The New York Times, July 4, 1970
Max’s Kansas City, NYC, Summer 1970
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND WAS PLAYING EXPERIMENTAL ROCK IN 1965 when the Beatles just wanted to hold your hand and San Francisco was still the place where Tony Bennett left his heart.
The group came to prominence in 1965 and 1968 through an association with Andy Warhol and Nico, the singer and actress. The musicians played a long standing engagement at the Balloon Farm, now the Electric Circus, on St. Mark’s Place, where they were a part of Warhol’s mixed-media show, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. They are appearing through tomorrow at Max’s Kansas City, their first New York appearance in three years.
The music, which after all this time rates very high, is more rhythmic and forceful than ever before. The Velvet Underground plays a hard rock that is powerful and tight as a raised fist; so unified and together that it just rolls itself into a knot and throbs.
The group defies categorization as well as any other group currently making the rounds. Better to say that their music is loud, driving, with remarkable interchange of dynamics between guitars and bass, and that awesome sense of unity. The vocals tend to be second rate and subservient to the instrumental, which is a common condition.
The musicians should be seen more often than once every three years; they make 80 percent of today’s popular rock groups seem pointless and amateurish.
The Velvet Underground consists of Lou Reed, vocals and guitar; Sterling Morrison, guitar; Doug Yule, bass and vocals; and Bill Yule, sitting in on drums.