BE PART OF WHAT'S / HAPPENING !! / ANDY / WARHOL...UNDERGROUND FILMMAKER / COMES TO THE BOSTON TEA PARTY / THIS WEEKEND TO CAPTURE THE / PEOPLE ON FILM AS THEY EXPLODE / TO THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF / THE VELVET UNDERGROUND / YOU / ARE THE STAR / ARE THE HAPPENING / BE A PART OF BOSTON'S FIRST / AUTHENTIC UNDERGROUND MOVIE / ANDY WARHOL / VELVET UNDERGROUND / BOSTON TEA PARTY / AND YOU!!!! / FRI AUGUST 11 / AUG 12 SAT / 8pm / $3.00. [Original Concert/Event Poster]

Boston: np, [1967]. First Edition. Fine. 11 3/8” x 8.5” offset poster, black ink on brown paper. Hand-lettered in a psychedelic style designed by "T. [F?] Murphy.” PROVENANCE: From the estate of Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison, with Morrison's widow Martha's signed letter of provenance included. Originally glued to another piece of paper, the poster has been professionally restored and is now backed with archival rice paper. Fine.

Rare poster to what has become an historic event. The Velvet Underground played The Boston Tea Party (the Beantown equivalent of Max's Kansas City) numerous times throughout their career. And their performances over the weekend of August 11th-12th might have been just another appearance had Andy Warhol not been present to film the band. The footage he shot is one of only two performance films of The Underground with synched sound, and more importantly, is the only footage of the band in color extant. Capturing The Velvets just before the WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT sessions, Warhol's footage features the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and utilizes numerous experimental techniques – in- camera edits, sudden zooms, single-frame stills, sweeping panoramas – meant to mimic the experience of seeing live The Velvets and their troupe. Warhol's film was long believed lost. As Steve Nelson remembered: "There's this mythical film that was shot at the Tea Party in August 1967 [...] That weekend [was] the first time they incorporated the Andy Warhol side of The Velvet Underground into the Tea Party presentation. Andy actually came there [...] and Paul Morrissey was there, and supposedly they filmed [...] I know they were there; I know they were pointing cameras. Was there any film in the cameras, or did it just disappear? I really don't know. The film just never seems to have shown up" (quoted in WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT 158). The film was unearthed, remastered, and restored in 2009-2010, and toured museums and art houses around the country from late 2010 through early 2011 as THE VELVET UNDERGROUND IN BOSTON (1967, 16mm, 33 mins. Dir: Andy Warhol). C/O THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (53) and NEW YORK ART (202) reproduce the original art for this poster (but not the poster itself), the latter noting (it now seems erroneously) that the shows “never took place.” Not in DeRogatis. A rare artifact to an important Warhol film and document of The Velvet Underground in their prime. Warhol's film work continues to be recognized as being as groundbreaking as anything he did on canvas, and The Velvets remain probably the most influential band of the last fifty years. As Lester Bangs has written: "Modern music begins with the Velvets and the implications [...] of what they did seem to go on forever." With extraordinary provenance from the estate of VU member Sterling Morrison, knee-weakeningly cool.