#194: Transformer- Lou Reed

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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.

#216: The Queen Is Dead- The Smiths

Mike Natale:

Listened to: CD

I should warn you all, this post will be short. I have to rush, as I have a lot of things to do today before I head into Manhattan to see The Swell Season in concert. To be honest, I find it fitting that the album would be The Smiths, as I feel the same honesty from Hansard as I do Morrisey, and I wish I had time to elaborate on that. Eh, fuck it, they have 3 more albums on the list for me to do that.
　


It was Halloween, senior year. We were flipping stations on the radio, me in my John Lennon costume next to my Yoko, Eve, and Fat Albert. It was then I heard a familiar voice on the radio, singing a song I’d never heard before. I was entranced. Could my favorite singer, who ominously drowned in 1997, have really sung the lyrics “The sea, it wants to take me”? He had, in fact, as the radio host later stated “That was a new posthumous release from the late Jeff Buckley, performing a cover of The Smiths’ ‘I Know It’s Over’.”

It was then I was convinced I had to track down that song. I bought the Buckley album it came from, the 45 they released to promote the aforementioned album, and, one day while buying an array of CDs at Borders, the original Smiths album it came from. I had heard of The Smiths, but they just struck me as more whiney musicians for indie-loving loners to praise on blogs…such…as…the one…I’m about…to praise them…on…my god, what have I become?

Anyway, when I decided to listen to the album, realized that either I had turned into the indie-loving loner I had so despised, or I had misjudged The Smiths, and a lot of me is banking on the latter of the two (after all, if I was an indie-loving loner, I wouldn‘t hate Sonic Youth, but more on that at a later time). Starting with a quip from 60’s cinema, a passion of Morrissey’s, we head into a very bass-heavy, too-rock-for-80’s music rock track entitled “The Queen Is Dead (Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty)”. Of course, this track depresses me a tad for personal reasons. There was a girl who I knew, and we were so in sync mentally that I could just tell what she’d think of things without her even being there, and every time I hear this track, when it gets to the line “So, I broke into the palace/With a sponge and a rusty spanner/She said : "Eh, I know you, and you cannot sing"/I said : "That's nothing - you should hear me play pian-er" I could hear her giggling and saying “Oh, that’s lame.”

Only a few of these tracks are forgettable (Frankly Mister Shankly/Vicar In A Tutu/Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others), and even those have some nice poetry, but where this album really shines is it’s tragic ballade ring tracks like Never Had No One Ever, the Wee Small Hours for the emo-set. “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” and “Bigmouth Strikes Again” have a guitar sound that reminds me of Crazy On You, and are even more fun than that for lacking that sometimes grating wailing of Heart. As I love john Keats, W.B. Yeats, and Oscar Wilde, “Cemetery Gates” could be the crappiest song ever and I’d still enjoy it (it is, in fact, nothing special) but it does remind me of “Here's Where the Story Ends” by The Sundays, and there’s nothing I can say about “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” that can’t be said on one million (500) Days Of Summer fan-sites better than I would, except that I truly wish I had written the lyrics “To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die”.

Without a doubt, though, the finest track on the album is the one that drew me to it. “I Know It’s Over” has some of the most beautiful lyrics and melody combinations of heard since Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (with which it shares chord structure and progression). The lyrics: "If you're so funny/Then why are you on your own tonight?/And if you're so clever/Then why are you on your own tonight?/If you're so very entertaining/Then why are you on your own tonight?/If you're so very good-looking/Why do you sleep alone tonight?/I know …/'Cause tonight is just like any other night/That's why you're on your own tonight/With your triumphs and your charms/While they're in each other's arms..."*

have such a power and potency to them that they alone almost justify when Jeff buckley declared that everything from the 80’s was shit “…except The Smiths”.

-Mike

*Lovingly reprinted without permission from Morrissey.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everyone, please welcome back Nick Young, who has chosen to guest spot on albums of his choosing rather than throw his life away on a silly internet endeavor that about 2 people read on a regular basis. I, however, will continue doing this daily to stave off the desire to leap off the roof. So, without further ado, here’s Nick Young.

Nick Young:



How can an album sound punk without once attempting to be punk?

Upon first listen there's something transformative and tragic about The Smith's third studio album, "The Queen Is Dead." There's something beautiful about Morrissey's ability to emote without ever raising his voice above a polite melody. Melancholy genius actually bombards you so consistently on "The Queen Is Dead" you find yourself at odds keeping up with it. Frankly, the album is quite intimidating upon first listen. Paradoxically, there's also something brilliantly welcoming about the LP's jangly guitars and woozy vocals leading us into musical kingdom come. If I haven't caught your interest by now, just know that we wouldn't have "(500)Days of Summer" or "(500) Days of Singers" without it.

The first eighteen seconds of the opening cut, "The Queen Is Dead," sound like the death of a Disney song. First an indistinct voice that sounds like a zombified Disney cartoon informs us that life is basically bullshit. "I don't bless them," the voice croaks, disregarding everyone in the world in four blunt words. Here is where the egg of life cracks and falls apart for anyone caught in the maelstrom of Morrissey’s crooning intonation. "Farewell to this land's cheerless marshes," he drunkenly salutes (as if he's actually escaping somehow). His words drip with bitterness. The lyric, "No one talks about castration," turns weakness and feelings of inferiority into art. The verse that follows speaks volumes:

We can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry
And talk about precious things
Like love and law and poverty
Oh, these are the things that kill me

"Frankly, Mr. Shankly" (fame, fame, fatal fame) is lyrically flawless. Any starry-eyed Indie-rocker can relate to the yearning in the lyric "I want to live and I want to love." Who doesn't want those things? "I Know It's Over" is so fucking tragic that I think it really can only be heard when you're alone. I'm almost positive that the song won't play if there's another person in the room. "Oh mother I can hear the soil falling over my head," Morrissey tearlessly laments as the cold hand of death escorts him across the river Styx inside his mind.

And do we really have to go over why "Never Had No One Ever" is significant to my, er, well, basically everybody's love life (somewhere along the line)? I mean come on! If you can't relate to these lyrics, then you've never truly felt alone before:

When you walk without ease
On the streets where you were raised...
I had a really bad dream
It lasted 20 years, 7 months, and 27 days
And I know that, I know that
I never had no one ever

-Nick
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, tomorrow will be #194: Transformer by Lou Reed. Hopefully it’ll be up before 2 pm, but come on, guys, I have the Swell Season concert tonight. My ass is gonna Falling Slowly well into the night.