I'll do no good today.
My musical awakening took place in the late 80s when I realised that U2 weren't, actually, all that good. Two artists woke me up - REM and Lou Reed.
By the time I got my first CD player in 1989 I'd amassed a huge collection on record and the first CDs I bought were REM's Green and Reed's Transformer. They're still among my most listened-to discs.
Then I bought Berlin, with it's bleak beauty and then Coney Island Baby, the closest he came to wistful.
He was a strange old goat, was Lou. Wilfully irascible to journalists but, as heard above, capable of moments of sublime tenderness in song. That he couldn't hold a note to save his life was immaterial...
Heck, his famous lack of tuning was no barrier to his record company trying desperately to get a bit of that Springsteen money:
Yeah, I'm sure that was a happy video shoot.
My favourite Lou Reed moments come from the year I bought my first CD player - 1989's New York. It was both love letter and hate mail for his home town and as spiky and visceral as any of his press interviews. New York contains my favourite opening to a record:
Caught between the twisted stars, the plotted lines, the faulty map that brought Columbus to New York. Betwixt, between the East and West. He calls on her wearing a leather vest, the earth squeals and shudders to a halt...
I could go on and on and on but I'll instead spend my day listening to Lou and thanking the old goat for the impact he had on my life.
Goodnight ladies.
My musical awakening took place in the late 80s when I realised that U2 weren't, actually, all that good. Two artists woke me up - REM and Lou Reed.
By the time I got my first CD player in 1989 I'd amassed a huge collection on record and the first CDs I bought were REM's Green and Reed's Transformer. They're still among my most listened-to discs.
Then I bought Berlin, with it's bleak beauty and then Coney Island Baby, the closest he came to wistful.
He was a strange old goat, was Lou. Wilfully irascible to journalists but, as heard above, capable of moments of sublime tenderness in song. That he couldn't hold a note to save his life was immaterial...
Heck, his famous lack of tuning was no barrier to his record company trying desperately to get a bit of that Springsteen money:
Yeah, I'm sure that was a happy video shoot.
My favourite Lou Reed moments come from the year I bought my first CD player - 1989's New York. It was both love letter and hate mail for his home town and as spiky and visceral as any of his press interviews. New York contains my favourite opening to a record:
Caught between the twisted stars, the plotted lines, the faulty map that brought Columbus to New York. Betwixt, between the East and West. He calls on her wearing a leather vest, the earth squeals and shudders to a halt...
I could go on and on and on but I'll instead spend my day listening to Lou and thanking the old goat for the impact he had on my life.
Goodnight ladies.
__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan