Remarkably, both the Holy Modal Rounders and the Velvet Underground appeared on national television, reaching millions of households. In 1965, legendary CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite introduced “The Making of an Underground Film,” a five-and-a-half-minute segment that featured Jonas Mekas, Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol, and the Velvet Underground (whose members—except for drummer Maureen Tucker—were shirtless and wearing body paint). “Some underground films have been criticized for dealing too frankly with such themes as sex and nudity,” CBS correspondent Dave Dugan reported, “but many movies such as this one may simply seem confusing.” Even the Fugs came close to making it on network television after Sanders’s face landed on the cover of the February 17, 1967, issue of Life—one of the nation’s highest-circulation magazines. This led to a call from The Tonight Show to appear as Johnny Carson’s guest. Ed Sanders stubbornly insisted that the Fugs should be allowed to perform “Kill for Peace” on the program as a protest against the Vietnam War but, not surprisingly, the network refused to let the Fugs sing, “If you don’t like the people or the way that they talk / If you don’t like their manners or they way that they walk / Kill, kill, kill for peace!”

From Chapter 15 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore

Former actress Nancy Cain joined the Videofreex after she took a job working on a CBS pilot that was to replace The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. CBS executive Don West had hired writers from Chicago’s famed improvisational comedy troupe, Second City, to create a hybrid television variety show, though Cain recalled that “he really wanted to create a cutting-edge documentary show.” West heard about the Woodstock footage, so he and Cain headed down to Ratcliff’s loft and were stunned by the tapes. “First Day #1 and First Day #2 documented a help tent for kids who were freaking out on drugs,” Cain said of the fuzzy black-and-white footage. “Don hired them immediately, and we all started on a pilot show to present to the network.” The group went from having no money to working with a healthy five-figure budget, which was a lot of money for the time. Mary Curtis Ratcliff remembered going to the bowels of CBS and, like kids at Christmas, hauling away whatever they wanted from a massive video equipment room. The ’freex stood out in CBS’s headquarters, a high-rise building called Black Rock where everything was carefully controlled by the network, from the air conditioning to the artwork on display. “There we were in our new suite of offices,” Cain said, “with posters and tacks on the walls—and music, boom boom boom—people going in and out twenty-four hours a day.” With all the resources and equipment they could ask for, the group began working on their doomed television show pilot, Subject to Change.

From Chapter 22 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore

Nancy Cain remembered people on the street being amazed by their Portapaks because, at that time, most people had never seen themselves on a video screen before. More than being a mere novelty, the Videofreex were trying to create media on their own terms. “We wanted to make our own world,” Mary Curtis Ratcliff said, “and this video movement was part of changing the world. There were only three networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS—so this was an underground way of getting information out.” Skip Blumberg added, “We had this front-row seat to everything that was going on, because the major media wasn’t covering it. And if they were, they were covering it from the outside and we were covering everything from inside.” Predictably, the other CBS executives hated West’s pet project. When the network suits descended from Black Rock to watch the Subject to Change pilot on December 17, 1969, they were taken aback by the Videofreex’s studio production. Buzzy Linhart led the show’s house band, and the downtown audience sat in bleachers. “We put the CBS executives in our neighbor’s loft,” Cain said, “and they were smoking these big smelly cigars, like, straight out of central casting. They were obnoxious and they burned a hole in our neighbor’s futon, stuff like that. Then at the end, they just stomped out. I never really thought it was going to get on the air, and I was right. But it was a great adventure, then everybody got fired. Don West, he got fired.” Over the course of five months, the Videofreex had blown through about $70,000 of CBS’s money, about half a million in today’s dollars. They may have failed in landing a major network television show, but this freed them artistically and left them with a lot of equipment.

From Chapter 22 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore