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Music

Listen to Julian Casablancas Cover The Velvet Underground's "Run Run Run"

For 'Vinyl'—HBO's new Scorsese-helmed, balls out, 1970s music industry TV series—Julian Casablancas lends his pipes to the character of Lou Reed.

Illustration by Dessie Jackson

Last Sunday saw the season premiere of HBO's Vinyl, a TV series, helmed by Martin Scorsese, which centers around the music scene in NYC from 1973 onward. It was a two hour long, balls-deep, white blizzard and glitter romp through the proto-scene of the city: before it exploded with punk and leather and Lower East Side guitar action. We ran a bunch of sweet articles that centered around the music and fashion and culture of the era—and its ongoing resonance—last week, which you can read here. But below is a cover of The Strokes Julian Casablancas basically pretending to be Lou Reed. From this we can glean that a fictionalized version of The Velvet Underground will be making an appearance in the series, and we can also reveal that the person who plays Reed is the ex-drummer of The Drums.

The more we talk about Vinyl, the more it seems like the central casting unit just went down to the corner of 7th and Avenue A in the East Village and selected whoever was falling out of Cabin or Black Market to play extras in the show. There are a lot of NYC indie boys to be spotted in the show as extras and more.

But in the meantime listen to Casablancas twitchily snarl and strut his way through this Velvet's classic and read our extensive cover story with him here.