A lavish book of over 300 photographs of The Velvet Underground at the Boston Tea Party in 1968 and 1969 was recently published in a limited edition by Phil Milstein, founder of the Velvet Underground Appreciation Society. The photos are credited only to a mysterious “Modern Printer.” I am lucky to have a copy of this rarity, but it brings to mind a more widely available account of the Velvets’ relationship to Boston, Ryan H. Walsh’s Astral Weeks. The remarkable illustration for this review arrived unexpectedly in Artforum editor David Velasco’s mailbox.
Originally published by Artforum (September 2018)
Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, by Ryan H. Walsh. New York: Penguin Press, 2018. 368 pages.
When my friends and I started a band in 1980s Boston, we weren’t just influenced by the Velvet Underground — we studied their first three albums like a code to be cracked. (The fou…
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