"13 Most Beautiful" is set to the live music of husband and wife indie-pop duo Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips former members of the band Luna who formed their own band, Dean & Britta, in 2003.
In 2008, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh commissioned Dean & Britta to compose, arrange and perform songs that would accompany a selection from nearly 300 of Warhol's screen tests in a multimedia performance inspired by Warhol's films "13 Most Beautiful Women" (1965) and "13 Most Beautiful Boys" (1965), according to Wareham.
"13 four-minute screen tests run about an hour so they fit perfectly with the 13 song performances," Phillips said.
The screen tests in "13 Most Beautiful," each slowed down to four minutes, feature artists, movie stars, socialites and people randomly pulled off the streets of downtown Manhattan. They were collected by Warhol in his studio and were, at first, scarcely used. The screen tests were then employed on occasion as visual components for performances by the Velvet Underground and the German model Nico, according to Phillips.
"To me [the screen tests] work like paintings," Phillips said. "Warhol would actually project them [onto] the walls at parties and even figure out who was coming when deciding which ones to show."
Filmed on a stationary 16-millimeter camera, these screen tests are mesmerizing black and white portraits of Warhol beauties, from Susan Bottomly to Ingrid Superstar.
"The screen tests are film portraits, which we score like a music video but backwards, or a movie soundtrack but without dialogue," Wareham said.
Dean & Britta who have scored films such as "The Squid and the Whale" composed the majority of the songs used in "13 Most Beautiful," which feature Wareham on guitar, Phillips on bass and keyboards and both musicians on vocals. Wareham and Phillips were joined onstage Friday night by Matt Sumrow on guitars and keyboards and Anthony La Marca on percussion, bass and guitars.
In "13 Most Beautiful," Dean & Britta also cover songs such as Bob Dylan's "I'll Keep It with Mine." The song accompanied the screen test of Nico, who joined Velvet Underground as a vocalist in 1965. Dylan is rumored to have written the song specifically for Nico. Dean & Britta also cover the unreleased Velvet Underground song "I'm Not a Young Man Anymore," purportedly written by leadman Lou Reed in the same year that he sat for his screen test, according to Phillips.
Dean & Britta draw upon a blend of sounds including modern electronic components reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder, driving beats and riffs similar to The Strokes and an inevitable revival of elements of the Velvet Underground.
The most compelling portraits include Ann Buchanan (who at one point shared an apartment with Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg) holding an expressionless, unblinking tearful gaze, Paul America (who Warhol described as a "comic-strip drawing of Mr. America") smirking and chewing gum, the tragic baby-doll beauty Edie Sedgwick, the handsome Dennis Hopper, and the wide-eyed Jane Holzer, brushing her teeth in an unconsciously titillating fashion.
"They all show a persona what happens to people when they are in front of a camera and what happens to their faces, when the three minute film is stretched out to four," Wareham said.
Among the most powerful and interesting audiovisual combinations in "13 Most Beautiful" was the song that accompanied Edie Sedgwick's screen test, "It Don't Rain in Beverly Hills," which begins with the lyrics "you belonged on the silver screen." The performance's concluding song "Knives from Bavaria," which accompanies Jane Holzer's screen test, pays homage to Serge Gainsbourg's "Bonnie and Clyde," according to Phillips.
"There is inevitably a somber element to the show, when looking at faces frozen time and projected 42 years later, especially when so many of their lives ended tragically," Wareham said.
For over two years, Dean & Britta have been on tour around the world performing "13 Most Beautiful" in venues ranging from the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., Wareham said.
"[The Andy Warhol Museum] anticipated eight to 10 shows, but they didn't think it was going to go on for this long," Wareham said.
Although the duo was initially worried about the daunting responsibly of representing Warhol's work, Dean & Britta soon dismissed such heedful prudence.
"Warhol was no stranger to appropriating artwork, but I am sure there are some people who think we are complete philistines," Wareham said.
The performance on Friday was followed by an after party attended by the band at the Top of the Hop.
