In RE Lou Reed
In Re Lou Reed.
I must admit that I was a bit surprised at how hard the news of Lou Reed’s death hit me. It might have been the suddenness as I had no idea that he was ill at all (the bit about the liver transplant was news to me) or it could be that I’ve been dealing with a lot of stressful things in my personal life including not being that well myself that it was just the straw on the camel’s back sort of thing.
As the day has worn on I see that the internet is all a buzz with the news and tributes commentary and what not are being posted as fast as folks can write them and link to a you tube video…which I still have trouble doing blast so that won’t be on this post.
I apologize for not posting on the blog for a while except for links to the podcast and my annual movie torture days of cheese but well life is life and some things aren’t as important as they used to be.
Back to Lou. I remember in one of the editions of the Rolling Stone Record guides – they stopped doing them at one time as the internet made this sort of book a commercial dinosaur - the third to be precise that while they had nothing but praise for the Velvet Underground they had little but scorn for Lou’s solo career – saying despite being a critic’s darling it’s all been downhill from Transformer and Rock and Roll Animal and it shows what a state of arrested development he is (or was now) it seemed a bit harsh then to me…but there are elements of truth in it.
To be pedantic – with the Velvet Underground – the first album especially the underground starts here – the long stream of Punk, Alterative and the like flows out of the spring that the velvets represented. They were ahead of the time but really not by much – what they did or what Lou did along with Cale was to marry subject matters such as drug use, deviant and unconventional sexuality, gritty tales of the city (Lou was a new Yorker) to avant-garde noise making and – and this is the bit I think folks miss – with the simplicity and forward thrust of Rock n’ Roll – Lou got his ear training from of all things Brill Building Pop – he worked for a bit as a song writer – which helped the kick which sometime startled folks when he penned things like Coney Island Baby
The effect of this was like dropping a catalyst in a supersaturated solution – things crystallized – and folks listened were amazed and did things – leading to a quip attributed to Brian Eno that only 10,000 (the number varies) people bought the Velvets first album – but they all formed bands –
The band was rather too full of dynamite to survive for long -- leading Lou into a solo career that was fraught with stylistic left and right turns and dives into a ditch from time to time – although after I’d say the Blue Mask in the 90’s he gradually became the cranky old man of rock – but made New York and Magic and Loss (about the death of a two friends from cancer) which is a very tough listen if you’ve lost someone. –
Personally I found the idea of Lou Reed at times much more inspiring than the actual Lou Reed – the idea that you can write a song about anything and that he wasn’t afraid to at times express a sense of self loathing and then come up with something like Sweet Jane from that box of pain was inspiring – that he wrote songs about Egg Creams which he sang in a very flat voice and was in general dismissive of anyone who was not Lou Reed and that some stuff is flat out bad makes him personally problematic – still I grocked him and Sweet Jane feels like an anthem to me for all the doom stuck losers who feel out there somewhere is a moment of sense love beauty and clarity if only they could find it or recognize it when it comes along –
So as I said – I was surprised to react to the news of Lou Reed’s death with a sense of being kicked in the gut.
Very much a Lou Reed Moment I would say.
RIP
I must admit that I was a bit surprised at how hard the news of Lou Reed’s death hit me. It might have been the suddenness as I had no idea that he was ill at all (the bit about the liver transplant was news to me) or it could be that I’ve been dealing with a lot of stressful things in my personal life including not being that well myself that it was just the straw on the camel’s back sort of thing.
As the day has worn on I see that the internet is all a buzz with the news and tributes commentary and what not are being posted as fast as folks can write them and link to a you tube video…which I still have trouble doing blast so that won’t be on this post.
I apologize for not posting on the blog for a while except for links to the podcast and my annual movie torture days of cheese but well life is life and some things aren’t as important as they used to be.
Back to Lou. I remember in one of the editions of the Rolling Stone Record guides – they stopped doing them at one time as the internet made this sort of book a commercial dinosaur - the third to be precise that while they had nothing but praise for the Velvet Underground they had little but scorn for Lou’s solo career – saying despite being a critic’s darling it’s all been downhill from Transformer and Rock and Roll Animal and it shows what a state of arrested development he is (or was now) it seemed a bit harsh then to me…but there are elements of truth in it.
To be pedantic – with the Velvet Underground – the first album especially the underground starts here – the long stream of Punk, Alterative and the like flows out of the spring that the velvets represented. They were ahead of the time but really not by much – what they did or what Lou did along with Cale was to marry subject matters such as drug use, deviant and unconventional sexuality, gritty tales of the city (Lou was a new Yorker) to avant-garde noise making and – and this is the bit I think folks miss – with the simplicity and forward thrust of Rock n’ Roll – Lou got his ear training from of all things Brill Building Pop – he worked for a bit as a song writer – which helped the kick which sometime startled folks when he penned things like Coney Island Baby
The effect of this was like dropping a catalyst in a supersaturated solution – things crystallized – and folks listened were amazed and did things – leading to a quip attributed to Brian Eno that only 10,000 (the number varies) people bought the Velvets first album – but they all formed bands –
The band was rather too full of dynamite to survive for long -- leading Lou into a solo career that was fraught with stylistic left and right turns and dives into a ditch from time to time – although after I’d say the Blue Mask in the 90’s he gradually became the cranky old man of rock – but made New York and Magic and Loss (about the death of a two friends from cancer) which is a very tough listen if you’ve lost someone. –
Personally I found the idea of Lou Reed at times much more inspiring than the actual Lou Reed – the idea that you can write a song about anything and that he wasn’t afraid to at times express a sense of self loathing and then come up with something like Sweet Jane from that box of pain was inspiring – that he wrote songs about Egg Creams which he sang in a very flat voice and was in general dismissive of anyone who was not Lou Reed and that some stuff is flat out bad makes him personally problematic – still I grocked him and Sweet Jane feels like an anthem to me for all the doom stuck losers who feel out there somewhere is a moment of sense love beauty and clarity if only they could find it or recognize it when it comes along –
So as I said – I was surprised to react to the news of Lou Reed’s death with a sense of being kicked in the gut.
Very much a Lou Reed Moment I would say.
RIP
posted by Unknown at 10:35 AM
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