Lou Reed - 1942-2013

[eighthobstruction]

Perhaps....you had all the right role models ....but in the wrong order [Eric Morecombe]

[teamsaint]

The best thing about self-destructiveness is when it stops being a role model.

Role models. Not usually a good idea, at least not the impossible ones the media want us to have.

[Serial_Apologist]

Perhaps....you had all the right role models ....but in the wrong order [Eric Morecombe]

Nah - started off on Chris Barber.

[Serial_Apologist]

Role models. Not usually a good idea, at least not the impossible ones the media want us to have.

Be your own walkman

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Why do Ian Curtis and Robert Smith make me feel involved, and Lou Reed and Jim Morrison don't?

Because Curtis and Smith have a perspective which coincides with something in your own worldview that Morrison and Reed don't? (With me, it'd be Smith and Reed, but not Curtis and Morrison - 'tho' either of those any day in preference to Morrissey!)

Bowie's material is often rather "distancing" and his manner rather cold and detached and yet somehow he still draws people (or at least me) into his world.

The same can be said of Pollini (or RS Thomas) - very often, the "cold" is so intense it's white hot (as opposed to the lukewarm, tepid stuff that passes for "cool").

[Richard Barrett]

Why do Ian Curtis and Robert Smith make me feel involved, and Lou Reed and Jim Morrison don't?

Bowie's material is often rather "distancing" and his manner rather cold and detached and yet somehow he still draws people (or at least me) into his world.

At the risk of stating the obvious: Curtis, Smith and Bowie are/were British; Reed and Morrison were American.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

At the risk of stating the obvious: Curtis, Smith and Bowie are/were British; Reed and Morrison were American.

It is "obvious" - but I hadn't noticed it! L'histoire de ma vie

[eighthobstruction]

It is "obvious" - but I hadn't noticed it!:

....Ttttt'....

[teamsaint]

At the risk of stating the obvious: Curtis, Smith and Bowie are/were British; Reed and Morrison were American.

Its a fair point. (although how relevant that might be to a fan of Blondie, the B52's and the Ramones is open to question!!)

I have always felt that Morrison's "west coastness" was perhaps something that got in the way....and it's perhaps generational too. At a personal level, Curtis and Smith were pretty much my age, whereas the other two were obviously of the 60's. But of course that really can't be the whole story. And its not like I didn't want to like the Doors or Reed ...or is it deeply subconscious? Just too many JM posters around perhaps, against the grain of the culture of the late 70's .

Anyway, back to Lou Reed......

[Anna]

I confess I only 'discovered' Lou Reed in the mid-90s, I now forget how and why. I've never been able to connect with Van Morrison, (but I love Morrissey!) but DOH! you mean Jim Morrison? Couple of The Doors stuff I like a lot. David Bowie - I like his early stuff such as Hunky Dory and Ziggy is his best, after that I think I lose interest. Assuming you mean Robert Smith of The Cure? I was quite keen on them as well for a bit. But then I'm still a mega fan of Dr. Robert and The Blow Monkies .... but, no rhyme or reason, I just like Lou Reed - I think he's been described as Music for the Literate.

[teamsaint]

Re Anna's comments, Its very hard for a single writer/composer /musician to keep on saying something that is important to a particular individual over a really extended period of time, not least because there are others out there saying things to us that may begin to speak to us more strongly, as Anna suggests perhaps re Bowie.

The Cure , for example, set out on a musical journey that carried a lot of people with them. But the did " Pornography", and after that for me, I didn't need to visit the next destinations on their path. My problem perhaps, but since after that time they began to speak to a whole new audience, perhaps this was a good thing. REM. Great band, genuinely creative, but after 10 albums?.....hard indeed to keep that level of audience intensity when the world is moving on, Radiohead are emerging, or whatever.
(Not criteria to apply to the beast known as Classical, but then the context is different, and Rock and Roll seems to need some "nowness" somehow....in an indefensible statement kind of a way .)

[Serial_Apologist]

Re Anna's comments, Its very hard for a single writer/composer /musician to keep on saying something that is important to a particular individual over a really extended period of time, not least because there are others out there saying things to us that may begin to speak to us more strongly, as Anna suggests perhaps re Bowie.

The Cure , for example, set out on a musical journey that carried a lot of people with them. But the did " Pornography", and after that for me, I didn't need to visit the next destinations on their path. My problem perhaps, but since after that time they began to speak to a whole new audience, perhaps this was a good thing. REM. Great band, genuinely creative, but after 10 albums?.....hard indeed to keep that level of audience intensity when the world is moving on, Radiohead are emerging, or whatever.
(Not criteria to apply to the beast known as Classical, but then the context is different, and Rock and Roll seems to need some "nowness" somehow....in an indefensible statement kind of a way .)

The epiphenomenal character of pop music illuminates the ephemerality of capitalist culture better than anything else in culture I think, though celebrity may now be overtaking it: I imagine there have been quite a few treatises on this subject.

[Anna]

The epiphenomenal character of pop music

Am I the only one who had to look this up? Anyway, I asked my dog, Pavlov, and he quite agreed with me!

[MrGongGong]

Why is it when people like Lou Reed die that folks who obviously have a huge interest in music
and probably DO read the Sunday papers seem to have no awareness of who these musicians are ?
It always strikes me as a bit odd , along the lines of someone who said they had "never heard" of the band Metallica
I can understand people never knowingly listening to their music but they haven't (like Lou Reed) been hiding in the shadows of late night R3 !
to be so unaware when the same folk are very aware of other musics is rather strange IMV

I wasn't a great "fan" of his music
and think that he was a bit "over rated" (not sure if that's a good way of putting it ? )
but (like Buxtehude ?) had a huge influence on many musicians........

or is this just a "composerly" thing ?

I know that if I went and talked to senior music academics in more or less any University of College that they would have a knowledge of these figures.

[Richard Barrett]

(like Buxtehude ?)

Lou Reed, the Buxtehude of the late 20th century - I like that.

You may know that MMM became a "classical" piece to the extent of being reconstructed and toured by the Zeitkratzer ensemble not so long ago...