The Velvet Underground

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‘Astral Weeks’ and the Making of a Van Morrison Classic

Christopher John Stephens / 19 March 2018

Ryan H. Walsh's Astral Weeks beautifully captures a not-so-distant era of free-form radio playing the "boss-town sound", people living communally, thriving underground newspapers -- and a 22-year-old Van Morrison coming into his own.

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Lou Reed Gets the Gritty ’70s-era New York Treatment in ‘A Life’

Sean McCarthy / 15 February 2018

Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis has written an arresting, confrontational, and oftentimes beautiful biography of the notoriously cagy musician.

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Maximal Minimal: The Legacy of Versatile Artist Tony Conrad

Tristan Kneschke / 22 August 2017

The former member of Lou Reed's The Primitives yearned to free himself of composition, to strive toward a new paradigm found in minimalism.

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Persona and Modern Music in 17 Songs

PopMatters Staff / 18 April 2016

Persona -- the “I” of the song -- has evolved, broadened, and expanded to more fully represent a diversity of experiences as well as emotional, political, and cultural orientations.

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The Case for the Velvet Underground’s Sterling Morrison

PopMatters Staff / 24 August 2015

Even as the Velvet Underground has graduated from cult favorite to part of the '60s canon, guitarist Sterling Morrison has largely faded from public view.

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The Best Album Re-Issues of 2014

PopMatters Staff / 15 December 2014

The music world saw reissues from all over the genre map, spanning classic rock titans to electronic music legends.

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