Mike Natale:Listened to: CD
“Who has touched and who has dabbled/ Here in the city of shows”
You know, it’s fitting that today’s album should be Lou Reed’s Transformer. After walking the streets of the new Giuliani-fied, Disney-ed Manhattan to go to Radio City to see The Swell Season perform (a truly magnificent experience, by the way), listening to Reed’s portrait of my city in the 70’s is an eye-re-opener. A mix of nonsensical lyrics and Waits-esque depictions of the New York high and low life, Reed’s masterpiece seems to be the musical version of Midnight Cowboy.
“Vicious” kicks the album off with instrumentals that say “This is rock and roll” and a voice saying “This is art”, a vibe immediately crushed with masterful force by “Andy’s Chest”, which is a mellow, child-like ditty that causes you to question what the deep meaning is to what is essentially nonsense. It is after two fun but not-terribly special tracks that we get to “Perfect Day”, which to all fans of Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting takes on a whole new meaning. The song seems to have bittersweet lyrics, which to the untrained ear seem simplistic, while those of us who are trained to be sad discover the lamenting hidden behind the hope. “Hangin’ ‘Round”, the next track, is fun, but I recommend seeking out the much more enjoyable, far less over-produced acoustic demo available on the 30th Anniversary CD.
Of course, this brings us to everyone’s favorite track on the album, the theme song/indictment of the hipsters and whores of all-holy Manhattan, “Walk On The Wild Side”. Another reason that the album was fitting today is that last night, during one of the early songs in the set, Glen Hansard had the audience perform the “Doo do do do doo do do doo”s during one of his songs simply by saying “And the colored girls go”. This is not only a sign of Hansard’s command on his audience, but Lou Reed’s command on american airwaves with a song that probably wouldn’t even get past standards today (they cencor the second verse, but will play songs with the lyrics “Call me Mr. Flintstone/ I can make your bed rock” by some under-educated assholes. Let’s protect the innocence of the children. If a body catch a body coming through the rye). I truly wish I could capture the magic of hearing this track for the first time, but I gotta be honest with you, I got home at 3am this morning. I shouldn’t even be awake now.
I’m not terribly big on the tracks "Make Up", "Satellite of Love", or "Wagon Wheel”, though they do add to the overall ambience of the album. It is the two three tracks that get eerily mystical and brilliant. Yeah, I just described “New York Telephone Conversation” as mystical. They posses a vibe of a dying vaudeville act, a clown with melting make-up on the streets of a city who pass him by without a glance. I began this piece with my favorite line from the album, which I believes sums the entire album up, and it is from “New York Telephone Conversation”. “I’m So Free” seems like an answer to Tommy’s “I’m Free”, but from the perspective of someone who got free and discovered there was nowhere to go. Of course, the eerie end track “Goodnight Ladies” seems to be more a funeral dirge then an end of the night anthem, and perhaps that’s what Lou Reed wanted. Here is a figure lost in the shuffle of New York’s nightlife, and even his death is nothing more than a vaudevillian goodnight.
-Mike
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Please welcome back, once again, Nick Young.
Nick Young:
The key to appreciating Lou Reed or anything he did with the Velvets is taking his music with a grain of salt. Solo Reed in the 1970's almost never took himself seriously. He would deflect questions from the press with the dexterity of a great Dylan imitator, and this was all thanks to his vicious sense of humor. When asked why he sang about drugs, he answered, "I think the Gov't. is plotting against me." There are laughs in the audience. Somehow I do not believe everybody found this funny. Some people just don't have the ability to take things lightly. Sadly, those are the people who lash out against Reed's music. They will never see the fun in his lyrics.
Reed himself was not very professional when it came to the structure of his music. If something was out of tune for a performance or a recording, he just went with it. It went with the label the press stamped upon him- that his music was 'gutter rock.'
(Interviewer) Would it be right to call your music gutter rock?
(Reed) Gutter rock? Oh yeah.
I'm sure he was plenty proud of that remark. His 1974 effort, "Transformer," captures all of the Andy Warhol throwaway glam at its absolute finest. "Vicious" is an emancipating anthem for the all of the lovesick and romantically downtrodden people of the world, more specifically those living in NYC. According to Reed the song was inspired by Andy Warhol (see imbedded video), who came up with the classic opening lyric, "you're so vicious, you hit me with a flower." In just nine short words he surmised everything wicked and elegant about his music. He would do it again in the chorus of the fifth track when he wooed us with, "Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.".
." Yes, the album is funny, but then if you're me you usually find something sad in just about anything you listen to. I didn't find it in the decadent, dispassionate strut of "Andy's Chest,", but I could hear it the tonally confused power ballad "Perfect Day," which finds Reed muttering "I thought I was someone else, someone good," before ascending into a highly expressive chorus. Somehow Reed finds a way to make his music affective without ever really emoting. His dry, caustic delivery is probably his greatest strength. This is probably why his music mixes with taking drugs so effortlessly.
Drugs "leave your problems alone," just as the song says, but only while you're on them.
Other album highlights include the jittery, T.V. obsessed, FOTC-esque ballad "Satellite Of Love," and the comical album closers "New York Telephone Conversation," and "Goodnight Ladies."
These tracks act as bookends, providing just the balance the album needs to make an indelible impression.
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