He and his (quite beautiful) wife Britta were playing a special performance of songs commissioned for Andy Warhol screen tests and, while here playing at the Wex, did a panel discussion of the Velvets/Warhol relationship plus a book-signing afterward. (I loved his book and highly recommend it, by the way.)
The panel, called Peel Slowly and See: Warhol, Music and Image, included Dean, Ohio State comparative studies professor Barry Shank, and Pitchfork managing editor Mark Richardson. Prof. Shank got things started with a 20-minute or so slide show and talk on Lou Reed's background leading up to forming the Velvets, including a clip of a song by Lou's pre-Velvets band the Primitives. I had never heard this before. Mark Richardson (who seemed like a shockingly cool, down to earth guy) went next and made the overriding point that it's hard to imagine how crazy it must have been to hear the Velvets back in 1967-68. One of his points was how crazy different (rock and roll speaking) 1967 was from a decade before while nowadays, 2008 doesn't seem so different than 1998. I think the term "cultural acceleration" was applied to this. Dean finished things off with more or less off the cuff remarks about his personal relationship with the Velvets. (Luna were picked to open up for the Velvets when they toured Europe briefly in 1993. Pretty awesome.)
The Q&A that followed was brief, mainly because there were maybe 40 or so folks there, most of whom didn't ask anything. Most questions were aimed at Dean, of course. I couldn't help myself and asked the whole panel, getting back to Mark's point about cultural acceleration, if they felt that music was reaching some kind of dead ends when it came to finding a sound as game-changing as the Velvets were. The discussion on that one was pretty lively, I thought.
Afterward, there was a book signing. I talked to Dean for a few minutes, and he was quite nice and, well, down to earth. I told him that I had been a fan of Galaxie since high school but, after reading his memoir, had really reevaluated and more deeply come to love Luna. He asked what I did for a living and seemed genuinely intersted when I talked about leukemia/lymphoma, etc. At the end of the conversation, I told him that I'd probably never get to meet him again and, if it was cool with him, would love to get a photo with him. And he jumped up, put his arm around me, and ... well ... there you have it. I'm a bigger fan than I was before.
