Last month a host of music stars got together in Paris to pay tribute to the band and their iconic 1967 debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico. Roxy Music member and legendary producer Brian Eno once said that the album may have only initially sold around 1000 copies, but everyone who bought it went out and formed a band.
The album, which all music lovers should have copy of; is renowned for its stark instrumentation, proto-punk musicianship and attitude and its tales chronicling drug scoring (‘Heroin’) Sado-Masochism (‘Venus In Furs’) and doomed relationships (‘Femme Fatale’) in New York City are landmarks of the 20th Century.
At this all-star gig, Feist and members of Air, Radiohead and Supergrass joined together to pay tribute to one of the most influential albums of all time. Fronted by Canadian songstress Feist, who took Nico’s part on ‘Femme Fatale, the band at the 7th July comprised Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood, Air’s Nicolas Godin, and the Hotrats ( a supergroup made up of Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and Supergrass’ Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey).
Feist’s voice admirably captures the spirit of Nico’s icy Teutonic vocals and the raw instrumentation of the band also recreates the sound of the Velvets at the time. Although the gig was almost six weeks ago, photos and audio of the event have just made their way online now.
Photos show the band performing in from of psychedelic light projections in a similar fashion to the Velvets during their time with Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable show, while you can listen to how uncannily similar Feist sounds to Nico on this cover of ‘Femme Fatale’ here:
