What else is there to say? Had a brother who was a Bowie obsessive - he came home sometime during 1973 with a copy of Transformer hed borrowed and that was it for me. I was ten. I hadnt had much interest in pop music before but something about that album worked its way into my brain. I loved the sound of it (the Bowie/Ronson production glows) and the songs, and Reeds voice and what he was saying. It was the first record I ever bought. The wonderful pure pop on that disc slowly revealed itself, to my innocent mind, to have multiple hidden layers. I didnt understand the references in Walk On The Wild Side or Make Up but I grasped they were there. Every song on that album is a masterpiece ... including the lesser known ones such as Wagon Wheel or Im So Free ... Do you remember the shape I was in? I had horns and fins. I didnt know what it meant but it was thrilling, nonetheless. The subsequent discovery of The Velvet Underground changed everything - the notion of pop as art, of an avant garde, of forbidden fruit, of dark and dangerous subject matter filtered through experimental form. Every album is perfection. Every album was a voyage of discovery. This was very quickly followed (again through the good offices of Mr Bowie) with the discovery of William Burroughs ... and the notion of writing as art, of an avant garde, of forbidden fruit, of dark and dangerous subject matter filtered through experimental form. Thanks, Mr Bowie. The first gig I ever went to was Lou Reed. And the second. When I heard Roxy Music, when punk started up, when I first heard Throbbing Gristle, when I first heard Faust and Can, when I first heard Cabaret Voltaire, and No Wave - there, somewhere in their DNA, I could hear echoes of my beloved Velvets. This was a good thing. Metal Machine Music is Metal Machine Music. A Zen-like perfection. Coney Island Baby is lovely, doo wop inflected pop, Rock And Roll Heart a criminally ignored pop masterpiece, Street Hassle ditto. New York showed the old buzzard still had a heart and a conscience. In recent years, Lou had been reconnecting with the avant garde in his work with The Metal Machine Trio and gigs with John Zorn, and the Metal Machine concerts by Zeitkratzer. My week beats your year he wrote - a very snotty, punk riposte. Very Lou. Very Lou indeed.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 08:22:50 +0000
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