The Story of the Velvet Underground by Prosperi Buri

​    I like music in a very specific way. And this band doesn’t really enter my mental music club. If you just told me the name…the only thing to come to mind would be the famous banana. And yet apparently, they were huge, at least when it came to blowing the minds of kids who grew up to become famous musicians themselves. And so I figured I’ll learn all about them. Well, as much as you can learn about a music act from a graphic novel.
    And so, according to this graphic novel, the band was a joke that started off as The Factory based pet project, fronted by two bickering unpleasant characters they went on to get some (limited and dubious) fame and not much acclaim and split about five short (or long to them, probably) years later. The book made it seem like at no time the music they made was actually good, but it was different and thematically controversial enough to gain attention.  And that’s eventually made them into a sort of music legends.
    I’m not impressed. Not by the story. Not by the underwhelming cartoonish art, very basic black and white with splashes of pink for color. Probably wouldn’t like the music either, though that judgement will be reserved until actually listening to it. But it was a quick read and educational on a pop culture level and now there’s a context for the banana in my mind, so there.