Ezra Furman: The Velvet Underground, Punk Pioneers
Thursday 23 June, 19.30-21.00, British Library Conference Centre, book online: http://www.bl.uk/events/ezra-furman-the-velvet-underground-punk-pioneers
An intimate evening with genre-fluid American singer-songwriter Ezra Furman reflecting on the Velvet Underground’s influence on punk and their musical legacy
‘Lou Reed is, possibly more than anyone, the person who gave me the keys to rock n roll. His songs let me in and showed me, when I was still just a kid, a view of a world I had previously known nothing about except in a dark corner of my heart. Lou Reed was radically ambiguous and radically free’.
Genre and gender-fluid American singer songwriter Ezra Furman will discuss the Velvet Underground and their influence on his own music, punk and everything else, through the words of his upcoming book published by the now legendary 33 & 1/3 series, on Lou Reed’s iconic album Transformer. Ezra’s passion for old-world rock n roll has invited comparisons to Jonathan Richman, but his sax-heavy album walks very much on the Lou Reed wild side. His 2015 breakthrough album Perpetual Motion People, is the restless sound of a genuine one-off in a generic world.
Ezra will read passages from his new book Transformer, due out in 2017, followed by a discussion with the Guardian’s Laura Barton. Ezra will follow this with a very special performance of Velvet Underground covers as well as some of his own songs, which have been heavily influenced by the New York genre-defying trailblazers.   The evening will end with a Q&A.