Velvet Underground and the United States of America

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Super-rare original concert poster, printed before the shows to sell tickets, for the Velvet Underground and the United States of America appearing at the Boston Tea Party in Boston, Massachusetts on Friday and Saturday nights, March 22 & 23, 1968. Features very sparse artwork all in pink, including a drawing of a very stylized psychedelic woman. It was done by Bob Driscoll, whose name appears in the lower right corner and who has also signed this poster on the verso.

The Boston Tea Party and Bob Driscoll in particular were known for a sparse, minimalist style to their poster designs, having decided that it would be impossible to compete with the colorful psychedelic masterpieces coming out of San Francisco. Printed in small quantities, these were put in store windows, stapled to campus bulletin boards and perhaps wrapped around telephone poles.

The Velvets were based in New York City but due to Lou Reed wanting to distance themselves from Andy Warhol they didn’t play in New York at all between late 1967 and June 1970. Instead, they considered Boston to be their real 'home away from home,' as they played over 20 times in the area, always to packed houses. They played 7 different sets of dates in 1968 and 11 sets in 1969 alone. (Half of those were at the Woodrose Ballroom near Springfield which was owned by Steve Nelson who had been the manager of the Boston Tea Party in 1967-1968.

The United States of America was an American experimental rock band founded in Los Angeles in 1967. The group’s sound was grounded in both psychedelia and the avant-garde. Unusually, the band had no guitar player; instead, they used strings, keyboards and electronics, including primitive synthesizers, and various audio processors, including the ring modulator. Their one record was released in early 1968, at a time when there was a receptive audience for “underground music” which combined musical experimentalism with radical social and/or political lyrics.