With their taste for black rather than tie-dyed clothing, their songs full of imagery from dog-eared bondage and discipline magazines, their Audenesque delight in the industrial ruins of New York, and their aurally brutal rebuke to the good vibes of late '60s Californian hippy acts like Love and Jefferson Airplane, the Velvets were a band that Bill could relate to in the late '70s and early '80s,