Sep 262008
Wow! This clip gets to the heart of the matter concerning our ongoing series on the sincere human beauty found in even the worst moments of Lou Reed’s long and suprisingly documented career. Talk about growing up in public!
May 072007
Featuring an astute VJ introduction!
9 Responses to “Lou Reed…As His Music Was Meant to Sound!”
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I find it impossible to listen to.
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Your loss, my man. Lou was so high on the sound of this record when it came out!
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I much prefer this to any number of uber-cool, look-at-me-being-Lou-Reed pieces of crap from the VU era. And beyond!
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As I have done with my preference for Billy Joel’s “Untown Girl”-era stuff and REM’s “Man On the Moon”, you, Townsman Hrrundi, have demonstrated how much you are not a fan of an artist. Bravo!
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No, that is not what I have done, Mr. Moderator. I have stated that this song contains elements that ameliorate the problems I tend to have with Uncle Lou. Specifically, this song features:
– A groove
– A sense of humor
– An apparent effort to communicate with the listener — i.e., to “mach schau” rather than telling us all to go fuck ourselves (my sincere apologies to the Lou Reed fans who feel let down by the fact that Lou Reed isn’t treating them like shit)Is that clearer?
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It’s crystal clear, Hrrundi, as it was to me in your initial post. You don’t like to be treated with contempt and faced with Lou’s awkwardness and misanthropy mixed with tenderness. So be it!
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Mr. Mod said:
You don’t like to be…faced with Lou’s awkwardness and misanthropy mixed with tenderness.
I ask, sincerely:
Hey, wait a minute — have I missed something about Lou’s appeal here? Is he another Pitiful Rock Loser that rock nerds like because he’s actually *less* cool than they are? Is this like a Jonathan Richman thing, but on an even more pathetic, self-delusional, leather jacket-wearing level?
I need to know!
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I’ve said it many times, I thought: for me, along with the sense of cutting cool that I actually do get from a lot of Lou’s best music (the VU stuff, in particular), I most enjoy him the way I enjoy Scorcese’s King of Comedy film – he’s a painfully honest example of the Rupert Pupkin within at least myself, if not all Reed fans. Not just taht movie, actually, but he’s like rock’s version of a lot of Scorcese characters – Jake LaMotta, Christ, and so forth.
I do NOT equate this with how you describe Richman and his fans, by the way. It’s not a matter of being less “cool” than me but rather him being less self-aware and more unintentionally candid than I could ever be. To me, there’s an important distinction regarding true vulnerability.
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Mr. Mod, you’ve come through for me yet again with a candid, thoughtful response. I wonder how the rest of you feel? Why do you put up with Lou Reed, anyway? Perhaps better put: why do you *love* him?
I know I’m in the minority, but I really like Lou’s 80s sound. “New Sensation” is one of my all-time favorites (probably a top-20 if I had to think about it). It’s a sound that I would not normally be into, but stuff like this lets me have me some Lou and avoid Billy Joel and other more-pithy versions.
It’s similar to my preference for Bozzio-era Zappa over the Mothers stuff, which I have very little taste for. Sometimes those mid-career transitions are jarring, but hey…birth is painful.