1.) (Lou) Reed’s first group with (John) Cale was the Primitives, a short-lived group assembled to support a Reed-penned single, “The Ostrich”. Reed and Cale recruited Sterling Morrison—a college classmate of Reed’s who had already played with him a few times—to play guitar, and Angus MacLise (see below) joined on percussion. This quartet was first called the Warlocks, then the Falling Spikes.
The Velvet Underground was a book about the sexual underground of the early 60's by Michael Leigh that Reed found when he moved into his New York City apartment (left by previous tenant Tony Conrad (see below)). Reed and Morrison have reported the group liked the name, considering it evocative of “underground cinema”, and fitting, due to Reed’s already having written “Venus in Furs”, inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s book of the same name, dealing with masochism. The band immediately and unanimously adopted the book's title for its new name.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Underground#Pre-history_.281964.E2.80.931965.29
Thank goodness they didn't stick with Warlocks or Falling Spikes.
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2.) In music, (Tony) Conrad was an early (though not original) member of the Theater of Eternal Music (see below), nicknamed "The Dream Syndicate," ... and utilized just intonation and sustained sound to produce what the group called "dream music."
Conrad created the naming scheme for the intervals used today by most musicians involved in just intonation, a tuning system based on the usage of fundamental tones derived from the harmonic series of a single fundamental and thereby based on nature rather than an arbitrary division of the octave.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Conrad
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3.) And I've found a Bob Dylan connection: from Philip Glass to La Monte Young to John Cale to Velvet Underground to Andy Warhol to Edie Sedgwick.
According to Paul Morrissey, Sedgwick had said: "'They're [Dylan's people] going to make a film and I'm supposed to star in it with Bobby [Dylan].' Suddenly it was Bobby this and Bobby that, and they realized that she had a crush on him. They thought he'd been leading her on, because just that day Andy had heard in his lawyer's office that Dylan had been secretly married for a few months - he married Sara Lowndes in November 1965... Andy couldn't resist asking, 'Did you know, Edie, that Bob Dylan has gotten married?' She was trembling. They realized that she really thought of herself as entering a relationship with Dylan, that maybe he hadn't been truthful."
Odd how through all my Bob Dylan obsessions, Edie has come up surprisingly few times...just a passing reference here and there (and Dylan fans are more than willing to delve into his muck). I haven't seen Factory Girl (about her), but there's controversy as to various allegations in it regarding Dylan. Dylan's lawyers are rumored to have announced legal action to come (we'll see).
Apparently Edie was in a relationship with Dylan's friend, Bobby Neuwirth (a guitar player-singer who was an early friend of Dylan while they were starting out with folk songs back in the early 1960s; he was also on Dont Look Back in 1965, a member of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975, and a co-writer, along with Janis Joplin and Michael McClure, of the song "Mercedes Benz"), who had to leave her in 1967 due to her barbiturate addiction and erratic behavior.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edie_Sedgwick
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_Girl#Controversy
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4.) Lou Reed's take on Factory Girl:
"I read that script. It's one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen — by any illiterate retard — in a long time. There's no limit to how low some people will go to write something to make money... They're all a bunch of whores."
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_Girl#Controversy
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