know a while back ATH ran a "Top 5 Album Closers" list, but this is different. Because I added the whole "mix tape" angle. So it's totally not the same thing. You're buying this right? What's that? You don't give a [...]

Our second installment of Discussions, where writers are paired up to discuss some of their favorite artists, explores the library of the the highly influential Velvet Underground. WILL RYAN: So The Velvet Underground are pretty good. I think for me, they were one of those early bands that transformed my perception of what music could be. I feel like they're probably that for a lot of people. Specifically the first two records. Like in the long odyssey of developing a broader musical perception they have to be somewhere near [...]
Filed under: News , Exclusive , Spinner Interview , New Releases , Q + A Jim Dyson, Getty Images Over a career spanning nearly five decades, Marianne Faithfull has taken anything but the easy route to success. Discovered by the Rolling Stones in 1964, the young ingénue rose to fame with the first Jagger / Richards composition, 'As Tears Go By,' and was the muse for many of [...]
We Talk Musical Influences and Favorites with Yuck As hopeless music lovers, musical etymology is always fascinating to us. Learning what made a certain work what it is always gives us a richer understanding and appreciation of someone's craft. In this guest list we linked up with UK's Yuck, who released their fantastic debut album on Fat Possum earlier this year. Catch Yuck on tour with Unknown Mortal Orchestra in the US through July and over seas through out the fall. We've got 5 [...]

House of Wolves is the work of Los Angeles native and classically trained pianist Rey Villalobos . A minimal acoustic driven folk project that feels like what the Velvet Underground might have sounded like if they never left the bedroom. The debut record, Fold In The Wind , feels influenced by the aesthetic of Yo La Tango, the androgyny of Beach House, and the lighter side of Vincent Gallo 's spirit. The mood is sullen while the approach is organic and simplistic. The tracks feel classic and from an era long gone. [...]
In September of 2002, a dude from Canada bought a record at an NYC yard for 75 cents. It was an acetate record with a handwritten label that read "Velvet Underground. 4-25-66. Att N. Dolph." On the acetate were nine cuts from the Velvet Underground's 1967 debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico . (The N. Dolph in question was Norman Dolph, an engineer on the record.) That alone would have made the record quite the find, but it turned out that the nine tracks on the acetate were not the same versions that were on the [...]

Ever since Radio Soulwax Part 2 I have always thought that the Velvet Underground are a missing link in dance music. I guess the story goes that everyone that bought the first VU LP went on to form a band but maybe some of maybe just got a mixer. I feel like with so much cross over between scenes that you could probably hear some of their records mixed in with disco classics at the Paradise Garage or The Loft. Levan was know for playing PiL so who knows. Jad's edit takes one of my fav VU tracks [...]
Everyone, or perhaps it's just me, loves apocryphal band stuff. From movies like the Stones' Cocksucker Blues and Bob Dylan's Eat the Document, to Black Lips' Last of the White Niggers, there's something inherently desirable about the things you can't hear or see, or haven't heard or seen. So most VU fans have heard about [...]

Listen up, here's a story. Once upon a time an unsuspecting American called Warren Hill filed reservedly through the tumbledown record collection of a "yard sale" in Chelsea, NY. In amongst the dust was a label reading: "Velvet Underground... 4/25/66... N. Dolph." He bought it for $0.75. Back in 1966 Andy Warhol was collaborating in all manner of forms with an underground collective of the velvet variety. In exchange for one of his paintings, Warhol asked a label executive to oversee a one-day recording at Sceptor [...]

Photo by G. Lou Reed Someone has been taking a walk on the wild side and tagging a bunch of things in Manhattan with the moniker Lou Reed. I am going out on a limb and saying it's not the same Lou Reed that sang "Venus in Furs." If it turns out that it is the same Lou Reed, that will be pretty frickin' cool. Also, if you enlarge the picture you'll see that someone also wrote Tara Reid on the door. [...]

Sights & Sounds is back with Dmitri Jackson's illustrated interpretation of the VU classic "I'm Waiting for the Man." To view more of Dmitri's work with Prefix and to more Sights & Sounds illustrations click here . Dmitri Jackson's Home Page : http://www.dmitrijackson.com Dmitri Jackson's Twitter : https://twitter.com/#!/frotoon comics