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Originally Posted by SonikJesus
So I'm working on my senior thesis project for my history major at school. I really don't want to be stuck researching and writing a 30-page report for six months on something I really have no interest in. I'd rather do it on something I'm really interested in. I really want to base it around the Velvet Underground in some way. I'm having no problem finding secondary sources on the subject but finding primary sources on it is proving to be difficult. Anyone know any primary sources or know where i can find some on the VU? Of course I already know of the records themselves but anything else would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, dudes
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undergrad right? I would assume so with only a 30 page project.. should be cake, I wrote a 25 page research project analyzing Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey monomyth in light of the music and culture of the grateful dead even back in community college,by senior year I was up to 50-60 pages easy, I did 6 or 8 30 page projects a semester ( i turned in approx 100 pages of work each class)..
for undergrad work the suggestions above are WAAYY to much work, that is graduate level history work, no one expects you to conduct interviews for your senior's thesis, not that you can't, but that is a bit over the top, especially considering you wanna write about VU where interviews are rather out of your easy access..
good primary sources for music/band related history projects include published interviews, lyrics, contemporary newspaper/magazine articles, contemporary biographies, live recordings, documentary/news footage etc etc.. this is undergrad level research expectations, probably that you include a few of each.
To narrow it down what is the particular topic of this senior seminar/thesis you are taking? I had to take mine on genocide in the 20th century, quite a drag actually, but it was the only seminar that would let me research Ethiopian History which was my specific major, and so my six months were full of nightmares and horror stories about the Italian acts of genocide against Ethiopia 1935-1941, and of course standard genocide studies like Rwanda, Cambodia, the American Indians and the Holocaust. I still am quite haunted by the experience... the draft came out to be 60 pages, but the project I enjoyed more was a 70 page study on the Cold War between Ethiopia and Colonial Europe, 1860s-1920s...
to get specific,
for VU look into interviews with fans, producers, contemporary artists/bands/, promoters, record execs, family members, biographers, magazine articles/writers of the period of your research.
Of my head, a good topic with VU would be to analyze the historical impact of the Velvet Underground on American music, and then you can lay a foundation of research on the Velvet Underground themselves, but also use primary source material for other bands/artists/music communities over the past few years..
Primary sources= any material/sources which are contemporary to the time you are researching, they do not necessarily have to be "from the horses mouth" so to speak..
By the way, if you find a primary source within a secondary source, as quotation you can easily quote it yourself as a primary source of your own, as it remains a primary source, so a good place to start hunting down primary sources for a band/music is in monographs and biographies which are literally filled to the brim with such material, usually in chronological order even!
For my dead paper I relied just on such material for primary sources, on interviews, on lyrics, on footage/documentaries, on biographies, on magazine articles, etc etc..
good luck, it should be a lot of fun, after all, it is your last history paper, make it your best, and make it practice for your Master's Thesis one day, which will be your first, peer-reviewed, profession level and fully published monograph
