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Joined: September 03 2005
Location: Olympus Mons
Status: Offline
Points: 15916
Topic: Lou Reed's worst concept albums Posted: October 03 2016 at 01:46
I (bravely) sampled a chunk of Metallica's Lulu - utter crap. Seems Lou is still whacked up to the eyeballs with smack.........Poor dude. What were Lars and Co. thinking ? Oh, did he pass on ?? Coz I never heard the news. Guess that says it all.......
Joined: August 27 2014
Location: riding the MOAB
Status: Offline
Points: 1505
Posted: September 28 2016 at 12:53
Eh, I'll pass. Lou Reed's not a bad musician per say but his solo stuff isn't exactly the best. To a greater (or in this case lesser) extent his concept albums fall into the same category.
I'll give him and Metallica some points for the Lulu idea but recording a couple of guitars feeding back, releasing it as well, is only mitigated by the fact that some people can be talked into anything. Not only liking this rhythym-less, melody bereft disharmonic mess but using it as a real influence. Real effluence actually.
Joined: March 12 2005
Location: Neurotica
Status: Offline
Points: 166178
Posted: September 27 2016 at 13:09
Lulu
Dig me...But don't...Bury me I'm running still, I shall until, one day, I hope that I'll arrive Warning: Listening to jazz excessively can cause a laxative effect.
Hmm...Lou Reed.....being an old fart I was there when VU came out. Some of that was interesting and some of his early solo things early are ok , but I always thought he was a poor singer and musician who wrote a handful of cool songs.
The only album that I still would play would be Rock and Roll Animal....best actual rock album he did.
Yes, that and Lou Reed Live as both were taken from the same concert.
Joined: August 22 2010
Location: Indiana
Status: Offline
Points: 20477
Posted: September 25 2016 at 16:06
Hmm...Lou Reed.....being an old fart I was there when VU came out. Some of that was interesting and some of his early solo things early are ok , but I always thought he was a poor singer and musician who wrote a handful of cool songs.
The only album that I still would play would be Rock and Roll Animal....best actual rock album he did.
One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Haquin
Joined: May 12 2009
Location: Coolwood
Status: Offline
Points: 6393
Posted: September 25 2016 at 15:11
Metal Machine Music has some value as an experiment, especially for its time, but Lulu is an abomination. Hudson River Wind Meditations sounds pointless to me, important only to Reed himself.
The world of sound is certainly capable of infinite variety and, were our sense developed, of infinite extensions. -- George Santayana, "The Sense of Beauty"
Joined: February 01 2011
Location: Michigan
Status: Offline
Points: 12702
Posted: September 24 2016 at 18:16
Never cared for Lou Reed. The songs that he wrote that were actually worth a damn were played better by someone else, and his best album, Transformer, is only redeemed because David Bowie's fingerprints are all over it.
This version blows away the original:
As does this:
I guess it's just a matter of not being able to stand Lou's voice.
...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
Joined: January 17 2012
Location: Wirral
Status: Offline
Points: 1079
Posted: September 24 2016 at 12:18
Lulu fan signing in! Very, very hard to find other fans of it. But it wasn't the disaster so-called collective knowledge has it down. I've lent the album to people who were poets and they thought it was OK. Lent it to non-poets and they were more lukewarm about it. You couldn't fill out stadiums playing it from start to finish, but you could fill out a good couple of theatres.
MMM however, I have to be in a certain mood for that. Probably the bravest album released in turns of what it consists of. And no "Berlin" in the poll?
EDIT: Oh WORST concept albums. That explains no "Berlin" then!
Joined: October 03 2008
Location: Là, sui monti.
Status: Offline
Points: 10837
Posted: September 24 2016 at 10:18
I didn't hate Lulu, I just found it... "bizarre": I couldn't tell if it was a Metallica album with Lou Reed singing or a Lou Reed album with Metallica as a backing band.
Not sure if I'm very clear with that sentence... Let's be clear: for a Metallica album, it was far from the quality of their early albums (Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets); for a Lou Reed, it sounded out of his style. Yet, strangely, I find the combination of the heaviness of the instrumentation and the outcentered vocals of Lou Reed worked well enough not to shock me.
About Metal Machine Music, even if I know it was a way to end his contract with RCA by saying them to go... "enjoy their inner selves", I still enjoy it. Yes, I enjoy it: it reminds that Reed knew the music of LaMonte Young, and I even tend to think that MMM is the kind of albums that Fripp or Richard Pinhas (Heldon) never dared to record yet...
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