Berlin Finally Gets Its Due

Oh how I wish I was in New York right now.
In 1973 Lou Reed stepped into a studio with producer Bob Ezrin to cut the follow up to his surprising smash album Transformer. RCA had been pleased, and perhaps stunned, enough by Transformers success to give Lou and Ezrin complete control in make the album they wanted to make. Lou Reed not content with making Transformer Two recorded a song cycle set in the divided city of Berlin chronicling the lives of a Caroline and Jim. It would take the earlier ideas of divorce and separation from Sinatra's Watertown and plunge as deep as possible into the depths of abuse, addiction and finally a strange sort of redemption.
Upon hearing part of an early mix Rolling Stone proclaimed it to be 'The Sgt.Pepper of the 70's' and a perplexed RCA gave it a royal red carpet arrival with ads and a beautiful fold out sleeve and full lyric sheet. This was beyond Rock and Roll, this was Lou Reed's Brechtian masterpiece that would shove him so far ahead that a new genre was created, 'Lou Reed music'.
The album was lambasted upon first release. Rolling Stone retracted it's initial praise in a scathing review. Lester Bangs famously called it 'The most depressing album ever made.' and it was a commercial bomb.
Swiftly though the album became something of a legend and it's influence starting reaching. David Bowie and Iggy Pop would relocate to Berlin just a few years later to record a mind bending genius set of albums including The Idiot and Low that would reshape rock as we knew it. Berlin as a divided city became a constant reference point for the punk and post-punk movement and it seemed as though Lou Reed's overly ambitious failure had had more influence than anyone could have imagined.
Then the 80's and it was gone again.
I first heard Berlin on it's first cd release in the late 80's. It was the second cd I ever bought, right behind Deborah Harry's Def Dumb and Blonde, and I got it before I even had a player. I remember very clearly taking it to a friends house, who had a player, and the first spinning of that dark and intense tale had a major effect on me.
It would slip in and out of print through the 90's until RCA finally saw fit to remaster it properly at the turn of the decade. Seemingly the story would end there as it's always been an album that divided people but Lou Reed always seemed to know what he had made was something special.
Lou Reed's Berlin lives again at St Ann's Warehouse in New York where it's being performed in it's entirety by Lou for the first time. Directed by artist Julian Schnabel and featuring film scenes projected behind the band by Lola Schnabel of the lovely and talented Emmanuelle Seigner the album is getting performed straight through followed by a short encore.
The reviews have been nothing short of ecstatic, everyone from the New York Times to Rolling Stone is pouring out praise to a piece of art that has deserved it for a very long time.
While I am not in New York to see it I have been fortunate enough to hear an audio recording of the first night and it is majestic. The band featuring Steve Hunter is playing like their lives depend on it and Lou himself seems energized by it. From the first line of 'In Berlin by the wall' to the very end of Sad Song he hits that perfect passionate monotone tone that he became so legendary for. Along with jaw dropping stabs of lead guitar it is to quote culturebot.org, 'One of the greatest performances in the history of live music.'
I hope the praise keeps coming because as legendary as he is Lou Reed the solo artist is still underrated. Dylan, Cohen, Waits....love em but ultimately keep em as I have a date with a tall strung out Germanic Queen and it's been a long time coming.

Dust Off Those Grooves (Chapter Four)

Some records belong to their time, others transcend it and then some are deliberately out of step with it. 1983's 'Paisley Underground' all star record Rainy Day in an odd way falls into all three of these categories.
A one off album, produced by David Roback, masterminded by Roback along with Susanna Hoffs as a reaction to the more and more plastic music the 80s were producing. Roback and Hoffs called in friends from other bands and recorded this odd, but affecting, album that would originally be released by Torrance, California's Llama Records. It's never been widely available as the original release was limited and suffered from poor sales, it was re-released just a year later in 1984 by Rough Trade but that swiftly went out of print. It fetches pretty steep prices on ebay these days but rumors of a re-release always seem to be in the air.
The album itself is a collection of Robacks and Hoffs favorite songs from the 60s and 70s performed by them along with Kendra Smith (Dream Syndicate, Opal), Three O Clock's Michael Quercio, and Will Glenn from the Rain Parade.
The album's opening track, Bob Dylan's I'll Keep It With Mine, is worth whatever price you can find it for. Featuring one of Susanna Hoff's most arresting vocals to David Roback's lightly strummed guitar with touches of a tambourine and violin, it sounds like a call to some sort of silent revolution that would only exist within these tracks. The song, one of Dylan's most underrated, was originally given to Nico by Dylan in the mid 60s although Judy Collins was the first to release a version. It's been covered many times but Hoffs gives it a definitive reading here and makes it her own.
Side one continues with cover of The Byrds John Riley sung by Quercio and that's followed by Kendra Smith's mesmerizing Neil Young reading Flying On The Ground Is Wrong. Quercio returns with the famous Pet Sounds opener Sloop John B and we find the first side closing with a section of The Who's mini opera A Quick One While He's Away. Roback's great guitar work, which would reach near legendary status later with Mazzy Star, is prominent on nearly every track here and it gives the album a great consistent feel, something rare for a covers album.
Side two opens with Kendra Smith's eerie take on Alex Chilton's already chilling Holocaust. The song made so famous by Big Star on that disturbing third album is given a suitably neurosis filled turn and sets the mood for side two which is considerably darker and noisy than the first. Roback continues the dark tone with Neil Young's On The Way Home before Susanna Hoffs turns in another stunner of a performance, this time with Lou Reed's I'll Be Your Mirror. The song, one of Reed's loveliest, was like the other main Hoffs contribution, given to Nico for inclusion on the first Velvet Underground album. Hoffs, also on rhythm guitar, gives the song one of it's sweetest and most melancholic turns. It's at least the equal to Nico's original legendary take and proves a welcome sigh of relief to the almost oppressive intensity of the side. The album closes with a long take of Jimi Hendrix's Rainy Day, Dream Away. It's a long exhausted sounding jam that is the weakest thing on the album but still sounds like a perfect closing. The final moments are taken up with the sound of rainfall before the needle slides over and the record is over.
Roback would, as previously mentioned, later meet Hope Sandoval and form Mazzy Star. Kendra Smith would continue with the great Opal before releasing a solo album in the mid 90's before unfortunately fading into obscurity. Michael Quercio would record with many bands and is credited with coming up with the term 'Paisley Underground', a joke that somehow caught on. Susanna Hoffs would of course find fame and lose herself with The Bangles. She would resurface in the 90's with a powerful second solo album and recently with another great covers album, this time with Matthew Sweet. She continues to mine her memories for those lost songs of her youth and still injects them with something they didn't have before. Search down this great album and remember a few of your own lost treasures.

Dust Off Those Grooves (Chapter Eight)

It would be interesting to take a poll of music lovers and critics and ask the question, 'What was the high water mark lyrically on an album in the rock era?'
There have been a lot of best of lists but I don't recall ever seeing that and yet what specific album would most music lovers point to as being the lyrically, the greatest? Dylan's Blood On The Tracks, how about Tom Waits Blue Valentine? Paul Simon's first album, what about Lou Reed's New York? Wouldn't want to leave the ladies out, Patti Smith's Horses anyone, Rickie Lee Jones Pirates? Springsteen, Townes Van Zant, don't forget Paul Westerberg. Tough question and I don't have the answer but the first one that comes to my mind and the one I would nominate is Under The Big Black Sun by X.
John Doe and Exene's Cervenka's lyrical masterpiece chronically the struggles of a working-class couple going through loss, a broken marriage, alcoholism and boredom is to my eyes and ears one of the great literary achievements in rock history. As good as any novel and the fact that the words are on top of one of the great rock bands in their prime only sweetens the deal.
Under The Big Black Sun should have been a disappointment, and God knows everyone was expecting one. It was the first major label album by X who had just signed with Elektra from the indie label Slash. Major label debuts are notorious for presenting watered down versions of once great acts. Even a great album like The Replacement's Tim suffers from a bit too much production, and the battle between the indie and corporate idea of what constitutes a great album continues to this day.
X were never a typical band though and with Under The Big Black Sun they delivered their finest work. It's a work that synthesises their harder earlier punk origins with their interest in more classic American traditions like country and folk. Americana 15 years before everyone was throwing that word around, it was called Cow-punk at the time and groups like X and Lone Justice would pioneer the sound that a future generation would reap the benefits of. Much like the country-rock sound Rick Nelson, Michael Nesmith and Graham Parson's would revolutinalize in the late 60s. It was a new spin to something very old.
Under The Big Black Sun would, like their first three albums, be produced by former Doors mastermind Ray Manzarek and I'm not totally sure if he has ever gotten enough credit for these recordings. First of all the idea that a musician so associated with L.A. rock from the sixties producing a young punk band in the eighties was incredible, but Ray managed, like John Cale with The Stooges and Patti Smith, to produce X with just enough control. He never compromised their sound, but he roped it in just enough to allow its inherit subtleties to come out. Ray Manzaerk is an uncredited hero to the 2nd wave American punk movement.
X's third album kicks off with the thunderous The Hungry Wolf, and we are immediately presented with something much more complex than the average rock lyric. Recalling Exene's native American ancestory we are presented with a, 'hungry wolf' running 'endlessly with my mate'. The song, ending with the haunting refrain of 'I Roam' is dedicated to The Santee Sioux Indians and JL 'Funny Papers' Smith.
The album continues chronicling the couple's doomed relationship with Motel Room In My Bed, it's lead character going to sleep, "Soggy and forgetful, hopefully not waking up so fitfully". Exene have John have an incredible way of presenting a concrete situation, like alcoholism, in such a subtle way. The music might be in your face but the words rarely are, these are clearly two authentic poets who happen to be part of one of the great American rock bands.
The single Riding With Mary continues and it's one of X's greatest songs and gives us the first clues that Exene is going through much more than just a disintegrating relationship with John. Her beloved sister had been killed just prior to recording this, she would remember her so tenderly in the film The Unheard Music just a year after this album, and it's that death that is sparking many of Exene's most poignant lines. The song, detailing an adulterous affair, ends with this image, "on the dashboard rides a figurine. A powerless, sweet forgotten thing, so the next time you see a statue of Mary, remember my sister was in a car".
Exene's Come Back To Me follows and is dedicated to her sister Mary. If anyone has ever written a more heartbreaking and real description of a funeral and dealing with death I have never heard it. Lines like, "Flies and relations make an annoying sound" and "I built a shrine for you on the kitchen wall with flowers and Florida souvenirs. You were walking through the house last night, I knew it was you from the space in your steps" are so perfectly rendered and detailed. Notice how they aren't just souvenirs, but Florida souvenirs, and it's not just her steps but the space in between them. Anyone who has ever questioned how good rock lyrics can be should listen to this song.
Typically an album will have a very specific break between side A and B. Different sounds or themes will be approached but here X again shows that they were never typical as Under The Big Black Sun and Because I Do both share an alcoholic haze of confusion and regret. The last lign on side one, "Mary's dead, Good morning Midnight" lends intself perfectly to the opening, "I am a black and white ghost in a black and invisible dress", of side 2.
Throughout the album, even though they are exceptional, the lyrics never over shadow the music. This is, after all, a rock record and it's a great one. Bonebrake and Doe were really coming into their own as a rhythm section. Bonebrake is a huge jazz, and specifically Lionel Hampton, fan and his drumming is uncommonly controlled for a punk group. It is also savage and loud, just tribal enough for Hungry Wolf and tender enough for Please Come Back To Me, exceptional work. Billy Zoom was astonishing in all of his work with X, early Rockabilly was and is his biggest influence and he continually gives the band some of the most incendiary fret work imaginable. He makes it seem effortless also, you never feel like he is pushing it or trying to impress. His riffs are deceptively simple and always powerful.
The album's themes of adultery and loss continue with Blue Spark and the only cover on the album, Dancing With Tears In My Eyes. The Leadbelly quote on the inner sleeve is particularly chilling, ending with a thought that will resonate with any music lover filled with something dark, "that's to show how music can bring you back.....if you ain't too far gone".
The album closes with three of X's most legendary songs. Three songs that would take the band to a spiritual place that few have ventured to. These are that Darkness on The Edge of Town that Springsteen sang of and that Badlands that Malick filmed.
First up is Real Child Of Hell, an exhausting rehearsal was filmed for The Unheard Music, and its idea of possession being the cause of a relationship breaking down is an astonishing one for rock. The real child of hell that the song presents is not only inside John Doe and Exene Cervenka but ultimately the fan wanting Exene's dress and much more. It's an indictment not only of themselves but the people they are confessing to, and if you haven't figured it out by now Under The Big Black Sun is a confession.
The ferocious two minute How I Learned My Lesson is what lyric sheets were made for with lines like, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so I never want to see you again", becoming a blur underneath the incredibly fast and frantic music.
The album ends with the finest song John Doe and Exene Cervenka ever wrote, and musically the finest song X ever performed. I don't say that lightly either, The Have Nots is one of the great songs in American music and I would hold it up against anything that Guthrie, Dylan, Springsteen or Reed ever wrote. Our sage ends with the couple separated and they are both at bars, just after work, drinking themselves into a much needed oblivion. It's a sympathetic chronicle and indictment of the American dream gone wrong, The Replacements would later cover similar ground in Here Comes A Regular as well as Th Manic Street Preachers in the astonishing Design For Life. It's a subject many authors and filmmakers have covered but it's not something you see in Rock music a lot. Correlating the life of a rock band with a dead end job with "the game that moves as you play" is one of X's most chilling moments. It's fitting that the original lyric sheet goes on longer than the song with a listing of bars to visit, hide and ultimately fade away completely in.
Under The Big Black Sun was awarded five stars by Rolling Stone and was near the top of nearly every critics poll in 1982. It was a defining moment for X and one which they would never top. They would record one more album with Manzarek, the brilliantly scattered More Fun In The New World. The remainder of their catalogue all suffers from over-production but still feature some of the most sublimely brilliant American music ever recorded. They would never scale the despairing heights of Under The Big Black Sun again but would provide a lovely sequel of sorts in 1987's See How We Are, in which the by now divorced John Doe and Exene Cervenka would lament, "the bars we keep between us".
25 years later Under The Big Black Sun is still relevant, still without peer and I'm pleased to report still available. Rhino had a wonderful re-release of it out, remastered with bonus tracks and in depth notes. Even though that will never sound as good as much worn and loved vinyl copy, I urge anyone who might be reading to get this currently available cd. It might make you re-think those best of lists that are released each year, it might make you remember a lost love or at the very least it will remind you that we all have something inside that needs exorcising.....if we're not too far gone.

Nico Returns

The end of this month will see the release of a new double set collection of Nico's work entitled The Frozen Borderline. The collection will contain her two finest album's The Marble Index and Desertshore along with 17 unreleased alternate takes. I first heard these two astonishing albums when I was a teenager and I had never before, or since, been as transformed by recorded sound. These records opened my musical tastes completely and albums I would later hear like Pere Ubu's Dub Housing or Don Cherry's Symphony For Improvisers made sense in a way to me that they wouldn't have if I hadn't been exposed to Nico's music. I trace my openness to all kinds of music, no matter how extreme or far out, to hearing these two works by Nico.
The albums were both recorded with John Cale and several years ago he called them, 'an important contribution to European classical music'. Anyone who hasn't heard these magnificent works should do themselves a big favor and pre-order this set.
The Velvet Underground produced three of the most important solo careers of the rock era in Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico. These two albums by Nico are the equal to Cale and Reed's best, and you can't get much better than that.

The Nelson Family Returns

There are many TV shows being released on dvd in the coming months but none have the historical value of Shout Factory's upcoming 4 Disc box set of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
A true television and rock music milestone, this will mark the first time that some original uncut episodes will be released on disc. The market has been saturated with public domain copies for years of varying quality but due to copyright reasons these were missing Ricky Nelson's songs.
This will not be a complete season set, I expect those in the future though, but will be a best of 24 episode collection. The Nelson family, specifically Rick's younger son Sam, is helping with this release. The episodes will be remastered and will feature audio commentaries, home movies, a featurette and more.
I haven't written about Rick Nelson as of yet on this blog but I consider him one of the greats from his early rockabilly work to his pioneering country rock sides. He remains one of popular musics most misunderstood and underrated icons.
The songs Rick would sing at the end of certain episodes from 57 on would mark the first time many homes would let rock and roll in and the smoking guitar work of James Burton would affect many future musicians, a certain Lou Reed has repeatedly said that seeing these shows had an enormous impact on him.
The shows impact on television history would also be significant, influencing everything from Seinfeld, variety shows and pretty much any family comedy you can name.
Mark your calendars for the May 1st return of a very sweet, endearing and important part of television and music history.

Lou and Pete Together.

Two of rock's most famous visionaries joined up earlier this week, at New York's Joe's Pub, for a historic set. Just after Midnight Lou Reed walked out for the conclusion of Pete Townshend's set and they performed three of Lou's most legendary tunes together. The three songs performed were Waitin' For The Man, White Light White Heat and Pale Blue Eyes. The founders of The Who and The Velvet Underground teamed up on vocals and guitars and they were also joined by Dinosaur Jr. leader J. Mascis.
Well over a decade ago Lou Reed appeared at a tribute to Townshend, performing a song off Psychoderelict but this marked the first time they had ever played together.
This performance is scheduled to be posted at http://towsertv.petetownshend.co.uk/ sometime Monday, for those who would like to see it. I can't wait and am grateful this was recorded.
Two giants and two of my heroes, hope the crowd there realized how fortunate they were.

"Ah. I love Lou Reed, but I'm not sure I ever did what he did. I think Lou deals with earthly themes, [whereas] I deal more with wishy washy abstracts! A literary model for me would probably be someone like Herman Hesse crossed with Somerset Maugham. The story is there, but I tend to try to work around it for some reason. Where my songs land in the neighborhood, which rock really demands, they [also] land in a general reflection of a group, a team, a gang, a small society. Lou is like an Elmore Leonard crossed with Charles Bukowski - he's actually better than both of them in my opinion. His story is often a neighborhood moment. He captures a specific, a color, the nature of a feeling. Lou is actually perfect pop. Just perfect sometimes.
-Pete being interviewed by The Independent late last year-

UPDATE: The streaming video is now available at the link above. The performance with Lou and Pete is sublime. They mesh together perfectly and it is amazing that Lou continues to find something new and inventive to say with these songs year after year. The two are clearly having a great time playing together and the mutual admiration is obvious. Chill inducing stuff, don't miss it.

Happy Birthday Lou Reed (Circus Article Part One)

Today is the King of New York's Birthday. Here is a rare Circus article from 1976 to celebrate it.

Sinatra's Watertown Finally Gets Some Due

The newest Mojo (issue 165 with The Police on the cover) has a huge article detailing Frank Sinatra's massively underrated period on Reprise records in the Sixties. While I haven't had a chance to read the article I was interested in their listing of his key tracks from that often overlooked period.
I suspected the list would have the usual suspects like IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR and SUMMER WIND but I was surprised and happy to see that Fred Dellar and Andrew Male had been savvy enough to include such treasures as THIS TOWN and A MAN ALONE'S lovely LONESOME CITIES. I was extremely happy though to see them paying tribute to the astonishing FOR A WHILE from my favorite Sinatra album, WATERTOWN.
The first album that I ever wrote about on this blog was WATERTOWN and this small mention in Mojo, where they call it "a brave, contemporary concept LP", is one of the first times that a mainstream publication has gone out of their way to praise this much maligned and misunderstood album.
I went back and re-read the piece I wrote on the album and was struck by how different it was to anything else I have written here so I thought I would reprint it for any that might be interested. I will be doing a proper look at the album eventually as I think it is one of the most overlooked in popular music. As Lou Reed is touring his very similar BERLIN record right now, the time for WATERTOWN to resurface seems right.

Here is my slightly re-edited original look at WATERTOWN for anyone interested.
...
Dust Off Those Grooves (Chapter One)

It's 1970 and Frank Sinatra has had enough. He's spent the last few years attempting to deal with the youth culture that has overtaken him and he is exhausted. The albums that he gave his all to like A MAN ALONE and the Jobim collaboration were relative commercial failures and he's watched some of the worst shit he's ever recorded find acceptance. Within a few short years he's gone from being the coolest man on the planet to appearing with The Fifth Dimension wearing love beads. He's had it and the world's had him. Retiring seems the only logical thing to do, step back and let all of this just pass him by until the world catches up again.
He has one final statement though, one final glance through that wall of isolation that he had visited time and time again. He had created the concept album when The Beatles and Pete Townshend were still getting their chins wiped by their parents. One more album pallie and let them all burn, their pinball wizards and lovely meter maids never meant anything to him. His was a world of pain, isolation and separation. He'll make an album about the new modern obsession, divorce, and if it fails then all the more fitting as he stopped caring long before.
He gets Gaudio and Holmes to write it, hell he might even make a TV show out of it and really stick it too them. He'll play a father and husband abandoned by his wife and left to take care of his sons alone. The album will trace this dissolve and it'll be a broken man he'll leave for us to find. No Ring a Ding, no Rat Pack, No more Chairman, that's all behind him and he knows it.
He steps into Columbia Studios with a sore throat from a cold and a weary heart from a cold world, and lays down 11 of the most gut wrenching powerful performances of his career, of any ones career. Take that he thinks as he leaves, the lights dimming behind him as the master tapes continue rolling.
The record fails, it fails big time, and he slips away into his memories and ours. He will make more records later, some good, some not, but he'll never make another statement like WATERTOWN. He'll never chronicle pain and what it is to be alone, really alone, again.
He closes out his career pissed and pissing it away surrounded by whatever trendy 'artist' he's grouped with but always in a separate booth, in a separate town because he never forgot that it was separation that he truly knew. It was separation that he embraced and WATERTOWN was his true last statement, his Waterloo and the last time he would raise his middle finger to a world that had forgotten just how much they needed him.
...

Trust Tom Snyder and Elvis Costello

I remember a great old Rolling Stone interview with Lou Reed around 77 where he is driving around New York with a journalist listening to The Sex Pistols NEVER MIND THE BULLOCKS, and he's lamenting the fact that the British Punk scene had only ripped off the New York sound but not the intelligence. It's a classic Lou moment that was quite perceptive although I am sure he said it before the first Elvis Costello album landed in the fall of that same year.
One of my favorite Tom Snyder interviews, thankfully preserved on Shout Factory's excellent Tomorrow Show Punk and New Wave collection, is when he sat down for a talk with Elvis Costello for the release of his TRUST album in 1981.
Costello was sandwiched between the odd combination of a clean-television rights activist and the great Frank Capra when he came out and performed a bruising and beautiful NEW LACE SLEEVES, one of the great songs off the undervalued TRUST. Snyder's moments with John Lydon, The Plasmatics and a bloody Iggy Pop might have made for better television, but the Costello interview provided American audiences with one of their first viewings of the man behind one of the most fierce and uncompromising persona's in rock history.
The talk revolves around Costello's time as a Computer operator, battles with record company executives, his lyrical influences (Snyder is obviously impressed by his mentioning Cole Porter and Lorenzo Hart), his father and his infamous Saturday Night Live appearance. Not brought up was the ugly Ray Charles incident that had damaged Costello's career in the late seventies. Snyder was right not to approach it as the issue had bean beaten to death and mostly resolved by February of 1981.
Both Costello and Snyder come across as well spoken intelligent men with sharp sense of humors. There is something so unrehearsed and fresh about this interview, and indeed all of Snyder's interviews, that is sadly lacking from most of today's talk shows. It's to both men's credit that the talk doesn't disintegrate into the combative nature of something like Snyder's interview with Paul Weller (a talk that seemed to bring out the worst in both men) or the infamous Lydon talk.
After the interview Costello would perform the astonishing WATCH YOUR STEP, also on TRUST, and Frank Capra is brought out. Costello's record company was so impressed with the interview that they released a rare promo vinyl copy of it backed with the studio version of WATCH YOUR STEP. An autographed copy is currently up on Ebay and it makes me wish I had 150.00 to spare as it is one of the only Costello records not in my collection. It looks like a great souvenir documenting a nice moment between two individuals who were the best at what they did. I thought of Costello yesterday when I heard the news that Snyder had passed away, and I wonder if the great man sent a clever spiritual quip to the one of the first journalists who bothered looking through his angry persona.

Lou Reed's Berlin Site Link

Here is the link for the official site for Julian Schnabel's film version of Lou Reed's Berlin starring the remarkable Emmanuelle Seigner as the self destructive Caroline. You can view a trailer for the film at the site as well as read some information on the figures involved and Reed's masterful 1973 album. The DVD will be out later this year, as well as I hope a CD documenting one of the live performances from last year.
Also, I am having trouble with YouTube clips posting as of late, but here is the link to Lou inducting Leonard Cohen into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame last night for those interested.

Lou Reed's Berlin: French Poster Design

Just came across this awesome French Poster for Schnabel's Berlin and had to post it here. I love how they are using the Ecstasy era photo with it as I have always found those some of the most striking images of Lou. Can't wait to to see this thing...

Lou Reed Live At Nashville's The Ryman

Lou Reed’s show at Nashville’s Ryman last night was an extremely satisfying one filled with more heart, passion and fire than most Rock and Roll artists could ever even hope to capture. Featuring a top of the line band consisting of iconic guitar players Mike Rathke and Steve Hunter plus Rob Wasserman on Bass, Kevin Hearn on keyboards, and the amazing Tony “Thunder” Smith on drums, Reed’s current USA tour finds him stepping away from the Berlin project that has been occupying him for the past couple of years to set his attention on the many other aspects of his now forty year plus career.
Sans an opening act, Reed and his band walked out on the stage to a huge response from the near capacity crowd just a few minutes after eight. The, just married to Laurie Anderson, Lou looked fantastic and he was clearly pleased by the huge welcome the hungry Nashville audience gave him.
The set begin with a real bang, namely an extended and slow down "Mad" (one of the key tracks from Lou’s 2000 masterpiece Ecstasy). Some minor technical glitches involving Lou’s guitar threw him off a bit during this song but it was made up for with his menacing vocal take and a mind blowing and lengthy guitar solo by Hunter that had everyone in the place on their feet. Its always a guessing game as to which persona Lou might bring with him but last night the ominous electric menace of the Rock and Roll Animal kept popping up.
The pulverizing "Mad" (which I estimate went on at least eight minutes) led into The Velvet’s classic "Sweet Jane" and it proved to be a solid rendition made great by a ferocious guitar break by Lou who seemed more than a bit pissed by the technical problems that had popped up during Mad. Thankfully the rest of the show went smoothly, almost as if any troubles were literally scared away by this searing improvised guitar take by Lou.
One of the nights highlights followed "Sweet Jane" in the shape of a powerful and moving rendition of The Velvet’s "I’m Set Free". Singing with his heart clearly on his sleeve and the band playing like their lives depended on it, the performance literally brought tears to me eyes. What a pleasure to see such a outstanding presentation of such an often-overlooked classic.

"I’m Set Free" was hard to top but somehow the band managed it with a bruising "Ecstasy", easily among the great lyrics that Lou has ever written. Featuring a haunting "The Bells" like opening and Lou’s uncanny ability to slip into whatever character’s persona he wishes to occupy, Ecstasy was an absolute stunner and again had the crowd on their feet.
An off kilter reading of The Velvets sweet "I’m Sticking With You" followed, a song that demands Moe Tucker’s involvement. Lou clearly played up the fact that the song has had such a success on the recent Juno soundtrack and he seemed to be clearly enjoying playing it. How strange is it that many young people are currently getting their introduction to Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground with a song like "I’m Sticking With You" courtesy of the Juno soundtrack?
The evening’s one new song followed and it was a real beauty. "Power of My Heart" seems destined to follow some of Lou’s greatest love songs and he sang it with a lot of fervor. Laurie Anderson unfortunately didn’t make a physical appearance last night but her spirit was absolutely in the room all evening.
The evenings most jaw dropping moment followed with a reading of The Raven’s "I Wanna Know". Featuring some astonishing percussive and vocal work by Thunder Smith and Reed’s channeling of Poe, "I Wanna Know" was spine tingling stuff and was perhaps the key performance of the night.
The much-maligned Mistrial album even got its time in the spotlight with a gloriously chaotic "Video Violence" following the monumental Poe track. The band and Lou clearly love the song and they played it to maximum effect, with Lou’s unmatchable guitar playing shaking the historic Ryman’s walls.
The evening’s most emotional moment came next with a lovely reading of New York’s "Halloween Parade". Lou opened the song lamenting the fact that more money is still being spent killing people oversees instead of helping sick and needy people here before launching into on of the best performances I have ever heard of one of his greatest songs.
The emotions continued running high with a gorgeous "Guardian Angel" (I love that Lou visited the epic and tragically underrated The Raven twice) and the main set concluded with an extraordinary and epic "Magic And Loss". A full standing ovation was given as Lou and his band bowed a walked off the stage before returning for the two encores.

The encores featured a series of incredibly well played and emotive fan favorites including "Pale Blue Eyes", a gorgeous "Perfect Day", "Satellite of Love" and the perennial "Walk on the Wild Side". Lou continued to show that he was thrilled to be a The Ryman and he thanked the audience multiple times for the warm reception they were granting him and his band. With a final bow and wave Lou and his band walked off for the final time and everyone’s no doubt emotional drive home followed. It was a really splendid and powerful show.
There isn’t a living artist I value more than Lou Reed so getting to see him again in a fairly intimate setting was very special. With a really cracking band (Smith and Hunter have to be seen to be believed) and a varied and inventive set list, Lou’s current tour is a glorious reminder to how vital he still is…up next is that long awaited Berlin DVD from Julian Schnabel and, fingers crossed, the new studio album Lou has been hinting at lately.

Faraway, So Close!

The final post in my look at Faraway, So Close! at Nostalgia Kinky.



Wim Wenders’ follow-up feature to his legendary Wings of Desire is simultaneously one of his most flawed productions and most resonate. Gone is the moody perfection that inhabited so much of his early career, and in its place in Faraway, So Close! is a sprawling over-ambitiousness that is as beautiful as it is frustrating and as poignant as it is flawed.



Of the three films Nastassja Kinski made with Wim Wenders, Faraway, So Close! is the weakest and yet there is something profound and right about it. Faraway, So Close! is a overtly spiritual work that has moments that rank along with the best of Wenders, but it’s hard to deny that the film falters in ways that Wenders work hadn’t before it. It’s a film that finds the great German director transitioning from one of the shining lights of the art house world into one of the most fractured.



Wings of Desire was a phenomenal success for Wenders and is arguably the pinnacle of his career. A near unanimous critical smash that is often featured along with Scorsese’s Raging Bull as the best film of the eighties, Wings of Desire was one of the oddest choices for a film to make a sequel to so Faraway, So Close! automatically had a lot going against it.



One of the most anticipated films at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival and one of the most controversial, Wenders Faraway, So Close! split audience and critical reaction more than any of his films prior had. Even the admires (and there is a lot to admire abut the film) were more muted than usual and its critics were much more vicious.



The film, written by Wenders with Richard Reitinger and Ulrich Zieger, like Wings of Desire centers on a group of Angels in Berlin looking over the people in the city. Also, like Wings of Desire, it features cameos from real life figures including everyone from Lou Reed to Peter Falk to most astonishingly Mikhail Gorbachev.



The positives from Wender’s sprawling film are easy to note. A incredibly beautiful looking mostly black and white production shot by legendary DP Jurgen Jurges, Faraway, So Close! is at the very least one of the most striking looking films from the early nineties. The acclaimed soundtrack, featuring a beautiful score by Laurent Petitgand and songs by the likes of Reed, U2 and Simon Bonney has also held up very well. This is also clearly one of the most personal projects Wenders ever mounted and its clear-headed spirituality is downright touching. There’s nothing ironic about Wender’s work here and its good-heartedness and good-will make it one of the most spiritually resonate works in all of modern cinema.



Unfortunately the negatives are just as easy to spot. Overlong and sloppy, the film never finds a consistent tone and for the first time in his career Wenders seems downright confused by the film he is making. Part political commentary about the reunification of Germany that had happened after Wings of Desire and part Spiritual confirmation, Faraway, So Close! marks a surprisingly unbalanced period for Wenders, one that unfortunately he has still not fully recovered from.



Despite the films many faults, its virtues finally outweigh them. The cast is extraordinary with special mention going to German actors Otto Sander and Bruno Ganz. The American actors in the film, including Falk and Willem Dafoe, are also quite splendid in their smaller roles. If the film does finally feel a bit bloated due to the cameos, Lou Reed does reverberate nicely specifically in a chill inducing moment when he plays his “Berlin” in his hotel room.



Nastassja is really fine in her role as the good hearted angel Raphaela and it remains one of her most resoundingly tender roles. There is something special in the collaboration between Kinski and Wenders and that comes out here, even though one wishes more time would have been spent on her character rather than the irritatingly silly action subplots that film becomes occupied with in its last forth.



Faraway, So Close! surprisingly won the Grand Prize at the 93 Cannes festival but the disappointment many people felt with it was palatable, and by the time it reached Britain and the States the sharp backlash was in full force. The soundtrack ended up being a much bigger success than the film did, and after a brief theatrical run it was relegated to a poor full frame VHS that destroyed the film’s stately compositions. Most English speaking countries would have to wait nearly ten years to see a decent copy of the film but thankfully the Widescreen DVD of it is quite nice, and it even contains a commentary by Wenders where he manages to highlight the films many virtues and faults.

Lou Reed's Berlin: The DVD, The Live CD and The Book

Here's the cover art for the upcoming release of Julian Schnabel's film of Lou Reed's Berlin, which streets on September 30th. The disc, featuring a filmed live recording of Lou doing his legendary album, as well as footage of Emmanuelle Seigner playing the doomed Caroline, will feature a new interview with Lou as an extra. Also streeting is a CD recording of the show courtesy of Matador Records. That's not all, as apparently a literary companion is on the way as well in April 2009 courtesy of Rizzoli entitled Berlin: A Performance by Lou Reed Directed by Julian Schnabel.

Elvis Costello with Lou Reed on Sundance Tonight

Episode number one of Sundance's new series Spectacle with Elvis Costello was a knock out last week, and tonight's looks to be even more special. Episode two of the episode series features Costello and Lou Reed together for the hour, along with a special guest appearance from award winning director Julian Schnabel. The idea of seeing two of my favorite songwriters siting down and discussing their crafts, careers and lives (not to mention playing together) has me more than a little excited. Everyone who has access to Sundance should tune in tonight for what promises to be a very special hour. More on the series can be found here and upcoming guests include everyone from Tony Bennett to The Police to Norah Jones.

Lou Reed's Metal Machine Trio

Lou Reed has a new album out although you might not know about it yet. Metal Machine Trio: The Creation of the Universe is an instrumental double album recorded over two nights at Los Angeles' Redcat. Please visit this link for purchasing details on what promises to be an exciting and delightfully combative release. I am going to get mine ordered as soon as I get moved completely and settled in to my new place.

Classic Song Chronicles: "Jealous Guy" (John Lennon)

While the title track “Imagine” is undoubtedly the most famous song off Lennon’s masterful 1971 LP, it is the haunting “Jealous Guy” that has become the most covered. Growing up with the legendary album, I must admit that “Jealous Guy” has always been my favorite, and as I have gotten older it has lost none of its hypnotic and powerful pull for me.
Lennon originally wrote the tune for “Jealous Guy” after The Beatles returned from their visit to India as “Child of Nature”, a song that was left off The White Album.



The discarded song stayed in Lennon’s head throughout the next few years and he brought it back to life during the Imagine sessions with new typically ultra-personal lyrics focusing on his relationship with artist, collaborator and muse Yoko Ono.



“Jealous Guy” is one of the ultimate John Lennon songs as it shows so many aspects of his volatile and passionate personality. Beautiful sounding but with a real line of bitterness underneath, the song offers up an apology without a resolution. It’s as though Lennon is explaining a line of behavior he has no plans on changing.
Despite the fact that the song includes Lennon’s own undeniably effective piano playing, the haunting harmonium work by John Barham, Jim Keltner on drums and the ever present Klaus Voorman on bass, the real pull of the track is Lennon’s pleading vocal take and an eerie mid-song whistle that would go on to influence Billy Joel a few years later on his equally mesmerizing "The Stranger" in 1977.

“Jealous Guy” wasn’t released as a single in Lennon’s lifetime (it finally appeared as a 45 under his own name in the mid eighties) but its impact was immediately felt. Of the dozens of cover versions of the song, one of the earliest by late soul legend Donny Hathaway remains the most effective:



Rod Stewart and The Faces began performing the song live in the mid seventies shortly before they split up, and the tune lent itself well to their scrappy but ferociously great playing, and is heard well in this rehearsal version:



The most successful version of the song (and truth be told, perhaps the greatest) was released by the peerless Roxy Music in 1980 shortly after Lennon had been killed outside The Dakota in New York. Armed with one of Bryan Ferry’s most enduring vocals and the band’s typically immaculate playing, Roxy Music’s version would ironically turn out to be their only number one hit in Britain, and it served simultaneously as a lament and tribute to an extraordinary talent taken all to soon.



Everyone from The Black Crows to Kiss have performed the song since. Much missed Elliot Smith was an unabashed fan of the track and his tender version would pop up often in his live shows throughout the nineties:



The most original version of the song came courtesy of Lou Reed at the Come Together tribute concert in 2001. Lou’s pulverizing and passionate version of Lennon’s track instantly became a ‘Lou Reed Song’ in the famed New Yorker’s hands and it’s a shame he hasn’t (to my knowledge) revisited it since.



Vivid, unflinching, and altogether haunting, "Jealous Guy" remains one of John Lennon's most beloved tracks and, along with the raging "Crippled Inside", it is the key song off his most commercially successful album.

One-Trick Pony From The Warner Archives

I received the Warner Archive DVD of Paul Simon’s One Trick Pony earlier this week, and I thought I would post a brief report on it. On the negative side, it is a DVD-R and the artwork is fairly plain and unimaginative, also the static main menu for the actual disc reminds me of some of the menus that graced so many early DVDS in the late nineties. There are no extras to speak of, save an advertisement for the Archives Series at the beginning of the disc. At 19.99 the disc is also overpriced and I hope that Warner’s might eventually lower the prices of these, or begin offering bulk deals of some sorts.
Now the good stuff: The film looks terrific and it was such a pleasure being able to watch it finally in widescreen the other night, plus the two channel stereo mix is solid if not earth shattering. I continue to be extremely impressed by the film, and re-watching it the other night reminded me of how big of an impact it had on me as a youth, particularly the last shot which probably helped shape the person I am perhaps more than I ever imagined.
Pricing and packaging aside I am quite thrilled with what Warner’s is doing. I am a bit concerned about the longevity of the disc as it is finally just a burned copy, but I trust Warners has at least gone to the trouble of using the best equipment and media for the copy they could. I can’t wait to see the next batch of titles the Archives will offer, and for now I am thrilled to finally have a decent copy of One-Trick Pony on disc.

The Return of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music

Metal Machine Music, the head-splitting apocalyptic double-LP set that Lester Bangs called "the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum" has been unleashed once again by its creator, Lou Reed, and I wanted to supply a link here for anyone who didn't have it in their collection. Please visit Lou's site here for information on the deluxe vinyl set, the Audio DVD and Blu-Ray versions of Reed's historic 'fuck you' to every conceivable notion of what was was expected of him as an artist, performer and rock star. Metal Machine Music was a monstrous and monumental statement by one of our greatest artists in 1975 and it hasn't lost any of its power to shock and pulverise its listeners into complete submission in the 35 years since it was first released. If you haven't experienced it or, like me, if you are just looking to upgrade your copy then visit the link above.

The Re-Making Of John Lennon

Growing up, John Lennon was my favorite Beatle. It was always like that, I seemed to gravitate towards his material more than Paul or George's and his was the first of the solo Beatle catalogues that I began to collect.
Sometime within the past couple of years that began to change for me. I found myself listening to Ram more than Plastic Ono Band and All Things Must Pass more that Sometime In New York City. Suddenly I seemed to have more books on my shelf about Paul rather than John. Tastes change I thought and I will always have a deep love for John and his work but around my thirtieth birthday I came to the conclusion that I was now a Paul man.
A friend made a joke to me that it was because I had mellowed, that same old idea that Paul was just the cute one still reverberates. An amazing book published a few years in Britain called The Unknown Paul McCartney shows clearly that Paul, much more than John, was the experimenter. As we get farther away from The Beatles, myths will become much more resonate than fact. This is happening in the worst and most extreme way with the legacy of John Lennon.
I realized that it wasn't me mellowing out in my love for Paul, it is the sad truth that in society's eyes that John is becoming the dreaded 'cute one'.
This isn't going to be a post bashing Yoko Ono. I have a deep respect for her as a woman and artist but one has to wonder who exactly is she marketing John Lennon to and why.
The last few years have seen McCartney make two of his finest albums, I would argue that there are moments on Chaos and Creation that are among his finest works. He has also been dragged across the coals by an incredibly messy divorce and by Beatles fans who seem to blame him for having the gall to keep living. Paul has become harder since Linda McCartney died, I don't mean personally but artistically it's given him a demon to fight. There is nothing cute about the sceaming Run Devil Run or the magnificent Rushes.
Something very different is happening with John Lennon. I was in a Starbucks recently and their cd of the month is a Lennon collection made exclusively for Starbucks. John Lennon's music wasn't made for a gigantic coffee chain, just like his image wasn't made for boxer shorts and fleece blankets. We are losing the main thing that distinguished John Lennon from the majority of his peers and the thing that was his biggest asset, his anger.
There is a moment on the amazing Who box set Maximum R and B where you here Pete Townshend kicking Abbie Hoffman off the stage. It's a raging definitive moment where Townshend is separating himself and The Who from the blossoming hippie movement. Lennon, even perhaps more that he realized shared a lot of Townshend's rage. For all of his activism and talk of peace John Lennon was always that angry young punk rocker who grew up worshiping Elvis and understood that a major element of Rock and Roll was personal exorcism.
One of the things that made Lennon so important was that he took the early energy of Elvis and Little Richard and he combined it with some of the most introspective songwriting that has ever been written. A damaged soul who never, at least in his music and I'm guessing in his life, got over the death of his mother. Listening to John Lennon at his rawest is like listening in on a confessional, an angry loud screaming testimony. This was a man who truly lived for Rock and Roll, if he hadn't had that it's hard to imagine what would have happened to John Lennon.
None of this is to discount the peace loving, humorous and ultimately tender aspect of Lennon and his work but those sides of him are being pushed so much onto people, especially younger people, I can imagine in a few years the nightmare of walking into a Wal-Mat and seeing something like 'John Sings Songs of Peace for Your Youngest' or designer baby cribs with partial lyrics to Imagine scrolled down the side.
I remember I first started to notice this new Lennon being pushed onto the public in the late 90's during the Come Together tribute. A sickening sweet candy coated concert that would have made you think that John Lennon was the most one dimensional cartoon character that ever lived. Only Lou Reed seemed to remember who he was saluting with a pulverising Jealous Guy. The memory of Kevin Spacey breaking out into Mind Games towards the end of that show still causes me nightmares.
Even the legendary lost weekend is becoming glossed over to the point of being erased. This dark period, away from Yoko, which had an at times ferocious child like Lennon getting arrested for assault and making some of the best and worst music of his life is becoming just a 'cute' footnote.
The quick mythologizing of Lennons final album, Double Fantasy, predicted the directions things were going to go. A critical and commercial disappointment upon released, soon after his death these bad reviews and poor sales were forgotten and people now view the album as being a triumphant comeback. Ironically it's that rose colored view that has made one of his most interesting works one of the least discussed. Songs like the brutal I'm Losing You and Milk and Honey's Stepping Out are among the best he ever wrote, but they also call into question the supposed perfect life in the Dakota that his last few years are currently being portrayed as. These songs, among others that question the marital bliss and perfect father, call into question everything that is more and more being accepted about the 'truth' of John Lennon.
In an odd way I am almost grateful for this shameful commercialization and softening of Lennon. It's made me go back and re-acquaint myself with his work and life. I didn't realize how much I missed that power and anger. I had forgotten how much a song like Isolation or I've Found Out could speak to me. Ironically, the forces in power that have attempted to change Lennon have brought his true spirit back to me. I worry about younger fans though and people who aren't intested in the truth that Lennon famously said he wanted. I worry about those people who might get there introduction to one of our greatest angry young men through a Starbuck's exclusive.
I have no idea what the future will hold for John Lennon's legacy. This sugaring might continue fo generations but I can only hope that the music will win out. That's the one thing that can't be sanitized, they can wrap the spirit of Lennon up in an American Flag and send it across the globe but they won't be able to change his words and music. For everyone that chooses the 'edited for content' version I can only hope there will be just as many that fall in love with one of our most primal and necessary screams.