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Out:
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Thursday, December 11, 2008
Lou Reed: Metal Machine Music
Like any ravenous record collector who pretends that money ain't a thing, I regularly peruse eBay for the rare gems I can't find in real life.
My latest conquest, and at a pretty damn low price considering I've been chasing this thing for over a year, is this baby:
Feast your eyes on it--I can't believe it's mine now. Holding it in my hands feels like a dream.
So here's my take on it: as esoteric now as it was in 1975 when it was released, Reed's mystery as an artist/musician deepens, even upon first listen. It is probably one of the first pure noise records to ever come out, as he creates a vast musical landscape that seems almost prehistoric in its cacophony. It is an homage to machines, racing away from the organic wizardry Reed created with the Velvet Underground, which used solely the ingredients of sex drugs, & rock n' roll. But this noise masterpiece isn't a complete non-sequitir--you can hear the seeds of it in the grating fuzzed-out fury in the Velvets' magnum opus "Sister Ray".
Everyone knows Reed is a pompous ass. In my opinion, although I love this record for its novelty and absurdity (it's also great to make out to), Reed made music mostly for himself. This record is anti-mainstream, anti-radio, anti-Billboard chart, anti-music, anti-everything; it's a retreat into the bowels of his brain.
This is how I know it's a great piece of work: when the needle retreats back to its standby position and the music stops, your ears are left with a vacuum of sound, wandering and confused, your brain rattling with loosened screws. The only sensible thing to do then is to flip the record over and begin the madness again.
I'll leave you with this hilarious description of how Lester Bangs coped with Metal Machine Music:
"One day in the summer of 1975 I awoke with a hangover and put on Metal Machine Music immediately. I played it all day and through a party which lasted all night, in the course of which I got shitfaced again on cognac and beer, broke about half my record collection, punched out the front screen door in my house, physically molested one of my best friends' girlfriends of four or five years, told my friend who was a very talented poet that he couldn't write for shit, after getting thrown out of a restaurant for spilling beer all over his lap and myself and the table and creating a 'disturbance', zoomed over to another friend's house where I physically assaulted her, repeating over and over in a curiously robotlike rant, 'I know you've got a bottle of Desoxyn in your dresser! Gimme, I want them, I want to take all of them at once!', threw all the empty cognac bottles in the air as high as I could for the pleasure of watching them shatter in the street, ending up in a blackout coma stupor, which nevertheless never blacked me out quite enough to stop me from writhing on the couch, tearing at my hair and screaming at the top of my lungs, until the police came at seven a.m., whereupon I snapped to and told them that my friends, who were now out in the street breaking beer bottles and yelling 'MACHINE! MACHINE! MACHINE!' up at my bedroom window, had gotten a little rowdy and I would be responsible for them here on out."
My latest conquest, and at a pretty damn low price considering I've been chasing this thing for over a year, is this baby:
Feast your eyes on it--I can't believe it's mine now. Holding it in my hands feels like a dream.
So here's my take on it: as esoteric now as it was in 1975 when it was released, Reed's mystery as an artist/musician deepens, even upon first listen. It is probably one of the first pure noise records to ever come out, as he creates a vast musical landscape that seems almost prehistoric in its cacophony. It is an homage to machines, racing away from the organic wizardry Reed created with the Velvet Underground, which used solely the ingredients of sex drugs, & rock n' roll. But this noise masterpiece isn't a complete non-sequitir--you can hear the seeds of it in the grating fuzzed-out fury in the Velvets' magnum opus "Sister Ray".
Everyone knows Reed is a pompous ass. In my opinion, although I love this record for its novelty and absurdity (it's also great to make out to), Reed made music mostly for himself. This record is anti-mainstream, anti-radio, anti-Billboard chart, anti-music, anti-everything; it's a retreat into the bowels of his brain.
This is how I know it's a great piece of work: when the needle retreats back to its standby position and the music stops, your ears are left with a vacuum of sound, wandering and confused, your brain rattling with loosened screws. The only sensible thing to do then is to flip the record over and begin the madness again.
I'll leave you with this hilarious description of how Lester Bangs coped with Metal Machine Music:
"One day in the summer of 1975 I awoke with a hangover and put on Metal Machine Music immediately. I played it all day and through a party which lasted all night, in the course of which I got shitfaced again on cognac and beer, broke about half my record collection, punched out the front screen door in my house, physically molested one of my best friends' girlfriends of four or five years, told my friend who was a very talented poet that he couldn't write for shit, after getting thrown out of a restaurant for spilling beer all over his lap and myself and the table and creating a 'disturbance', zoomed over to another friend's house where I physically assaulted her, repeating over and over in a curiously robotlike rant, 'I know you've got a bottle of Desoxyn in your dresser! Gimme, I want them, I want to take all of them at once!', threw all the empty cognac bottles in the air as high as I could for the pleasure of watching them shatter in the street, ending up in a blackout coma stupor, which nevertheless never blacked me out quite enough to stop me from writhing on the couch, tearing at my hair and screaming at the top of my lungs, until the police came at seven a.m., whereupon I snapped to and told them that my friends, who were now out in the street breaking beer bottles and yelling 'MACHINE! MACHINE! MACHINE!' up at my bedroom window, had gotten a little rowdy and I would be responsible for them here on out."
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