Ah, Uncle Lou. Lewis Allan Reed. The guy who helped launch 10,000 bands (usually with the help of his own group, the esteemed Velvet Underground…you know the Eno quote about them, I'm sure). A much beloved figure in the rock n' roll world, he showed us what the great American novel could sound like when you set it to 3 or 4 chords. When I was a kid learning to play guitar, this was huge.
I loved reading. It was a thing we used to do back then in the 80s. We didn't have smartphones or a 24 hour news cycle, so you had to make do with what you had. Which was awesome, of course. Whether we knew it or not. So reading Lou Reed say that he wanted an album to be like the great American novel was very influential to me. It seemed impossible, but the kind of impossible you wanted to go for anyway.
In the late 80s, as luck would have it, just when I was discovering this guy through his RCA Greatest Hits cassette after seeing him (with Robert Quine on lead guitar, no less) on some awards show where it was clear that not only were Lou and his band the coolest folks in the auditorium that night, but more than half of the attendees had no idea what was happening until he hit the chorus of Walk On The Wild Side, if not a little sooner. Maybe.
After that, it was trips to places that sold records, tapes and CDs. I usually would peruse the bins at truck stops, drug stores, supermarkets and so on, because you would be able to find the weirdest music for cheap. I liked weird stuff. Bootleg beige cassettes with things like George Jones and Gene Pitney singing together. Some terribly mastered Ellington tape with a slowed down version of The Mooche that I was obsessed with (Shout out to Philly late night horror hostess Stella and her show, Saturday Night Dead, a show that came on after SNL back in the 3 channel days where she'd show old, bad horror films). Collections of 60s and 70s hits or oddities, or old country comps with titles like Trucker Tales Vol 8. I forgot where I copped that “RCA: Best Of Lou Reed”, but after that, I was hunting for his music everywhere. Then New York came out.
Reading about how Lou Reed was back again, after already being back a few times, was exciting. Seeing an article in the entertainment section of the Philadelphia Inquirer about Reed's just released album, I read it in record time and couldn't wait to get it. I probably got it later that day I bet. I'm thinking this had to be in January sometime.
The album did do my head in. Then, the search got broader. Trying to find everything I could that was Reed adjacent. The Velvets, John Cale's stuff, Nico's stuff, Mo's stuff. Finding a cassette of the Doug Yule-led VU album Squeeze for 99 cents, then still feeling ripped off. It's not a good album, although it always cracked me up to think that the great UK band Squeeze took their name from this album (then Cale produced their first album). I guess it would be like a mid aughts band calling themselves Cut the Crap or something.
Getting that first VU cassette with the banana, and White Light/White Heat on the same day was massive too. Smoking a bowl, parked on some street in some neighborhood as song after song came on and answered a lot of questions that I should have already been asking. After European Son screeched outta there like a hyena on fire, I was so frothing and eager to unwrap the next cassette and dive into some more. Everything about it hit me.
White Light/White Heat too. Jesus. Nothing prepares you for that in 1988. Six songs. One of the few albums that'll feel like you're hearing it for the first time despite having heard it countless times. To me, anyway. Just a fuzzy visceral hang, with the occasional soft gauziness of a tender moment that's sure to be fleeting. Or a doctor yelling at a nurse, mid-shock treatment, with a voice that somehow overpowers the drums and blaring guitars in the mix. I could go on and on, and I'm sure I will some more…..hence the “1”.
(I figured I'd toss another blahg up here since it's been a minute. There's more to come. Always.)
Oh yeah, I'll leave the lyrics to a tune I wrote for the guy the day after he went. Just banged it out using that 3 Chord method I had learned from Uncle Lou. I’d attach a recording of me playing this, but it’d be more fun to hear it requested sometime... or you can just wait for it to appear on some EP down the way.
I don't know why the formatting is so large plus I had to change the font to construction yellow because otherwise it was invisible. It's like the Metal Machine Music of font size/color, so it stays. Not like I have a choice. Damn you HTML!
The Ostrich
Solemn family trips you’d always have to take
In Connecticut, by a New York lake
Bitter look on the old man’s face
Gave you something he could never take away
Doctor asks about your schooling
You know, the guys, the girls, your friends
Grown ups talking just a room away
Growing tired of having to defend yourself
Say it starts off with the Ostrich
Could be a craze there for the kids
Maybe something different happens
What could be more different than the Ostrich?
Every metro has its wonder
You can hide there in plain sight
with this you’d mine for stories
injected smack into the night
Imagine one of those parties
Where everything takes place
Afterwards when all the blood and baubles
get swept up
They’ll see the gift you left behind,
A beating heart wrapped up in lace
The street just winds up shifting
So you went back to your dad
For 50 dollars weekly
You’d type and drink and drink and drink
When it was discovered
That you never went away
There was a line around the Beacon
and no more ConEd bill to pay
Known to be a prickly sweetheart
An enfant terrible
Moody bitterness and violence
Sometimes heaven, sometimes hell
Sometimes subway, sometimes scooter
The occasional fuck you
Even when you faltered
You’d say “it’s more than critics do”
There’ll always be some suffering
Is that the price one pays for peace?
Your lover in the golden hour
Life force flowing towards release