Lou Reed: Metal Machine Music (RCA)
Purchased used at Sound Cat Records
I never liked the Velvet Underground or Lou Reed's solo albums that much. Which is not to say I disliked them. I admire Lou's dedication to his art. He wrote a few okay songs. But he couldn't sing worth shit, in situations where singing was necessary. On Hal Wilner's Kurt Weill album (Lost In The Stars) Lou sang the title song. Except, he just can't hold a melody on a song that requires it.
I was barely a teen when I started reading Creem magazine. I recall a back issue I bought at the QMart in Quakertown, that covered this Lou Reed album. There were three columns down one page, the middle of which read "no no no no no no no no no no...[etc]" with Lou's image superimposed on the text. I guess I remember it decades later.
So what to make this record? Its primary purpose is pretty much on the surface: Lou owed two LPs to RCA and devised this monstrosity.
Is this album prescient? I'm thinking both yes and no. Yes in that, there'd be cassette releases by Italian noise artists (specifically MB) that aren't too far astray from this wall of sound, just a few years later. Surely some of them must have known this album.
No insofar as, I don't think Lou was trying to influence anyone. He put this thing out into the world, and accept it or not.
So what of the contents? It's a wall of sound, more trebly and bass-end. I can't particularly distinguish one side from another, though they're clearly not the same either.
But what of the effort? Maybe Lou didn't take this especially seriously, but he didn't not take it seriously. There's a push here, he wanted to make something. There's an atmosphere, an air to this. That said, while it's clearly not all the same, I can't distinguish one side from another.
Four sides, and hour + spent with this. What would Lou think? Probably that I was a sucker.
