13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests"

In the mid-'60s, pop art provocateur Andy Warhol filmed brief, silent portraits of many of the near-celebrities and hangers-on associated with his famous Factory. Shot in starkly lit black and white, curiously probing each subject's soul, they remain fascinating decades later. Pittsburgh's Warhol Museum commissioned Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips to compile music to accompany selected portraits, including those of Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, and Dennis Hopper. Wareham (ex-leader of Galaxie 500) and Phillips together form the atmospheric, Velvet Underground-influenced band Luna, and are a duo with two albums to their credit as well as the score for the 2004 film, The Squid & the Whale. Often spare and laconic, their music inevitably scares up dreamscapes oozing cool elegance over ominous edges, just the thing to go with the Warhol shorts. Wareham (guitar, vocals) and Phillips (bass, keyboards, vocals) will perform while the films roll, along with Anthony LaMarca (percussion, bass, guitar), and Matt Sumrow (guitar, keyboards). Most of the Warhol project tunes are Dean & Britta originals. Exceptions include "I'll Keep It With Mine," which Bob Dylan supposedly wrote for Nico, and the Velvets' "I'm Not a Young Man Anymore," which naturally goes with Reed's portrait.
Sat., Feb. 28, 8 & 10:30 p.m., 2009