Lou Reed RIP

carl wilson:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2013/10/lou_read_obit_an_appreciation_of_the_velvet_underground_frontman.single.html

I love Rob Sheff's, particularly for explaining why Lou was an awesome guitarist.

x-post- My university radio station in 1979 was run by Radio/tv/film majors who wanted to get jobs at top 40 stations and believed that the university's am carrier current station heard only in buildings on campus and the low-watt FM station should just imitate commercial top 40 radio of the time. But they let us djs get a few token choices of our own per hour on the air. Freshman me found the Velvets back in the record library, and played "Heroin" in the wee hours on the AM station. The program director later disdainfully asked why I would choose to play a song with that title. She then listened to it, and said "sounds like that guy is on heroin." I forgot how I responded, but she dealt with it (she was a graduating senior), and eventually me and others transformed the Fm station into a free-form one where such a question was never asked again.

What a shitty excuse for a program director!

I wanna talk to that program director, she threw a cup at curmudgeon.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/today-particularly-rough-day-for-east-village-junk,34367/

Does anybody know where I can find that 1979 WPIX radio show with Lou and Cale? The link for it on that tumblr is gone.

So, older people, did "I Love You, Suzanne" and "No Money Down" get daytime MTV play? Their respective album's chart positions suggest he was actually selling records, peaking of course with New York (certified gold).

Does anybody know where I can find that 1979 WPIX radio show with Lou and Cale? The link for it on that tumblr is gone.

tylerw has it

Seem to remember "Suzanne" being played a lot, vaguely remember there being a video.

So, older people, did "I Love You, Suzanne" and "No Money Down" get daytime MTV play?

I had a cassette "Best Of" of Reed's 70s solo stuff and got "New York" when it came out, but I didn't hear any of his other 80s records until I got to college and plundered the radio station. vague recollection of some late night performance (Letterman?) of "Joystick" or something like that.

looks like that was "Video Violence" actually, 1986...?

I just saw it. Eek.

"My Red Joystick" got play too apparently.

tylerw has it

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier)

oh, thanks! Hadn't dug deep enough into the other thread.

Lou did an in-store signing at Tower Records on W4th in support of that album. I went and remember being surprised when my friend from Canarsie asking him which of his albums was his favorite. I tensed up a little in anticipation of the response which turned out to merely be "I like 'em all."

"Suzanne" and "No Money Down" were in regular rotation on MTV, but the former more than the latter. The live "Video Violence" (1986 Giants Stadium Amnesty Int'l show) was shown a lot, too (VJ Dweezil Zappa called it "the worst guitar solo of all time").

(not nearly as notable as getting Iggy Pop's signature at the Tower in Austin)

Just saw a piece on Lou on NBC news. Clips of "Heroin" and Metal Machine Music were played. On national network TV.

and by Brian Williams himself! He sounded moved.

and he mentioned Vaclev Havel!

I didn't say I liked the Art of Noise, I said I liked the sound of it. People I like are Afrika Bambataa and Soul Sonic Force. Rikki Lee Jones. Run DMC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6-Nnq8BQ86M

i have one of those cringeworthy memories of doing an oral report on heroin for my american studies class in 1985 and turning all the lights off and putting the shades down and playing "heroin" for the class on a boombox. i was trying to be deep.

lol

oh Scott that's excellent. I did mostly the same with the Cure's Killing an Arab in my English class (we were reading The Stranger or Outsider or whichever one that was..)

Yup. Some of us bought a few of those RCAs on eight-track, a format we might have otherwise shunned.

My greatest record find of all time was finding the 8-track of Metal Machine Music at a truck stop in Barstow. Probably had been there since the release.

VU&N and WL/WH were pretty difficult to find in the early 80s. I found both of them used at Rhino Records in Claremont - the banana had been peeled, but even then finding an intact one was cost-prohibitive.

I found both of them used at Rhino Records in Claremont

!

this was my record store as a young'un

I had Patti Smith's Radio Ethiopia on 8-track. It was so hard to find music I liked on used 8-tracks back in the early 80s (wasn't going to buy new just for the car).

I remember the VU 3rd being hard to find one in the 70s, with WL/WH being the easiest, and VU&N being not that bad. Don't remember whether Loaded was easy or not.

I bought MMM when it came out; when in high school a department store near me (Two Guys) kept the Billboard top 200 LPs on display (and on sale - $3.99 for single-LPs), and believe it or not MMM made the cut. Some pretty obscure stuff will show up in the top-200.

I also found great stuff at the Claremont Rhino.

luc sante:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/10/lou-reed-gardenia-and-snowflake.html

SFJ:

The famous quotation, widely attributed to Brian Eno, that “only a thousand people bought the Velvet Underground’s début, but they all started bands” is not wrong; if anything, it is conservative, though we have to range over many albums to size up Reed’s impact. “What Goes On” gave us the Feelies; “Sister Ray” gave us Spacemen 3; the third, self-titled Velvet Underground album gave us Galaxie 500, and maybe a chunk of the independent rock music made in New Zealand during the late nineteen-eighties. Reed’s tendency toward structural simplicity married to noise, and a faith that no word was above his listener’s head, is at the root of so much music that I am scared to make a list, in fear of the counterlists that will point out everyone who is missing.

On the Pixies’ 1987 début, “Come On Pilgrim,” Frank Black sang, “I wanna be a singer like Lou Reed.” That’s a fairly solid citation, so we’ve got one, for sure. We could venture further and say that David Byrne, Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, and Ian Curtis would have thought very differently about music if not for Reed’s existence. The real list of who loved Lou Reed songs is probably something like “everyone,” though that doesn’t do much for anyone looking to find something to listen to right now.

i can't remember ever reading lou talking about dylan or dylan talking about lou. in an interview or whatever. like, what did lou think when he first heard dylan?

Think they decided never to talk to or about each other because of Nico. Cherchez la femme.

In the mid-1960s, when the Velvet Underground was first trying to make it, someone, possibly Andy Warhol, was trying to get Dylan to see Lou Reed's young band. Robbie Robertson went to see the Velvets instead, and was not impressed. Referring to Reed, Robertson said, "That guitar player, he ain't nothin' ". Reed retorted by saying that Dylan's songs were "marijuana leftovers", and something like "Dylan is the type of person you'd want to punch out at a party."

Reed praised Dylan at length in RS' '89 cover story -- said he made his assistant buy Down it the Groove so he could listen to "Rank Strangers to Me," as if working for Lou wasn't penance enough.

And he did a ripping job of covering "Foot of Pride" in '92.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIvfgVCJm4A

gaizka mendieta obviously has a lou reed story too https://twitter.com/GaizkaMendieta6/status/394837463531012096/photo/1

i can't remember ever reading lou talking about dylan or dylan talking about lou. in an interview or whatever. like, what did lou think when he first heard dylan?
iirc according to the transformer bio lou felt slighted that his songs weren't revered as much as dylan's.

i can't remember ever reading lou talking about dylan or dylan talking about lou. in an interview or whatever. like, what did lou think when he first heard dylan?

― scott seward, Monday, October 28, 2013 5:32 PM (35 minutes ago)

Take a listen to the Peel Slowly & See demo disc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9xQ-xwz6lM

Prominent Men, I guess, but the other demos, Albert R? Maybe I just don't remember them correctly (the lugubrious Cale ones I am thinking of...)

but that's not Lou, duh--sorry, disregard (sleepless)

Yeah I need to revisit them, but I remember there were some alt. takes or demos that sounded just as Dylan-esque as "Prominent Men".

I imagine it would be time-consuming to isolate the takes within the long unindexed tracks.

Maybe this one too?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmmMy-712ZA

Kinda reminds me of "These Days".

Speaking of the Nico+Dylan+Lou connection, didn't Lou play the guitar on Nico's "I'll Keep It With Mine"?

love that version

Nope. Wiki informs me that Jackson Browne plays on that track.

Run Run Run is pretty Dylanesque in the verses!

i have no doubt that a fiery pissed off jew storming the barricades of pop music in the early 60's influenced lou in a big way! i mean everyone took from dylan. in dress or attitude or song. and i know they were apparently friendly in the 80's? just never actually heard lou say anything about him later. but maybe he didn't want to remind people of dylan when talking about his own stuff because HE was the genius.

i mean they have always reminded me of each other.

this is pretty rocking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUH8VrIC1j8

great sound and video on that clip too.

"tatters" one of those songs i don't know cuz i never listened to that album and now of course i want to listen to that album.