Lou Reed RIP

Czech's naming a revolution after them, the Israeli's
I knew in my phone-posting fury I would be drawn into making some egregious typographical error.

"Egregious," for those without the benefit of a Long Island education, means...

Most people in my work only know "Walk on the Wild Side" and possibly "Perfect Day". One girl had never heard of Lou Reed (she is 22 and from Bulgaria though).

I'm pretty sure the Czech revolution was actually named after the house music producer Green Velvet. It was time for the perculator!

this is beyond stupid. if anything, particularly in America under-30s might recognize Lou/Velvets from the copious use in films (which was def the case with my top-40 loving teenage niece, who knew the Velvets' songs from the fucking Juno soundtrack)

"Heroin" was in that terrible Denzel drunk pilot movie

Andy's Czech

do not feed the Tuomas

lol @ pplains

Praguey Notion

"we're gonna Havel a real good time together..."

this thread is about a great man not some tuomas faux-naif passive aggressive trolling bullshit

shut the fuck up tuomas to to threads about shit you do care about and talk about that

heh in the UK we used to have this carcrash called "the culture show" and I remember the host flirting w reed and basically asking tough questions like "why are you so great" and "why do your toes taste so nice" and at the end of the interview lou said "just so you know, there is now one english journalist I like". The scoundrel!

― Jesus (wins), Wednesday, 30 October 2013 02:11 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2d8t6_lou-reed-berlin-interview-2007_music

Laverne's questions are fairly innocuous but she does the right thing in asking him about the music which always seems to be the one thing he's happy to engage in.

Interesting!
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/10/29/how-many-albums-did-lou-reed-and-the-velvet-underground-really-sell/

more like poo peed

http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/stop-the-presses/lou-reed-most-cited-influence-rock-n-roll-234749432.html

is there anyone Bono hasn't been influenced by?

Tuomas.

loool

from that Wall Street Journal blog

Since then, “The Velvet Underground & Nico” has sold 558,000 copies, more than any of the band’s other releases.

that's not really a surprise, "Heroin" is far and away their most notorious (and probably well-known, again thanks to film) song

man Oh! Sweet Nuthin's been used a lot too:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0892754/filmoyear

Banana album had sold 400,000 by the time of Rolling Stone's 20th anniv. issue in '87, I remember. ("Trout Mask Replica" 50,000; "Modern Lovers" all of 5000.)

I think VU & Nico had even outsold Music From Big Pink by that point, if I remember my RS 20th anniv. numbers correctly...also, Astral Weeks was in the high four-digits.

ME: So, what do you think about Lou Reed?

DAD: You know, I liked that song when it came out even though it was "different." It was his big hit, but you probably know this, he was the "cult" guy. Had a whole other career.

ME: Did you ever listen... to the band he was in?

DAD: The, what, the Hot Pepper?

ME: Velvet Underground.

DAD: "Hot Pepper?" Yeah, the Velvet Underground. No, I never listened to them. Were they played on Dr. Demento or something?

ME: Well, maybe an FM station at 3 in the morning.

DAD: I never heard anything else of his besides that one song, but everybody says he influenced a lot of people. How many records did he make?

ME: I dunno, a dozen? 20?

DAD: Really? That many? I know all his stuff was about the shady side of New York. Kind of his thing, right?

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/metrics-emily-haines-pays-tribute-to-lou-reeds-integrity-and-humor-20131028

this is just... i cant...

ME: Well, yeah.

haha

My girlfriend, who's younger than me, was surprised to learn that there was ever a time when VU wasn't super-famous. The way she learned the '60s as a budding 1990s hipster, England had the Beatles and Stones, and America had the Velvet Underground.

does she think the Beach Boys were french or something

Yeah, I don't know. Those are the three bands she mentioned as being on the same level, in her sense of the era. (I'd put the Beach Boys down on the next rung too, tbh.)

Michel L'amour

But anyway my point is that it's not surprising even the mainstream obits talk about the Velvets -- they've been successfully retroactively inserted into the timeline as a major force, even if most people still haven't heard them.

Also see: the band the Box Tops guy formed in the 70s.

eh I dunno if Big Star is *quite* on that level. I mean CNN didn't cover Chilton's death

Don't think Big Star nearly as famous. No Andy Warhol connection for one. Bet a lot of people who watch That 70s Show don't even know where the song came from.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/metrics-emily-haines-pays-tribute-to-lou-reeds-integrity-and-humor-20131028

RIP heaven needed

http://img1.etsystatic.com/030/0/6276524/il_570xN.518555379_exud.jpg

re dads
My parents did not have a Velvet Underground album but my dad went to see them in Cleveland and said it was the "worst concert [he] he ever seen" and he walked out and then complained about it for the next 45 years. He hasn't mentioned it recently, but I'm sure I could get him going on how terrible it was just by mentioning Lou Reed.

― La Lechera, Monday, January 30, 2012 10:01 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Did your parents have a Velvet Underground album?

Naw, I don't mean to say Big Star's as well-known as Velvet Underground. I do mean that they're a band most people have heard of, rather than have actually heard.

http://img1.etsystatic.com/030/0/6276524/il_570xN.518555379_exud.jpg
Poor Ernie HudsonIggy Pop.

I don't think that's true pp

like if you're the type of person who's heard of big star you're probably the type of person who's listened to big star

VU crept in at the edges of my awareness circa 1973 via thumbing through other people's record collections in college and hearing Heroin played on FM, back when AM ruled the airwaves and FM was an obscure backwater that drew 1/20th the audience of AM.

By the eighties people who liked music assumed you would have heard and liked the VU

By the nineties the VU were canonized. That's when I started seeing people actually owning their albums or their stuff on sale at Best Buy or Camelot.

Laverne's questions are fairly innocuous but she does the right thing in asking him about the music which always seems to be the one thing he's happy to engage in.

oh fine if you wanna bring facts into it

I guess I retconned in the flirting based on lou's final remark but the qs are total "plz talk for ten minutes about how you are a neglected genius, starting... NOW" fluffing (which is SOP for UK chat shows granted but for that to get a "now THIS english journalist is one of the good eggs" response is still pretty lolsome)

Not sure what the original point about Big Star was, but at least since the late 80s Lou was playing places like Radio City Music Hall, whilst Alex Chilton could be found at Tramps and Coney Island High.

I do like his marked preference for female music journalists, though. xp

Also bristled at questions about his personal life. Presumably because he was smart enough to know that shit didnt matter.

Who topped, him or Bowie?

> ME: I dunno, a dozen? 20?

i was browsing amazon the other week and noticed he had *4* of those cheap 5-album cd boxes available, the ones with the facsimile cardboard covers. all going for about £13

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Original-Album-Classics-Lou-Reed/dp/B0018BF1J0/ref=sr_1_1

Big Star has not been parodied in a Scooby Doo episode. game-set-match for Velvets imho