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Patti Smith, Lou Reed make list of New York City 400
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Reed at the 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert at MSG Oct. 30, 2009 in NY
The Museum of the City of New York has released a list of the 400 most important figures in the city's four hundred year history. Included in this list are punk vets Patti Smith and Lou Reed, as well as artist Andy Warhol.
According to the museum's website, the list is to commemorate Henry Hudson's voyage to New York Harbor in 1609. There will also be a book to go along with the list, New York 400: A History of America's Greatest City with Images from the Museum of the City of New York, published by the museum.
Patti Smith is a poet and artist who, in the 1970s, was one of the founding females of punk rock. Along with Lenny Kaye on guitar, she started performing her poetry on the Bowery, the two later on forming the Patti Smith group with Ivan Kral, Jay Dee Daugherty and Richard Sohl. She was a regular at Max's Kansas City and CBGBs (where Smith was the last person to perform when the club closed in 2006).
Lou Reed is best known as the lead singer and guitarist for The Velvet Underground, one of the most influential bands, which led the way for all different types of rock music genres. He has since become one of the rock and roll greats. Reed wrote unabashed, straightforward rock mixed with soul. The Velvet Underground was punk before the term "punk" was even coined. He then went on to have a varied and prolific solo career after the band broke up, and is still performing, most recently at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame anniversary shows at Madison Square Garden.
Andy Warhol was at the center of the early New York music and art scene of the late 1960s/early 1970s. His factory was the gathering place for all the creative types of the city. Warhol is responsible for The Velvet Underground's early beginnings and first shows at Max's Kansas City, not to mention the inspiration for a countless amount of the band's songs. His pop art pieces, like the Campbells soup can, are his best known, but he also made short and feature length films and productions with his factory "superstars."
New York 400 is available on the museum's website. Patti Smith will be performing at the Bowery Ballroom for three days in December. Lou Reed has a new book of photography, Romanticism, out now. You can also hear him every Saturday from 6pm-8pm and Monday from 10pm-midnight on Sirius XM channel 29.
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