Compilation of Dallas appearances show Velvet Underground at its prime

For years, the Velvet Underground’s Oct. 15, 1969, appearance at White Rock Lake was barely a footnote in the band’s brief history.

Then, in 2019, Southern Methodist University archivists found an unmarked 16mm reel showing Lou Reed and company performing outside the lake’s Winfrey Point building during the nationwide “Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam.” SMU posted a 12-minute clip from the peace rally on YouTube, but only used snippets of the VU’s performance because the concert audio was garbled.

Now, Boston-based videographer and VU fanatic Jack Amadon has put together a remarkable new clip of the future Rock and Roll Hall of Famers playing their junkie classic “I’m Waiting for the Man” in its entirety at White Rock Lake.

After digging up additional footage of the Dallas rally, Amadon painstakingly matched the “Waiting” visuals with live audio of the VU performing the song days later at The End of Cole Ave., a long-gone nightclub in Knox-Henderson near the present-day Javier’s restaurant.

After weeks of snipping and syncing, Amadon had an important new artifact of an influential but rarely-filmed band in its prime. He recently put the video on YouTube, where it’s racked up more than a half-million views. 

“It’s a little dizzying that this project is garnering this much attention,” he says. “It’s blown up bigger than I expected.”