oh that's right isn't he the one that's into like Merzbow and Hijokaidan and such?
― obsidian crocogolem (sleeve), Tuesday, 28 March 2023 01:24 (one year ago) link
Yep. These days he's into super extreme contemporary stuff, things you can only order on cassette. I appreciate his enthusiasm even if I don't share it. (I was initially a little worried about the whole white supremacist side of noise, but instead he's found what seems like a really tight-knit queer-friendly scene. Lou would approve.)
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 28 March 2023 01:33 (one year ago) link
I'm afraid to ask, but what's the white supremacist side of noise? Is it something that's catching on?
― birdistheword, Tuesday, 28 March 2023 04:53 (one year ago) link
https://jeanhugueskabuiku.substack.com/p/about-vatican-shadow-link-with-the
― obsidian crocogolem (sleeve), Tuesday, 28 March 2023 05:48 (one year ago) link
(that link was re: yr 1st question, answer to the second is "not any more than in metal, maybe less"
― obsidian crocogolem (sleeve), Tuesday, 28 March 2023 05:49 (one year ago) link
I am playing the first Lou Reed LP, LOU REED.
It's good.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 28 March 2023 10:37 (one year ago) link
Thanks sleeve. Disturbing stuff, hopefully more journalists will call it out.
― birdistheword, Tuesday, 28 March 2023 17:23 (one year ago) link
I didn't know about those connections and I wrote a lengthy profile on Fernow for The Wire in 2011. Pissed me off quite a bit to find out.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, 28 March 2023 17:31 (one year ago) link
Yeah I was bummed because while my exposure to that musical world is very dilettantish, I actually like Vatican Shadow and saw him perform once.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 28 March 2023 17:39 (one year ago) link
I mean it goes back to Boyd Rice/Non, Whitehouse etc
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 28 March 2023 17:52 (one year ago) link
New NYT piece up that's taken from Will Hermes's in-the-works biography, covering the time between the Velvets and Transformer, more or less.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 22 September 2023 22:21 (six months ago) link
Oh wow, I was starting to think he had given up on that project.
― Kizza Me on the Bus (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 September 2023 22:23 (six months ago) link
Ha I'd been half thinking that myself at points but I saw various posts from him that it was still happening. Just was putting in the work!
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 22 September 2023 22:26 (six months ago) link
It’s here!
― Dose of Thunderwords (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 05:00 (six months ago) link
Hermes bio is stellar — definitely the best Lou bio ...
Also! This thing I put together ...
https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2023/10/03/sad-song-lou-reeds-berlin-at-50/
― tylerw, Tuesday, 3 October 2023 16:53 (six months ago) link
I met him in 2015 at Pop Con and he was already working on it.
― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 16:58 (six months ago) link
(xp) Funny you should mention Fassbinder, and I might have mentioned this before, but this scene from "Beware of a Holy Whore" always reminds me of the cover of "Berlin".
https://peterburnett.info/images/film_stills/beware_of_a_holy_whore/beware_of_a_holy_whore_041.JPG
― The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 17:10 (six months ago) link
Wasn’t Berlin supposed to be a double album and the label said “hell no”? Is there any idea what that tracklisting would have looked like?
― Cow_Art, Tuesday, 3 October 2023 17:29 (six months ago) link
That's the story but I have never actually heard of what else was recorded for it and not used and I suspect it might be one of Lou's fairy stories (no pun intended).
― The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 17:36 (six months ago) link
the beginning and end of that mix I made has the only real Berlin outtake I've heard — which is just a quick instrumental of "Berlin". I think the acetate that floats around has slightly longer edits of some tunes, but nothing too major.
Re: fassbinder, I do have a fantasy of him filming a Lou concert sometime in the 1970s. Could've been GREAT.
― tylerw, Tuesday, 3 October 2023 17:45 (six months ago) link
― Dose of Thunderwords (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 18:49 (six months ago) link
i interviewed him for a yet-to-be-published thing — they sent me the book a few months back.
― tylerw, Tuesday, 3 October 2023 18:50 (six months ago) link
nice!
― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 19:04 (six months ago) link
Cool! Started reading from the beginning but now just skipping around and my jaw is dropping at how good it is, the organization and level of detail. Not really too surprised though, since I loved loved loved LOVE GOES TO BUILDINGS ON FIRE.
― Dose of Thunderwords (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 19:10 (six months ago) link
Looks like this is yet another step up in his fine, fine, superfine career.
― Dose of Thunderwords (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 19:11 (six months ago) link
You’ve got to give a littleTake a little
another excerpt on Vulture - dealing with Lulu, amazing
https://www.vulture.com/article/lou-reed-biography-the-king-of-new-york.html
But the finale, “Junior Dad,” was something else. The album’s quietest song, with lyrics written roughly two years prior, it was delivered with a tenderness that had scant precedent in Reed’s work. The verses moved through a Freudian minefield of parental failure and childhoodfears. The singer asks to be saved from drowning, to be kissed on the lips, and envisions their dead father driving a boat. Awakening from a dream, the singer sees how time had “withered him and changed him,” perhaps both of them, invoking the “greatest disappointment.” A father’s disappointment in a child, a child’s disappointment in the father, the child realizing they’d become the parent: Take your pick.
Listening to the playback, the lyrics cut Reed’s bandmates to the core. Hetfield’s dad abandoned him when he was 13; Hammett’s had been physically abusive toward him and his mother, then abandoned them, and had died just a month prior. “I had to run out of the control room,” Hammett said; “I found myself standing in the kitchen, sobbing away. James came into the kitchen in the same condition. He was sobbing too.”
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 19:19 (six months ago) link
Loved that article, the Lulu details and the stuff around the end of his life was very affecting.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 19:20 (six months ago) link
from the vulture excerpt…
"that suggested the guitarist Kirk Hammett had, like most hard-rock guitarists of his generation, been weaned on Rock ’n’ Roll Animal."
Hammett may have been familiar with Rock 'n roll Animal. But "most hard rock guitarists of his generation' have very very little truck with that record/Wagner and Hunter. For sure, that record was an FM hit in 1974 and not only put him in the front rank with Alice Cooper and Dave Bowie, but had a greater penetration with the lumpen rock audience at the time than Berlin and definitely any VU record. But R'nR' Animal didn't stick around at all in the hard rock canon afterwards: the overwhelming majority of Hammett's metal/hard rock cohort could have very easily gone through their formative periods never hearing that record. Will Hermes damn well knows this, and it seems like he should have gone back and come up with another claim.
I gotta think that Hetfield was the least into the whole Lou Reed thing… he likes country, hard rock, metal and hardcore, and that's it. in 89, David "this new stones album is the best since some girls' Fricke profiled the band for RS for the first time, and while on the bus, someone put on "I Want you (She's so Heavy") and hetfield goes "whoa, what the fuck is this? this is HEAVY as fuck!!!" He had never heard it.
― veronica moser, Tuesday, 3 October 2023 19:47 (six months ago) link
^Good post, vm. I thought the same thing about that RnRA quote.
― Dose of Thunderwords (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 20:18 (six months ago) link
Also still think Jenny Scheinman is kind of an unacknowledged secret weapon of "Junior Dad."
― Dose of Thunderwords (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 20:19 (six months ago) link
I make no apologies for being the ringleader of our double precovers album but I will be interested to read all of this.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 3 October 2023 20:23 (six months ago) link
kirk and lars seem to have pretty catholic tastes for metal guys but agreed the RnRA isn't exactly part of the general hard rock canon on which i was reared.
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 20:45 (six months ago) link
Wasn’t Berlin supposed to be a double album
According to Bob Ezrin, who produced the record and then performed the editing, all that he removed were interludes, instrumental solos and other interstitial material; no songs or vocal parts of songs were excluded.
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 3 October 2023 20:47 (six months ago) link
If anything I thought this went in the other direction: it was a way for Xgau to say “hey, I appreciate hard rock too!”(xp)
― Dose of Thunderwords (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 20:47 (six months ago) link
Lou reed live > rock n roll animal imo
― brimstead, Tuesday, 3 October 2023 20:49 (six months ago) link
ha same show! I don’t know things
kirk and lars seem to have pretty catholic tastes for metal guys
The core dynamic of Metallica is James vs. Lars; when Lars wins the argument, you get Load & ReLoad (especially their album covers) and Lulu, when James wins you get "let's just be Metallica, dammit" albums like Death Magnetic.
― read-only (unperson), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 21:06 (six months ago) link
Re Rock 'n' Roll Animal, the live version of "Sweet Jane" got airplay on NY classic rock radio into the mid '80s, because junior high unperson was definitely influenced to buy the album.
― read-only (unperson), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 21:08 (six months ago) link
You think? Lars has the conceptual side for sure, but I got the impression that a lot of Load/Reload was James wanting to express his blues-y side musically. Idk which one of them is more of the driving force behind the 'return to form' thrash records, I'm curious though.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 21:31 (six months ago) link
Lars has the conceptual side for sure, but I got the impression that a lot of Load/Reload was James wanting to express his blues-y side musically.
I wrote about Load and ReLoad for Stereogum a few years ago and started the piece off with this quote:
“Lars and Kirk drove on those records. The whole ‘We need to reinvent ourselves’ topic was up. Image is not an evil thing for me, but if the image is not you then it doesn’t make much sense. I think they were really after a U2 kind of vibe, Bono doing his alter ego. I couldn’t get into it. The whole ‘OK, now in this photoshoot we’re going to be ’70s glam rockers.’ Like, what? I would say half — at least half — the pictures that were to be in the booklet, I yanked out.” — James Hetfield, Classic Rock, May 2009
(If you want to read the whole piece, there's a hilarious quote in there from a Rolling Stone review that describes Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and ...And Justice for All as "transitional albums" between Kill 'Em All and the self-titled album.)
― read-only (unperson), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 21:55 (six months ago) link
Lol. James is just talking about the artwork/fashion/photos there though, not the music. I came across this quote from him that makes it sound like he's often trying different styles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZh7Fw1j0qk
I'm sure the truth is that sometimes one of them is tired of reinventing the wheel while the other is more ready to go back to the well, and vice versa.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Tuesday, 3 October 2023 22:38 (six months ago) link
Btw the ending of this is way more metal than Lulu -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym9-r1-G8Gg
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Wednesday, 4 October 2023 17:45 (six months ago) link
― read-only (unperson), Tuesday, October 3, 2023 5:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
this just doesn't seem true at all but whatever
― ivy., Wednesday, 4 October 2023 17:50 (six months ago) link
Lol. James is just talking about the artwork/fashion/photos there though, not the music.
― Dose of Thunderwords (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 4 October 2023 19:02 (six months ago) link
Bought this book last night and great so far. Thanks for the rec Ilm
― calstars, Wednesday, 4 October 2023 20:02 (six months ago) link
Btw I've been continuing to enjoy getting introduced to the '90s Reed & Cale albums via the Jokermen podcast.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Wednesday, 4 October 2023 20:16 (six months ago) link
just learned today that LITA is reissuing this obscurity I have never heard, sounds cool
https://www.discogs.com/release/1051337-Lou-Reed-Hudson-River-Wind-Meditations
― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Wednesday, 4 October 2023 20:26 (six months ago) link
it's nice, like if metal machine music was a new age album
― tylerw, Wednesday, 4 October 2023 20:57 (six months ago) link
One of the comments suggests playing it in concert with MMM
― calstars, Wednesday, 4 October 2023 21:43 (six months ago) link