Barbelith Underground > Radio & Music > The Velvet Underground

Okay--Method, not to sound flippant here, but you are posting to the Internet, which gives you access to something like the sum total of human knowledge, and your time might be better spent running some of these names through a search engine (like Google) rather than simply asking other people to do it for you.

That said: the Theatre of Cruelty was a French theatrical movement associated with the mad genius Antonin Artaud, the aim of which was, again, transgression, speaking the unspeakable, taking audiences out of their comfort zones, and blah blah revolutioncakes.

"Bad" is/was a film by the American pop artist Andy Warhol, who "discovered" the VU, introduced them to Nico,and first brought them to audiences as the house band for his travelling art-and-performance roadshow, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. He nominally produced their first album (though he had no tehnical knowledge of the recording process whatever), and designed its famous banana cover.

The history of the VU is very much tied up with the history of Warhol, Paul Morrissey, and the Factory--the epicenter of New York City's Pop Art scene in the late 1960s. Understanding that scene is crucial to understanding the VU--the polymorphous sexuality, the drugs, the oppositional stance, the visual aspect, the Europhilia.

Other names worth running through Google: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, German author of the novel Venus In Furs, from whose name we get the term "masochism." Delmore Schwartz (sp?), American poet who was Lou Reed's teacher at Syracuse University. Aaron Copland, American composer, who gave a young John Cale his entree to the American music scene. John Cage, American minimalist composer, with whom Cale was briefly associated. LaMonte Young, American avant-garde composer, who worked with Cale on sound and installation projects as part of an art-music group called the Dream Syndicate. Pickwick Records, a grindhouse label that churned out knockoffs of pop hits of the day, and where Lou worked as a house songwriter.

This is tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. There are many, many books about the VU and its members, many of which would be availablke in your local library,if your library is any good at all. Especially recommended are the early chapters of Cale's autobiography What's Welsh For Zen? (written with Victor Bockriss and designed & illustrated by Dave McKean). Also seek out the film Nico/Icon.