THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - Beginning To See The Light (1969)

* For information or to purchase one of the CD Art Clocks pictured in video, please click on the appropriate link below (or Copy & Paste into web browser): 🍌THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO: 💿 🍌TRANSFORMER: 💿 VIDEO INFO: [This is a Re-Upload] The film footage was first revealed to the world about 2 years ago courtesy of the G. WILLIAMS JONES FILM AND VIDEO ARCHIVE AT SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY (SMU). It is a recording of elements of Dallas Peace Day which was part of a nationwide day of protest called the ‘Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam’ on 15 October, 1969 at White Rock Lake, Dallas TX. This stunning video is perhaps the only high-quality colour footage of the band pre their 1993 reunion but unfortunately the audio track was virtually non-existent with just faint snippets of ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ and ‘Beginning To See The Light’ discernible. In that spirit, I crudely overlaid the audio of the latter song, which was recorded as part of a bootleg of the famous ‘Matrix’ shows in San Francisco, 26-27 November, 1969 and which I lifted from Disc 5 of the 45th Anniversary/Super-Deluxe edition of the self-titled/grey album. I selected it based on its quality but it is virtually indistinguishable from the version that appeared on the ‘1969: Velvet Underground Live /Volume 1’ album recorded in Dallas within a few days of this Peace Day. So, I am confident that what I present here is authentically close to what would have been seen and heard that day and I have kept virtually every frame of footage which included either the band or the audience during their set. The band quite evidently had shed some of the noir appearance of the Andy Warhol/John Cale period and this Mark II/rebooted version has a lot more sunshine about them in every sense – along with Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker is new recruit Doug Yule, who seems to get most of the camera’s attention. Intriguingly, I’ve since been told that the footage was recorded for/by Stoney Burns (seen alongside Sterling wearing a sheriff’s hat), a well-known local counter-culture journalist who was running a publication called ‘Dallas Notes’ at the time and was in effect shut down after a heavy-handed police raid the following year when virtually everything (typewriters, credit-cards, telephones etc) was seized including camera equipment and rolls of film which may explain its disappearance and remarkable standard of preservation. An unsuccessful challenge to get all this material returned reached as high as the US Supreme Court. © COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER: I do not own the original recording or the rights to it. The material was available for public broadcast and not subject to copyright restrictions in its’s country of origin. Furthermore, under United Kingdom copyright law; ‘Fair Dealing’ is an exception which allows for the use of copyrighted works without licensing in certain circumstances. It is governed by Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which provide three types of situation in which fair dealing is a valid defence: (i) where the use is for the purposes of research or private study, (ii) where it is to allow for criticism or review, and (iii) where it is for the purpose of reporting current events. Sufficient acknowledgement to the original author is also necessary for all works where the fair dealing exception is applied. Under Section 30(3), however, this is not required for reporting via a sound recording, film or broadcast where it would be “impossible for reasons of practicality or otherwise“.