Lou Reed

asdf wrote:
I read something too. But I think I heard Andy saying that he's not good live these days

I might have said something that could be interpreted as such, though it surely would need to be nuanced.
In july I saw Lou for the 10th time in concert - I honestly enjoyed each and every one of those concerts and would go out to see him tomorrow if he came anywhere near me. He's the only artist I've travelled for - it's in fact a bit of a tradition between me and my partner.
Our first trip was to Paris, when we were still very young gay lovers -a trip in 2005 to go and see Lou perform over there.
Since then we've also been to Berlin and Lyon to catch a Lou performance.

Lately Lou has been playing all instrumental free form noise shows.
I saw him perform one such a show at a jazz festival here in Antwerp with his wife Laurie Anderson and John Zorn.
I also saw him with his MM3 at the AB club in Brussels, about a year later.
This type of performances should come with a clear warning - the second one did! - to the audience: it's a type of music that has some genuine ties to his back catalogue, even from the earliest days of the VU onwards, but this is a fact known ony to people who know his work thoroughly and appreciated by even less.

This summer I was genuinely suprised by Lou's performance in a positive sense.
Old age and health issues have affected some aspects of the rock 'n' roll animal, but he's rather well aware of what he can and can't do.
It's nothing like Dylan who'se basically embarissing himself publicly by maltreatement of his finest work.
But in some fields he obviously is less dynamic than he used to be - he seemed to have aged rather dramatically in just 4 years time, possibly due to diabetes.

Still, there's no living artist I admire anywhere near as much as him.

Just how beautiful is this:



Oh, right: he has 2 new guitar players, one of whom is called Aram Bajakian - he plays the lead theme on 'Ecstasy''.
He's a really good guitar player - check out his outro work on a song like 'Waves of fear' -, incredibly enthusiastic, even quite sexy.
He also has a record called out on Zorn's Tzadik-label called Keff, which is a trio of guitar, violin and bass doing current renditions of traditional Armenian stuff. I like it quite a bit.

Here's Aram Bajakian getting off on his guitar during the Lyon show I attended:

asdf wrote:
From "Magic & Loss", an album that deals with death much.

I'm not sure if it deals with death, though I understand why you say so.
A few years I ago I read an article - maybe it was in a collection of lyrics - of how he came to write Magic & Loss.
People often know half of the tale: the deaths of Doc Pomus and Rotten Rita, 2 people close to Lou.
But what's much less known is that Lou incorporated stuff he had already written with something very different in mind.

Appartenly he had been reading about shamanism and got intruiged by the claim of some of these people that they were capable of physically disappearing while remaining present in their communities. This rather bizar notion apparently set him of to write some stuff which was focussed on that theme of presence and absence. It's also why it's called [i]Magic & loss[i], the magic litteraly refers to something that's passed off as such.

If you'll relisten to the album, you'll find the theme of presence and absence to be at its very core!

It's one of my all time favorite albums.
Though, as often, Lou got more criticism than praise for it.

^^^^^

Andy, i assumed you were going to the Lyon concert, because of what you had said in our Blue Eyes conversation in June....
but i was uncertain, so i didn't say anything to asdf.

i wish i could see him in concert.

Andy wrote:Here's Aram Bajakian getting off on his guitar during the Lyon show I attended:

that is so good.

Andy wrote:

asdf wrote:
From "Magic & Loss", an album that deals with death much.

I'm not sure if it deals with death, though I understand why you say so.
A few years I ago I read an article - maybe it was in a collection of lyrics - of how he came to write Magic & Loss.
People often know half of the tale: the deaths of Doc Pomus and Rotten Rita, 2 people close to Lou.
But what's much less known is that Lou incorporated stuff he had already written with something very different in mind.

Appartenly he had been reading about shamanism and got intruiged by the claim of some of these people that they were capable of physically disappearing while remaining present in their communities. This rather bizar notion apparently set him of to write some stuff which was focussed on that theme of presence and absence. It's also why it's called Magic & loss, the magic litteraly refers to something that's passed off as such.

If you'll relisten to the album, you'll find the theme of presence and absence to be at its very core!

It's one of my all time favorite albums.
Though, as often, Lou got more criticism than praise for it.

i will listen to it later, with your words nearby, and see how it sounds then.....

cheers Andy.

^^^^

it is bright and early on Saturday morning here, so a talk about Lou Reed has to be a fine way to start a weekend....

i wonder if Andy and I read the same Lou Reed stuff on facebook....

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Lou-Reed/211254343633

I didn't really write "Magic & Loss" deals with death because two Lou's friends died. He seems to write about facing death all through the album.

It's very interesting to know he had been reading about shamanism.

asdf wrote:he's made an album called Lulu with Metallica. I don't like Metallica but I want to know what that sounds like.

I think I won't like it...

From an interview to Isabelle Huppert

"You know sometimes," she says, apropos of nothing, "you can meet people that you admire, or you know through their work, and it's not necessarily a pleasant experience."

"Lou Reed," I volunteer.

"Lou Reed," she says, "is a very nice man."

Eight syllables, I tell her, that I have never heard in that order before.

"Well, Lou Reed was nice to me. He came to see me on stage a couple of times. Then I met him in Paris."

We can't say they're not brave

It's streaming at their website right now.
I have only listened to 'The view' and the first 2 or 3 minutes of the openig tune - whatever that is called.
Needless to say that if a Lou Reed freak like myself hasn't jumped to the oportunity to check it out more substantially, it's because I'm not falling in love with the stuff.
Some Lou Reed fan are extatic. What I've heard so far, in my opinion, is really not very good to put it nicely.

Why would Metallica make an album with Lou Reed? He sucks.

I listened to something (I don't remember what) and is it just me or does Lou Reed sound just like Ric Ocasek but worse?

You guys should all give Master of Puppets or Ride the Lightning a spin

I don't like it either. The worst part I think are Lou's vocals... he sings like too "rigid"...

i didn't like it very much either.

asdf wrote: he sings like too "rigid"...

That's not true: he just doesn't sing at all.
He sounds like an old man reading words from a page.

Dylan sounds like a muppet who had too much to drink reading a spanish newspaper.

There are some demo recordings from that first V.U. record that do sound very Dylanesque - I believe they are the only tapes on which you can Lou hear playing a harmonica.

But I'm not really sure what official VU-releases have a specific Dylanesque sound to them.
There are even some pre-VU records - 'Your love', 'Merry go round', ... - on which Lou actually sounds as a relatively good pop singer!

I have often said that one of the most fundamental differences between present day Bob & Lou is that Lou appears to be a lot more aware of his capacities and, more importantly, shortcomings than Bob. Lou may not always deliver stunning performances by sticking to his limitations but at least it isn't as embarrasing as what Dylan does.
From what I've heard from this new record, it would seem Lou may have crossed that line!

Andy wrote:There are some demo recordings from that first V.U. record that do sound very Dylanesque - I believe they are the only tapes on which you can Lou hear playing a harmonica.

You mean like the song I posted first in this thread?
I want to hear more like that one.

Andy wrote:Dylan sounds like a muppet

asdf wrote:
You mean like the song I posted first in this thread?
I want to hear more like that one.

I hadn't listened to it yet, but that's one of them yes.
There was a VU-boxset called 'Peel slowly and see' that contained a disc filled with this type of stuff.
If memory serves there's also a version of 'I'm waiting for the man' that sounds very Dylan-folky.

I'm glad he quit that style after that afternoon or so.
I'd rather listen to stuff like this:

asdf wrote:

Jesus, that sucks.
And to think he wrote such clever classics ...



The Bells, btw, IS a really good record if you ask me.