Shows

Music in the Summer Air: Velvet Underground 50th Anniversary Memorial Concert in Shanghai

Date: July 11 - 7:30 pm

Venue: Shanghai Symphony Hall

The Velvet Underground are an avantgarde New York City band whose unconventional and screeching sounds paved and shaped the roads of "underground" rock 'n' roll. Beginning in small clubs, the band originally enjoyed a cultlike following of dedicated fans, who rejoiced in a sound that, at the time, was deemed "undanceable". Eventually, the band emerged from the cracks and shadows of Greenwich Village to form a union with the infamous Andy Warhol, whose notoriety catapulted the group of experimentalists to new and unseen heights. As they linked up to travel the Unites States, they overwhelmed audiences everywhere with a surreal concoction of images, films, lighting effects, and music, known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable Tour. With not only a rock 'n' roll Hall of Fame induction under their belt but also four albums in the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of all Time, The Velvet Underground still influences a younger generation of artists, who one can only hope will uphold the underground's tradition of challenging and piercing the conventional boundaries of not only music, but creativity as a whole.