The Velvet Underground Meets Lawrence Welk

The worlds of the Vel­vet Under­ground and Lawrence Welk are pret­ty far apart. On the one side, you have a grit­ty New York band city writ­ing lyrics about shoot­ing up hero­in. On the oth­er, a band­leader whose “cham­pagne music” charmed TV view­ers across Mid­dle Amer­i­ca for 27 straight years. And yet. And yet.

In this 2007 YouTube clas­sic, director/producer Dar­ren Hack­er found a way to cross the chasm, mash­ing up VU’s 1968 song “Sis­ter Ray” with footage from the Lawrence Welk Show. As he explained to Dan­ger­ous Minds, “I rigged up 2 ancient VCRs and a CD play­er across my liv­ing room floor, layed down on my stom­ach, cued every­thing up and then man­u­al­ly acti­vat­ed all 3 devices at pre­cise inter­vals, live…in real time. One take, no edits…” Every­thing lined up, just like that.

Enjoy “Lawrence Welk Meets Vel­vet Under­ground” and imag­ine a moment when, cir­ca 1968, VU went main­stream on the mil­que­toast Lawrence Welk Show.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­ma­tion of The Vel­vet Underground’s “Sun­day Morn­ing” … for Your Sun­day Morn­ing

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The Vel­vet Under­ground & Andy Warhol Stage Pro­to-Punk Per­for­mance Art: Dis­cov­er the Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable (1966)

Hear Lost Acetate Ver­sions of Songs from The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)