Musicians resisted the radical demand for free shows

Evidence

Taking this literally, a contingent of Motherfuckers showed up at the Boston Tea Party where the MC5 opened for the Velvet Underground. In between the acts, the Motherfuckers commandeered the stage to demand that concerts should free. The rap ended with a cry to tear down the Tea Party, a former synagogue that had been converted into a concert hall in 1967. When the Velvet Underground (now without John Cale) came out on stage, Lou Reed declared that his band had “nothing to do” with the Motherfuckers’ proposal and in fact considered it very stupid. “This is our favorite place to play in the whole country and we would hate to see anyone even try to destroy it!” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1344

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The rupture between the avant-garde musicians (who want to keep their venue) and the radicals (who want to tear it down) is a complete dramatic scene—artists as incumbents defending their turf against the very revolutionary politics that electrified them.
• XREF: This inside-the-scene tension between musicians defending venues and radicals attacking them tests the book’s core claim that avant-gardes are produced by conditions rather than genius—here the conditions include the artists themselves resisting structural change.